Travel Video Making Tips for Beginners: How to Make an Amazing Video of Your Vacation

These travel video making tips for beginners will serve you well.

In fact, video-making now a days is a hot trend. You’ll find travel vlogs, food vlogs, information videos and of course, videos for social media.

But you don’t have to hire a pro to share professional-quality videos to share.

If you want to polish your videos to impress — even just to capture your trip in moving pictures for your own memories — then this article is a must read.

Find our easy, beginner tips for making travel videos, below.

Travel Video Making Tips for Beginners - filming in nature — It’s easy to make professional-quality videos on your vacation!

CONTENTS –This article will provide you with travel video making tips for beginners, including:

How And Where To Shoot The Perfect Travel Video
The Right Lighting and Shooting Time
Choosing Your Location and Background
Easy Life Hacks on Shooting Video
What is Post-Production and Why You Need It
Final Thoughts on Travel Video Making Tips for Beginners
Next Step

How And Where To Shoot The Perfect Travel Video

The video content market is growing, attracting advertisers and large audiences.

Many YouTube channels easily compete with the biggest TV channels in terms of views.

Travel video is not only a good way to record your observations and impressions on the way, but also a promising idea for earning money.

We have already talked about what to do and how to act in this article about travel video beginners.

Today, we will figure out how to shoot a video on the street, what shooting time is the best, and also give some cool pro tips. These are important video making tips for beginners, too

Then you can create your own professional looking vacation videos for social media or as a keepsake.

A vacation destination is the perfect place to create perfect videos on location.

So if you are ready for your vacation, let’s go on to learn how to make unforgettable memories with the best travel movies!

The Right Lighting and Shooting Time

You might think that outdoor videography is a simple task because the sun gives good lighting.

In fact, you need to carefully monitor the position of the sun.

It should be behind the operator’s back.

The subject should stand or walk facing them.

But this rule does not always work.

For example, at dawn and sunset you’ll get the most favorable light for filming – soft and warm tones.

And the shots taken against the sun at such a time, on the contrary, can become the highlight of your video.

Nature is unpredictable, and all forecasts can easily lie.

So, you need to be prepared – sometimes you have to wait a long time for the right weather.

As in photography, light is vital for video.

Try to shoot in well-lit places to avoid noise and unnecessary shadows that will spoil the picture.

At the same time, it is undesirable to shoot with the midday sun too bright.

But here it is important to choose an angle in which the person’s face in the frame will not be obscured by parts of the head.

Otherwise, you can get shadows from your nose or forehead or the shadows from the objects nearby like blooming trees or buildings.

Therefore, you need to purchase the simplest reflector that will illuminate the face well and remove shadows.

The best time is early morning or a few hours before sunset.

If in doubt, do a practice shoot and see the result.

Also, avoid situations where the camera is pointed directly at a bright light source.

Ideally, it will be behind you or to the side.

The camera will try to adjust to the lighting automatically, but it is better to control this moment yourself.

Choosing Your Location and Background

You’re going to find a lot of great places to shoot your videos on vacation.

But first, consider this.

The human eye perceives perfectly complex geometry on the background, or, conversely, a monochrome background – with or without illumination.

Before shooting, look for:

Interesting geometry
Beautiful perspective
Structural buildings
Exquisite facades
Park areas
Or, conversely, a large open space behind the hero – for instance, fields, rivers, sea, cliff.

Think about how it will be combined with the theme of the video.

No matter where you’re shooting, there shouldn’t be anything in the background that will be too distracting.

For example, Christmas garlands may seem like a great idea for a winter vacation.

But, if their brightness changes dramatically, the camera may focus on them.

That means you will become just a blurry spot in the center of the screen – you will have to reshoot.

Easy Life Hacks on Shooting

Here are some easy tips you can use when you are taking your videos.

Smart Phone Video Tips

If you are shooting your vacation videos on a smartphone, like most travelers, try this suggestions.

Turn on airplane mode before shooting. Otherwise, the recording will be interrupted due to a phone call or, if a notification arrives, its sound will be recorded.

Hold your phone horizontally if you are shooting a movie or clip. But if you plan to share the video on social networks – Instagram or TikTok, for example – then feel free to shoot a vertical video.

Record test shots, especially if you are shooting yourself. Record 5–10 seconds of video and check that it looks as it should.

Use tripods and other devices to secure your smartphone.

A tripod is suitable if you are shooting yourself against the background of something, and if you are moving and want to shoot your face or the surrounding space, you can use a selfie stick.

How to Create A Lively Video

To keep your vacation video interesting, follow these ideas.

Try to swap shots every 5 seconds, showing something more intriguing to keep the audience’s eye.

During the formatting process, do not bother too much with applying exceptional effects.

Instead, put more emphasis on cutting off the pieces that you do not need and gluing together the pieces to make the whole thing appear finished.

Remove all dull and low-quality shooting material.

Reducing the excess is excruciatingly painful. But, remember, not everything that appeared awesome during filming looks great on screen.

You want to tell a compelling story, so cut out all the fluff.

What is Post-Production and Why It’s Important

Travel Video Making Tips for Beginners - editing — Edit video footage at home

Post production is the phase when you are working with video materials after the filming is completed.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of post-editing, in addition to formatting and color adjusting.

You can apply visual effects at this point, as well — and they are getting better by the year.

Typically, post-production is divided into four steps:

Video sequence editing
Color adjustment
Adding audio
Visual effects

Now let’s learn about each of them in detail.

1. Editing

So, you have chosen the perfect technique for your purposes and shot a good material.

What to do next?

Formatting sometimes may not be the most enjoyable part of video production.

However, some manage to enjoy it.

This is especially true in the case of using native iMovie for Mac or iMovie for PC, user-friendly software that allows for millions of creative opportunities.

Montage is when you layout the video sequence by trimming and assembling the various pieces so it tells a story.

This is the most important step and you should get this right before moving on to the next “post” steps.

2. Color Adjustments

Colorization is the adaptation of color components.

Experts also advise against overlooking this post-production step.

The color palette and tones you use can establish a mood for your vide.

It also helps the viewer quickly browse and recognize your intent.

For instance, you might go for dull, neutral tones to convey something melodramatic, or go for colors that are bright and saturated for enjoyable scenes.

(Of course, when you are capturing your vacation memories, we hope they are all sunny and bright!)

This quick orientation will help your target audience make a lightning-fast decision whether they will stay with you for the length of your video.

3. Audio Tracks

Adding audio tracks while producing a video or clip is a tough, time-consuming, and highly responsible challenge.

And when creating a sound, a lot will depend on how much you want to spend. You don’t want to use a copyrighted audio and risk getting your video taken down, or worse, sued.

You have a couple of options.

Perhaps the audio from the video experience is good enough, and you can just go with that.

You can also use stock sound recordings.

And if you have musical talent, you can create your own original soundtrack to go along with the video.

Remember, like the colorization in your vacation video, the audio will play an important part in setting the tone.

4. Visual Effects

The concept of visual effects unites most of the transformations from post-processing after cutting and gluing.

In this stage, you can

Replace the background
Adding colorful footage
Superimposing text on top of the image
Use three-dimensional graphics

These techniques give the video a final professional polish, and create a unique viewing experience.

You might even want to consider time-lapse, slow motion, and image zoom.

The good news is, all of this is possible with the right and powerful software.

Final Thoughts on Travel Video Making Tips for Beginners

Don’t make the error of assuming that after you’ve filmed the essential content, your work is done.

Sometimes, the video preprocessing step can take longer and be more laborious than the recording itself!

Remember that by taking shortcuts in the post-production phase, you sacrifice quality.

Making trip movies is a labor of love.

But nothing compares to sharing your travel experiences with others!

Next Steps

We hope the video making tips for beginners was a real source of learning for you

For more creative ideas about where and how to capture your vacation memories, read these articles next:

Don’t forget to save this for future reference on Pinterest!

When to Visit 36 Dreamy Destinations

You will instantly receive the FREE Month-by-Month Destination Guide