6 Tips for Making a Memorable Travel Video

We’ve all seen profoundly boring travel videos featuring family members stiffly posed in front of landmarks. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Combine your travel footage with a small amount of creativity and whatever your destination, you will produce a memorable travel video.

Every trip is different. There is no formula that fits every odyssey. But if you use one or a few of the following tips, you will likely hear applause.

1. Keep it short. The odds are strong than the shorter your travel video the happier your audiences will be. Better to have viewers asking for more than asking for less. While you might shoot hours of footage, by careful selection of clips–and also by trimming the clips that you want to use–you can usually make a dazzling travel video that runs less than 5 minutes. In case you doubt that you can do justice to a place in that limited time frame, take a look at “Prague in a Minute.”

2. Choose a theme. The “everything + the kitchen sink” approach is easy, but it’s also a prescription for boredom. Audiences like to know what a movie is about. If your trip is devoted to a specific subject—like birding or surfing—coherence will come naturally. But if you’re in a more general sight-seeing mode, you need to invent the focus. There are many possibilities such as awesome vistas, unusual people (especially, candid shots), local food, architecture, music, weather (how your fellow travelers cope with heat or rain), or even repeatedly getting lost.

3. Have a real beginning and a real ending. A small amount of planning can provide you with visual bookends that will let your viewers know that you’re telling a story rather than tossing a lot of unrelated shots at them. For example, if you’re going on a ski trip, preparing the equipment could make a fine start.

4. Use titles. Digital editing software such as iMovie makes it easy to add titles to your video. There are many typographic options, such as: placing the titles onto black or white screens, superimposing the titles over images, and animating titles. Graphic style aside, the real secret to effective titles is to avoid saying what the pictures show. If you’re shooting a skyscraper, no need to call it “a tall building” but you might name the building if it’s obscure.

5. Experiment with visual effects. Visual tricks—for example, slow motion, time lapse, or unnatural colors—can add fun to a travel video. The danger is that the result can be gimmicky. So, just as you would with strong spices, use visual effects sparingly.

6. Play music. Well-selected music adds value to almost any travel movie. An obvious choice is to use music associated with the place you’re visiting. For example, Zydeco makes sense for a movie set in New Orleans. But Stanley Kubrick–who used “The Blue Danube” waltz to accompany a trip to a space station– taught us that you can be successful with very wild music ideas. The Internet is a rich source of music, much of cheap or free.