Have you just got back from a vacation and intend to edit together all the footage that you shot to create a travel video?
Or have you already come up with an initial cut but feel that it doesn’t look impressive enough? If you want to produce a travel video that really stands out and captures the sights and sounds of your trip – there are a few tips that you should use when you edit it:
Be sure to use colour correction when necessary
One of the problems frequently present in travel videos is that the lighting conditions vary quite a lot. That can result in some footage where the colours look very different from the rest, and it is why you should make it a point to balance out the colors in any footage that you want to use in your video.Overall color correction should make your video look much more even when you cut it together, and make transitions between clips less jarring.
Avoid using jump cuts in the video
The jump cut is a type of transition where you cut from a point in a clip to a point later in the same clip that looks visually similar. As a result the elements in the video may appear to suddenly ‘jump’ to a different position entirely.
While there are some situations where jump cuts can be useful – in general you should avoid them in your travel videos as they can be very jarring and distracting to viewers. Instead if you feel you need to cut to a point later in a clip, try to add in a cutaway to mask the jump cut.
Decide what you want to do about the audio
Although you may have recorded some terrific-quality video footage – can you say the same about the audio? If you recorded it using the built-in microphone on your video camera, odds are its quality won’t be that great.
It is up to you to decide whether you want to improve the audio as much as you can by removing background noise and adjusting the audio levels. Alternatively you may want to get rid of the audio entirely and replace it with background music or a voiceover narration that you can record separately.
Focus on the story that you’re telling
As you start to cut together the video footage, try to focus on the story that you’re trying to tell. It could be a general story about your trip and the places you visited, or it could be a more specific narrative about a particular aspect of it.
Regardless of what the story is, it should be what you use to decide what shots to use and how to cut from one to the next. Every shot should build on the narrative of the story, and help you to piece it together for the viewer.
With the help of these tips you should find it much easier to learn how to make a cool movie yourself. The only other thing that you’ll need to put together your travel video is an editor, and for example you could use Movavi Video Editor.
All said and done you should end up with a travel video that looks impressive enough to have been produced by a professional. It may take a bit of trial and error initially, but with a bit of practice and experimentation you’ll start to be able to edit together your videos far more effectively. In fact the next time round it probably won’t be nearly as hard.