It may be obvious to some people, but we still see people holding their camera upright. This is fine for meme’s and short Facebook clips, but if you want a cinematic video of your experience, remember to hold your phone longways to get the full 16x9 view.

Keep your clips short and precise! This will make the editing process a whole lot easier. Don’t just film and wait for something to happen, look for the moment. That little moment is all you need to convey the story.

When you hit record silently count:

And one, and two, and three and four and Cut.

This does not necessarily represent 4 seconds, it can take longer. It is a rhythmic count to capture only short clips. Within this count you should get the part of video that you need, we call this THE MOMENT.
If “the moment” was not captured within that shot, cut, and do it again. It is better to make 5 separate short clips, where 1 is the winner and you can quickly delete the other 4, rather than looking for the moment in one long clip afterwards.

Ask yourself: What is the purpose of this shot?

When you pick up your Phone you should know what the purpose of the clip is before you even hit record. Too many people see a nice scene (like penguins on the beach) and just point their lens at everything hoping to capture what their eyes see.

In a movie, every single shot has a purpose. It tells us something about what we are watching. Your experience video should do the same. Break down what you are seeing into various parts. Film a unique clip to capture each aspect. Which brings us to:

Let’s stick to the example of Penguins on a beach. There are many things happening here. There are birds, waves, the beach, people and a sunset in the background. Flailing your camera around at all of them will not do your video any good. Each one deserves at least one, if not two unique shots. There are 3 types of shots to choose from:

Please note that one should avoid zooming on phones unless you actually have a optical zoom lens. If you don’t know what I’m talking about just avoid zooming and rather try get closer to the subject.

As previously mentioned, accessories like a tripod or a selfie-stick aid in the stability of your shots. You can also use your surroundings like a pole or wall to lean against to steady yourself. Now, whether you are using these or not these are some tips to help you steady yourself naturally.

These two elements can add an incredible amount of “cool factor” to your video. Not all phones have them build in so you might want to find an App that allows you to capture Timelapses & Slowmos.

You may need to practice a few times before you record, or if you flop it, don't worry, it’s digital, just do it again. This is a vital part of making your video engaging. If you don’t like being on camera or don’t feel comfortable talking to camera, get a friend or family member or stranger to say something. Remember to are actually talking to people on the other side of that lens.

Lighting is one of the most important parts of making something look good on video. So why is it not higher up on our list? Well, because 95% of the time the places you are visiting are either naturally or artificially lit anyway. Lucky you, but you will need to know how to manipulate it to suit you.

You just have to ask one question: Where is the light coming from?
Then always try and keep the light source behind you, so that your subject can be well lit.

The idea of filming a travel experience is to get away and experience the place you visit with your eyes and not through your lens. Too much of our time is spent on our phones anyway, so the best thing you can do is spend as little time as possible filming but still show the world: “you were there”. But how?

Remember we said make a short shot list. Tick off the shots you came to get. Once you have them, pack your phone in your pocket and enjoy your experience while it’s happening.

At the end of your filming session, or after a specific
activity, go to where your clips are stored and select all the clips that belong together. Move them to a new album and rename the album to something like: “Penguins at beach”. Each time you film a new activity or at the end of each day, group these clips into a new album. This literally takes 2 minutes if you do it right away and saves you hours later.

Now that you have all your footage stored in a manageable way it’s time to get to
the editing. Edit each album as new project or a unique video. There are two main
reasons for this:

ONE. It's easier to edit when you only working with bite sized pieces. You can always stitch the pieces together to make a longer video afterwards. But...

TWO. It’s easier to watch shorter videos and people want to watch shorter videos today anyway. The days of sitting through 2 hour home-videos are long long gone. Enter the age of 1min Instagram videos.

You have to play around. Don’t worry, it’s digital, you can’t break it! Experimenting is the best way to learn. If it completely fails, just delete the project and start again. Remember if you keep your projects limited to 10-20 clips (each 4-6 seconds long) the project stays manageable. This will give you roughly a 1 minute video and should only take about 15 minutes to edit.

Guys, we left the 90’s behind us! As retro as some things may become, those terrible star zoom boom shake cross fade effect are best left out. Straight cuts between clips are more professional and cinematic, so resist the urge to use the fancy ones.

When you don’t need the audio of a clip, make sure to mute or delete it. Although you may not always hear it clearly on your Phone, it can be noticeable on other devices and is very distracting.