Shooting a Travel or Vacation Movie

Many travel movies are ho-hum; they have lots of nice scenery but don't really take advantage of video's unique ability to tell stories. You need to learn how to make the most of any situation to shoot great video.

In travel movies, shoot quickies just 30 seconds here or a minute thereto get plenty of impressionistic shots. Get different angles and details of scenes. You'll want to have a good variety of shots from each scene to edit together into sequences.

For shooting exterior locations, set up your tripod and get (slow) pans and (extremely slow) zooms. Try a variety of speeds in panning and zooming so you'll have several choices in the editing stage.

Enjoy the sights and sounds of your trip and shoot what naturally attracts your attention. Shooting travel movies is like shooting a constantly moving target. Every day is a new day, and the experience of discovering special places is very satisfyingenriched by your ability to capture those impressions visually.

On other hand, don't overdo it. Have the trip you came for! Occasionally put the camera away and experience the trip without a digital dimension. You'll refresh your senses and bring more to your shooting when you pick up the camera again. Have fun exploringand documentingyour appreciation of new experiences and horizons.

It's your big chance to play National Geographic television show producer. So consider what shots you need to get.

Variety is important in travel movies. You'll see lots of new things, so shoot frequently and broadly. One long shot of the cathedral won't be all that interesting when you go to edit your video. So shoot a wide shotsay, of a cathedraland then shift to covering the detailsthe sculptures around the door, the tourists waiting in line outside, the fountain in the courtyard. You're painting a picture in time, so shoot different views of a single place.

Interviewsfrom your companions and from localswill add human interest to your travel movie. It's often the "people experiences" on a trip that bring a place to life.

Like many other people, you may find that making great travel movies is fun and rewarding. If you get just a few of the shots from the following suggestions (see Figures 6.1 and 6.2), you'll have a movie that your friends and family will appreciate for years to come.

Figure 6.1. A wide shot of street vendors in Vietnam.

Figure 6.2. A medium shot of street vendors in Vietnam.

Shots to Get Before the Trip Begins

Your movie can begin the moment you begin planning your trip. Here are some creative ideas for capturing shots and sequences before the trip even begins.

Shooting Trip Planning

You can bring the camera out when you, your family, or a group are in the planning stages. Videotape some of the discussion of who would like to go where and why. After you've decided on a destination, you can videotape discussions of who's going to bring what (and why), especially on a camping trip. If you're traveling on a group tour and there's a pretrip get-together, shooting that will make a nice addition to your movie.

Shooting Getting Ready to Go

From packing scenes (what to bring?) to those pre-dawn departures, leaving home is filled with interesting scenes. The cab ride to the airport, the airport at sunriseyou don't have to wait until you've landed in Puerto Rico to start shooting.

Shooting Travel Vehicles

A shot of everyone getting in the car and driving away from your house can be the start of your movie. (Editing it later at high speed can be fun.) A guided tour of your car or van or the plane can also be entertaining.

Shots to Get During the Trip

Shooting during a long drive or flight is a good way to get people's reflections on their travels.

In a group, this may be the only time everyone is together (because they run in different directions as soon as you arrive somewhere).

When you watch TV, notice how often you see a driving/riding shot in a regular program (cop shows, reality TV shows, and more). In real life, it's an informal setting and can help you get more candid comments than in an interview.

Shooting Exteriors of Buildings

Vary the angles of your shots. Just as in still photography, your travel movie will benefit from a variety of shots when you edit it. Get a long shot of the exterior and details. You can also shoot several sides of a building that is architecturally noteworthy or do a walk-and-talk shot around different facades, zeroing in on any interesting features.

Scanning Famous (and Not-So-Famous) Works of Art

Many museums do not allow you to shoot their collections. If you want your movie to include images of world-famous paintings in the Louvre, buy postcards or books of the images, scan them, and edit these shots into your movie. Or shoot close-ups of posters or other images on location.

Getting On-location Narration

If you're walking around a location, describe what you're seeing, especially if there is a cultural angle. For instance, showing your viewers a row of snakes in jars on your trip to Vietnam is more interesting if you're talking about the snake wine, its medicinal qualities, and how everyone you met swears it works. If you don't fill in the details with audio, your audience won't understand why you shot it or what it means.

Recording Walk-and-Talk Shots

To take walk-and-talk shots, follow someone around as he or she walks and also talks to the camera. (You may have to learn how to walk backward or at least sideways to do this!) It's a great way to vividly capture the sense of a place and explore it at the same time, and it is intrinsically more interesting than someone standing still in a place. Try it and see what happens.

Shooting Food and Eating Scenes

Food is a subject everyone can relate to. Chances are you'll be eating something that reflects the local character of the place you're visiting. Even bad food can be interesting for people to talk about. Everyone has opinions.

Shooting sequences adds variety to movies. And food is always a good subject for a video sequence. Figures 6.3 through 6.8 show a series of shots from a friend's visit to Vietnam. See how much more interesting a variety of shots is and the different kinds of information each type of shot provides?

Figure 6.3. A wide shot of restaurant.

Figure 6.4. A medium shot of food.

Figure 6.5. A medium shot of a waitress.

Figure 6.6. A close up shot of a waitress.

Figure 6.7. A close up shot of a meal.

Figure 6.8. A wide shot after a meal.

Interviewing People You Meet and Your Traveling Companions

Interact with people you meet and ask them if they will let you videotape them for a few minutes. People are usually interested in people who are interested in them and often have lots to say once you have established a connection.

Recording Daily Highlights

Interview your travel companions once a day about a favorite thing they saw that day. You can do this individually or in a group.

Shooting at Different Times of Day

Shoot in the early morningwhen the streets are empty, the village is quiet, the sun is just beginning to light the town square, people are drinking coffee in the cafe. Shoot night scenespeople having dinner in restaurants, taxis driving by, people dancing in the streets. This will give you more texture and variety than if you shoot at the same time of day everyday.

Trying the "A Day in the Life of" Format

Often what makes a travel movie entertaining is a mix of little moments and big onesnot just the great landmarks, but also the best market, the taco vendor at the beach, surfers at sunset. Try shooting from dawn to night in one day in a placeor editing a sequence in your movie this wayto show a day from beginning to end.

Repeating a Theme or Question

Ask the same question of lots of people on your trip. It can be anything: from "What's your favorite food around here?" or "What's your favorite place to tell tourists to go?" to "What's your favorite view in this place?" Even just one question, asked of many different people along the trip, edited together makes a great running theme in a movie.

Capturing Running Gags: A Special Guest Star

You know how kids have stuffed animals they sleep with every night? A special friend can become a character in your travel movie, too.

Lest you think this is just for kids, check out the French movie Amelie. The main characters pose a red dwarf in many of the places they visit throughout the film. (Now Expedia is using this same motif in its ads.) Some artist friends of mine taking a trip across America used this same idea, posing a figurine and photographing it against the local scenery, to create a theme-based visual element.

Bring an imaginary character with you and set it up everywhere you go. Let your kids tell you what adventures it's had. It can even add spice and family fun to a rather ordinary road trip.

Shots to Get After Your Trip Is Over

After your journey, you can take more shots to tie together all your other footage. The following sections provide some suggestions.

Recording the Journey's End

Unpacking the suitcase or the car, rifling through the postcard collection, the bag with all the souvenirs you bought...all these are good scenes to have. Interview everyone in the family about the souvenirs they brought back and edit this into your movie.

Tip

Remember the slogan "lock and label" throughout your shoot. When you've finished shooting a tape, press the Record/Save tab to save to protect your valuable footage and be sure to label each tape you use.

Mapping Your Path

Using maps to tell the story of your journey helps make your travel movie special. Following are three ways to incorporate maps that will add extra entertainment value to your movieusing The Road Trip Effect, shooting maps, and using online maps from Google and MSN.

Would you like to add to your movie a free, beautifully animated map of your trip? Impress everyone who sees your movie by using The Road Trip Effect, one of my all-time favorite, free downloads, available at www.solrobots.com/roadtrip/index.html.

The Road Trip Effect lets you select a departure point and an arrival point, and then it animates that path, using NASA satellite photos of the world.

You can choose from plane, van, car, or ship icons to represent your travel mode; add multiple points; select different speeds of lines; and change the color or width of the lines. This program is really amazing.

When you select what you want, the program generates video you can edit into Movie Maker. If you like, you can then add music or narration in Movie Maker.

In contrast, a very low-tech way to add maps to movies is to shoot a map by using your camcorder and a tripod. You can highlight your journey with colored markers. If you mark your journey in small segments and shoot a take of each handmade "progress bar," you can edit this together in your movie to show the unfolding of the path.

Another low-tech way to incorporate maps is to shoot a daily map feature with your travel companions and, using a map in the shot, have them point out where you are today, where you came from, and where you're going on a daily basis. Be sure to get a few close-ups of the map (or shoot that when you get home).

Using satellite maps from online sites is another way to get digital images to edit into your travel movies. Use the satellite images at Google's maps www.maps.google.com and select the locations you want images of. (Microsoft has this feature, too.) For even slicker satellite mapping effects, check out Google Earth (at www.earth.google.com), which has a lot more features, including 3D drawings of major U.S. cities.

You can save a copy of any of these images on your PC by using the PrintScrn key, which is located in the upper right of most PC keyboards. Using this command saves a copy of the image to the clipboard, and you can then create a .jpg or other image file type, which you can then import into a collection in Movie Maker. Macintosh users can use the Grab feature in any version of Mac OS X to copy onscreen images.

You can save a series of images of the same location at different heights and edit cross-dissolves between the images to create the illusion of descending or ascending aerial views. You can also edit together a satellite view, dissolving into the regular map view in Google maps, or vice versa.

All these map effects are fun to play with and add a cool factor to your travel movies.