Travel Videos: BEST Camera Angles (5 Tips)

oh hey thomas alex norman here and in this video we're going to be going over angles in your travel videos [Music] so [Music] angles are an incredibly important part of the travel filmmaking process because they dictate every single part of what your video is going to look like the wrong angles are going to ruin your video the correct angles the perfect angles are going to make your videos really pop and stand out between one shot if you change the angle from maybe high to low or left to right it can make all the difference in your composition all the difference in how your viewers are perceiving what's happening and all the difference to your overall video if you especially if you stack on different angles on top of each other throughout the video to tell a specific theme or a specific narrative so in this video we're going to be touching this topic we're going to be going over a few examples a few points a few tips on how you can actually start learning to use the best angles possible in your videos and know in which situation to use which angle oh that's delicious so the first thing i have to say to you is that cutting out is just as important as leaving in so much the time when you're making a video especially a travel video you'll be looking at what's appealing to you what you want in your video and pointing your camera at it and then shooting it and you're always thinking about what i want in the shot what do i want to have in here but if you step back a little bit and reframe how you're thinking and also really really take into consideration what do i not want in this shot right now it can transform each shot you're getting there's so many examples where i found myself thinking more about what do i not want in the shot right now than what i specifically want in it because there's so many distractions there's so many small things that take away from what i really want to say and what i really want to shoot in a travel video that you just really don't want in the shot so here's a quick example i went to the park this morning and had a few shots here's a wide shot of a street with some kind of unwanted tarmac and pavement in the foreground and then here's that same scene but i cropped in to just get these nice buildings i wanted and the road leading off into the distance and the mountain and if you just see that second shot it's so much more impactful than having the wider shot which gets all that unnecessary unwanted stuff within the shot also here's another shot of a nice statue in the foreground you can see this kind of these big railings that are kind of just there for no reason and in this other shot i repositioned myself so i just get the statue and some of the nice park in the background and that makes the whole composition look so much better now i don't have those unwanted railings in there the next tip i have is a general rule of thumb that i try and encourage especially new filmmakers or new travel filmmakers to pay attention to i mentioned this in another one of my videos but i'm going to say it here again lower angles generally look better and this is a very general rule there'll be so many instances when it's not like this but as a a person who wants to make it their first few videos try and film things from a lower angle than you them you would usually be comfortable with so a lot of the time you're going to be filming from eye level when you do that the world can kind of look like a fairly normal place but as soon as you go from a lower angle everything looks big and just by that short simple distinction your video can just look way more epic when you're going from a lower angle most of the time tip number three is knowing when to go close and when to go wide this is linked to knowing what you want in your shot and what you want to cut out of your shot this is going to play into that a lot but when you have more control over what you what you see if you kind of want most things in your shot knowing when to go close and knowing when to go wide is really important going close especially with people usually emphasizes their emotion it emphasizes what's happening within their face and emphasizes that the moment that's happening with them going wide usually distances you from the person and it usually makes everything seem it can make everything seem slightly more epic but also is going to kind of miss that detail within a person's face another thing that you need to keep in mind is that if you're going wide the whole time it can start getting a little bit boring and people actually want to see those details some of the best videos i've seen use a big combination of different angles they use low high side angles but they also use wide and close-ups to really contrast that they use a lot of wide shots and then if they want to go into something they really go close to show you that detail within a person's face or within the texture of a building or whatever they want to show so knowing when to go wide and when to go close is really important so here's a wide shot that looks okay i'm not really capturing what i really want to capture and then here's that same shot but super close and then you can see the emotion on the face you can see it actually emphasizes the effect a lot more because the background is like blurring around much more fast because you're closer with the lens uh it actually just looks much cooler in this shot so you need to kind of develop that it comes mainly from experience and that you you'll be reviewing the footage you got for the day and you'll be thinking at different points ah this shot should have been closer or this shot that would look way cooler if it was wide tip number four is knowing when to use movement and when to not use movement i typically encourage members of my travel video academy to use movement more because if you can get a nice cinematic movement within your videos it can really emphasize that production value and make the whole video look way more slick way more professional people especially on youtube now people are getting very used to like crazy hollywood dolly shots um as kind of like the standard for travel videos um which shows how far technology has come in the last like five ten years because before i think devin supertramp was the first person to really use like a glidecam i remember like six years ago well i don't know when it was maybe seven eight years ago seeing one of his videos in hawaii and be like oh my is he using a helicopter to film this because like drones weren't even out then but it was this glidecam to make everything look super smooth and ever since then slowly more and more and more it's just kind of become the standard to have like nice smooth cinematic movement in your videos so i would encourage people to try and achieve that if they can the what i would also recommend is just paying attention to when you don't want that and when you actually want still shots and when shots on a tripod can actually be more effective a lot of the time if there's something moving within your shot having a shot on a tripod can actually emphasize that movement a lot sometimes it's good to just stay back and let the the scene kind of do the work rather than really like forcing yourself to move the whole time the final thing about angles is you want to choose the best angle within your video to get the most richness of information so if for example um you are in venice beach like i was in december of last year you wanna for example if you were filming a skateboarder on venice beach you're thinking okay what are the aspects of this scene right in front of me that really make the scene what it is and it's not just a skateboarder because you could go to any old random town anywhere in the world and see a skateboarder in a skate park but what makes it amazing is that you've got these palm trees you've got the beach all around you maybe it's sunset you've got a really nice light in la typically and there's this really kind of there's this buzz there's this vibe so choosing the angle that works best to get that skateboarder going up the ramp and making him look as as like impressive as possible by maybe getting a low angle and looking up at him but then also trying to get the palm trees and the and maybe even the c in the distance within that shot having that richness of information is really going to make each angle you get more and more important in the outcome of each shot if you want daily tips into your email inbox and also if you want to see the entire swanky list of gear that i have and also that i recommend to get started and making travel videos hit that link below download the gear list that will get sent straight to your inbox and you will be welcomed into a world of awesomeness all right guys have a great day keep filming bye-bye

Channel: Thomas Alex Norman

Views: 968,460

Rating: 4.9430618 out of 5

Keywords: travel video, how to make travel videos, travel filmmaking, thomas alex norman, jay alvarrez, sam kolder, peter mckinnon, travel feels, adventure, how to, vlog, instagram, angles, camera angles, gopro hero6, sony a7sii

Id: aq43IpPMW10

Length: 8min 48sec (528 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017