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7 Simple Yet Powerful Travel Video Storytelling Tips

Video storytelling can make your travel videos go from MEH to WOW. Check out these 7 simple yet powerful video storytelling tips for your Youtube or social media content.

I have already shared 7 tips on making travel videos for beginners. Today, let’s dive deeper into video making: I’ll tell you about travel storytelling through videos.

As travel videos are becoming more and more popular, storytelling is becoming one of the trends in this field. Stories can be more engaging and exciting than top-lists and reviews, they get more feedback, so their popularity is not surprising.

Keep reading this article if you want to increase the views of your videos and the number of your viewers by bringing your travel videos to a new level with the art of storytelling.

Why Choose the Video Storytelling Format?

Traveling narrative has become a big hit these days, and it is also an excellent way to promote yourself and your video blog. Traveling storytelling is all about traveling and travelers, and this topic is trendy these days.

Travel storytelling is all about connecting with the people on your journey. This could be through many videos you will make, reviews you will create for people to watch, and many other ways you can use to promote yourself as a travel videographer and vlogger and tell people how you can help them.

Storytelling can work great as it helps to build an emotional connection with your viewers. People like stories about other people, and they are more likely to listen to you if you make an impression that you are just sharing moments from your journey with your friends. Also, stories can be even more interesting for the audience than reviews and top-lists, so viewers will come back to your blog for the new content.

Thus, travel video storytelling can help you attract a new audience and grab their attention with exciting content so that they stay with you for a long time.

What Can Help You Make Your Storytelling Video Amazing?

Although it might seem quite simple – just to shoot videos and post them, it cannot be enough to reach success. The reason is – video making has its pitfalls, just like all other fields. Moreover, today, travel video editing plays as important a role as shooting. Thus, it is necessary to pay attention to it also.

Here, I will share some tips on shooting and editing storytelling videos with you.

Write a Script

The first thing you need to do is to write a script for your future video. First, you should choose a story you want to tell your viewers and think about how you can film it. Second, it is necessary to decide on the location and characters of your story, how to show them the most lively and expressive way. And third, you need to write down in detail what will go on in your video in minutes.

A script can help you avoid awkward silence and unnecessary words and actions in your video. Also, it will help you not to forget about essential details you need to say or show. Thus, your story will be complete, and there will be no extra information your viewers don’t need.

Choose the Location for Shooting

While choosing the place for filming, you need to consider if this place is essential for the story you are going to tell or not. The location can be almost a character of the story – or just a background for it.

If the location is going to be a vital detail of your story, highlight it in the video. Then, you can choose a special place that can also be an expressive part of the story. In this case, you will also need to select the correct time of the day so that the light was the most suitable for you.

If the place is not so crucial for the video, you need to choose the most neutral location that will not grab the viewers’ attention from the main story.

Add Authenticity

Though people want to watch a story that has happened to other people, they also want to see the uniqueness of another country and another culture. This is what makes a travel blog or travel YouTube different from others, and this is what viewers look for when they visit one.

This means it can be a good idea to show your audience various parts of the authentic culture as you see them while traveling. This will make your viewers feel that they are sharing your experience, and such an emotional connection is your aim.

Another thing that storytelling in videos can accomplish is to let your viewers feel an authentic local experience, even if they’re not there. You can create the atmosphere of another culture so that viewers could imagine themselves in this journey. This is a valuable point for many people who watch travel videos.

Don’t Show “What,” Show “How”

The value of a story is that it is a personalized experience of a particular human. That is what your audience wants to see – your experience, your thoughts about it, your impressions and emotions. So feel free to express your opinions and feelings as it makes viewers think that they are watching a real story that happened to real people.

It can be a good idea to show how you deal with obstacles instead of a detailed presentation of these obstacles. If people want to know facts, they can read the news; if they come to your blog or YouTube channel, they need other people’s experience.

Don’t Neglect Video Editing

As I have already mentioned, editing is at least as important as shooting today. The quantity of video content is constantly increasing, so viewers become more demanding. People like beautiful pictures and smoothly edited videos, so using special software can be an excellent idea.

An excellent example of such software is Movavi Video Editor. It can help you with all kinds of editing you may need: cutting, cropping, rotating, resizing, and merging videos, adding music, filters, and effects to them, and much more. It is worth mentioning that there is the Chroma Key option.

Also, the program has a built-in effects library; among effects, you can find transitions, backgrounds, stickers, titles, royalty-free music, and more.

Choose the Proper Pace

This advice can be suitable for both shooting and editing processes. Thus, it would be best if you chose a pace that would not be too fast or too slow so that viewers feel comfortable.

If the pace is too fast, people might feel they can’t cope with it; it can be tiresome and irritating. However, if the pace is too slow, viewers can quickly become bored; in this case, they can just close the video. An essential point is: the pace should not change chaotically and unexpectedly during one video. It would be best if you choose one pace and keep it.

Keep Learning

Like in most spheres, in video making, it is necessary to keep developing constantly. Something new appears every day, and if you want to stay at the top, you need to explore recent trends, ideally – create them yourself. Learning new techniques of shooting and editing your footage can be exciting, and it can help you succeed with your Youtube storytelling videos.

Using these tips, you can bring your traveling videos to a new level – your followers and subscribers will notice the impact of storytelling. Are you already into creating storytelling travel videos? Share your experience in the comments!

  • Stefania Guglielmi

    Stefania Guglielmi is the founder of Every Steph. Originally from Bologna, Italy, she's been traveling full-time since 2016 and has visited over 50 countries across 6 continents. She believes sustainable travel and luxury travel can go hand in hand and has been advocating for responsible tourism since 2014. Stefania's advice and travel experiences have been featured in important publications such as Business Insider, Refinery29, and Yahoo Money.