Wanted to share a couple tips for families wanting to shoot films for their family vacations as a way to preserve memories. I love these films, they’ll be so fun to look back on in the years ahead, start recording these moments for your family today!
- My first tip is to choose how much filming works for you. Some people will plan their entire vacation around the filming and shoot up to 12 hours a day. I knew right off the bat that wouldn’t work for me. I film for a couple hours each day and that keeps it fun for me, if I was filming all day it wouldn’t be fun anymore ha! Find what works for you, and stick with it.
- If you’re wanting to practice filming shoot someone else’s family! It’s easier to film when you can just be the spectator I’m still the wife and mom on vacation even when I pick up my film gear and that means I can never be the full time film maker 😆 it just adds another dimension to the process so I suggest practicing first where you can just be the spectator.
- Choose a variety of shots to tell the story. Wide, medium, tight; I tend to love the tight shots that show the details where Brad loves the wide shots that give perspective. Using a variety of both and it will really help to tell the full story.
- If you’re going to use music it needs to be legally licensed. As an artist I completely understand not wanting my work to be taken. I love musicbed for licensing, they have a beautiful selection of music. I’ve been sourcing some cinematic songs for my upcoming project and I love so many of them it’s hard to narrow it down. They offer a subscription as well.
- Speaking of music the song makes such a difference in how you want you’re entire project to be portrayed. I have a list of favorites saved in my musicbed account and I source from that list first while picking for upcoming films. Use the music to help you tell the story.
- Keep a backup of your files, I use to think raw files were large until I started uploading all the video files 😳 I keep everything backed up on a external hard drive and I shoot to two sd cards as well.
- Make a list of some of the shots you want to get before hand. For family films a lot of what is filmed just plays out naturally but I always have some things I know I want to get for telling the story and when the opportunity arrives I make sure to be ready to go. Having somewhat of an idea of shots I want to get is helpful so that I can be searching for those moments.
- Use the equipment you have. You don’t need the go pro or drone, as much as I love them and think they’re fun to shoot with I film our family just on my iPhone all the time and you can get great free editing apps like InShot to go through and edit the footage.
- Stabilization is something I’m really working on, it was really challenging hiking along side my own kids and trying to be perfectly stable it’s a work in progress which brings me to my final and most important point!
- Do not require perfection!!! Particularly when your shooting your own family vacation film there will be technical aspects (a little or a LOT) 😆 that are not up to par with what you want them to be. Record the moments anyway!!! Can’t stress this enough! It doesn’t have to be perfect just get it recorded for your own family keepsake and enjoy the entire process!
Hope this was helpful! Let me know what questions you have!
