We’ve all been there. You brought a camera on your latest trip or adventure and captured tons of cool footage.

You want to put together a video that’s as awesome as your trip – something that captures the essence of the journey – to share with friends and family, and to help keep the memories from fading.

But you’re not really sure how to get started. Or you spend a few hours trying to put something together, but what you end up with feels kinda amateurish and falls flat. You never end up finishing it and all that trip footage never sees the light of day. 😞

Don’t let your adventure footage go to waste!

I’ve put together dozens of trip videos over the years and have learned a lot in the process.

I’ve found that you don’t need fancy editing software or a degree in special effects to make a great video. By following these 10 simple rules, you’ll end up with an awesome trip video that captures the memories and makes it easy to share with friends and family.

1. Make Sure you Collect Everyone's Footage

It’s important to make sure you have all the shots before you begin the editing process. If you’re like me, you probably ended up capturing video on a number of different devices during the trip.

Be sure to check for footage on your smartphone or digital camera as well as on your GoPro or other video camera. Make sure you look through each memory card you brought with you, if you used more than one.

Also be sure to check with the other people in your group. It helps to create a Google Drive or shared Dropbox folder to make it easy for people to give you access to any footage they took.

2. Watch All the Footage Before You Start Editing

Once you’ve collected everyone’s footage, be sure to comb through it all. It may take a few hours just to watch all of the raw videos, but it really helps to see all of the things that were captured before you start splicing together individual clips.

I usually go through each video and – if there’s an interesting section that I might want to use – I’ll jot down the file name, a few words about the shot and the timestamp of when the shot starts.

A lot of clips often end up being boring or unremarkable so you know that you can skip importing them into the video editor to speed things up and save disk space.

Going through all the footage ahead of time also gives you a better sense of what you have to work with and allows you to start laying out the shots in your mind before you dive into the actual editing process.

If you took good notes when you were reviewing all the footage, then finding the good shots is pretty fast and you’ll be able to work quickly once you begin editing.

3. Mix B-Roll in with the Action Shots

Adding B-roll shots to your video is a simple, easy way to set the scene and show off the location you were in. Unlike action shots, there isn’t necessarily a single focus point. B-roll shots are essentially background footage that helps tell the story.

Common b-roll shots are:

the country side as it rolls by your taxi window

a pan around a large market or crowded area

the view from the balcony of where you were staying

You would usually use b-roll clips with their audio muted. This makes it easier to transition between clips more easily without jarring audio differences.

Using b-roll also helps you avoid the temptation to make your whole video you talking to the camera, which can get super awkward for watchers.

If it’s a decently stable shot, you can speed it up so that the clip is shorter, but still gets the point across.

4. Don't Make it Into a Slideshow

If you’re taking the time to put together a video for your trip, make sure you use all that the video format has to offer.

Nothing breaks up the flow of a video more than slapping in some static images for a few seconds. Even if you try to use iMovie’s Ken Burns effect to pan across the image, you’re not fooling anyone.

If you really didn’t get any footage of something that you managed to get some good photos of, make a mental note to take more video next time!

5. Try to Include People in Your Shots

Humans always make for more interesting subjects than plain landscapes or empty scenery. To keep your viewers engaged, make sure you include shots of you, your companions, and anyone else you ran into on the trip.

Rather than just including a shot of a scenic lake or huge temple, show your friends swimming in the lake or peeking around corners in the temple.

Adding people and their expressions really helps to capture the feelings and emotions of that moment, and goes a long way to make your trip video more memorable and valuable.

6. Choose a Fitting Background Song

You are using a background song for your video, right? Adding background music helps add energy to the video to keep the audience engaged.

But don’t just use a popular top 40 song, or a generic song about adventures. Try to find a song that was meaningful or significant to you and the group during the trip. Maybe it was a song you couldn’t get out of your head, or one that the locals always seemed to be playing or listening to.

This will add another dimension of nostalgia to the video and help keep the sounds and music that you experienced on the trip sharp in your memory.

7. Time Transitions Between Shots with the Music

This one might seem subtle, but it adds a ton of “production value” and makes your trip video feel legit. It’s important to think about the interplay between the audio of the song you’re using, and the video clips you’re laying over it.

If you’re using dramatic visual cuts – like between a title screen and a video clip – try to do the cut on the beat of the music. Similarly, if there’s a big build up or drop in the song you’re using, try to have a cool shot that comes up right at that point.

It physically pains me when someone uses a song that has a huge drop and then nothing at all interesting happens when the beat comes crashing in. 😔 😢

8. Use Simple Title Formatting

This is another simple one that can make your video feel like it has better production value.

Don’t use any of those cheesy title effects that ship with most video editors. The ones like lens flare, star wars scroll or bottom-third title – or the all-too-common white-text-on-Microsoft-blue-background. It makes it so obvious that the video was something you just slapped together.

Instead, take a few minutes to find a simple font face and color (Helvetica and “white” seem to work just fine…). Include your title sequences over top of b-roll shots, making sure that there’s enough contrast between the text and the video that everything is easily readable.

Be sure to use large enough font sizes and as little text as possible so your viewers don’t have to squint to read anything. Use short, simple text in your titles, like the name of the city you’re showing, or the month and year you were there.

Putting in a bit of effort on your title sequences will go a long way to making your video stand out from all of the other “I slapped this together in iMovie” videos (even if you did just slap it together in iMovie).

9. Keep Individual Shots Under 3 Seconds

The biggest sin I see people make with their trip videos is using long, rambling shots where much shorter ones would suffice. Shorter shots keep the video moving and keep your viewer engaged.

If you look for it in your favorite TV shows or movies, modern videos rarely have the camera steady on one shot for more than a second or two. Viewers get the gist of a scene quickly, and will start to lose interest if they feel like something is dragging on.

Sure you might have a great 20 second clip of you walking by a few of the stands at the local market, but try to find a 2-3 second clip showing the most interesting stall. If you really must, you can speed up the clip, but try to keep each one short.

10. Keep the Video Under 4 Minutes

Finally, keep your video short. You’re not producing a feature film or a documentary, you’re just trying to show a few clips to your friends and family.

No matter how cool you think your trip was, your video realistically isn’t going to have a compelling enough story to keep people around for more than a few minutes.

For most people flipping through their social feeds who might stumble along your video, their attention spans are short, and there’s tons of other content next to yours that they’ll get drawn to if your video drags on.

Keeping your content “bite sized” makes it easier for you to re-watch when you’re itching for some nostalgia, and makes it less likely that your friends have to look away and shuffle their feet when you ask if they watched your whole trip video.

My Most Recent Trip Video

As an example of most of these rules in action, here’s a video I made for my trip to Southeast Asia with my girlfriend. The footage was all shot on a GoPro Hero and our two iPhones. It certainly won’t win an Oscar, but I think it’s pretty easy to watch through the whole thing. I used lots of b-roll and short shots of people to keep things moving, and synced up with the music.

Southeast Asia 2015 from Hartley Brody on Vimeo.

PS: It may seem like I violated rule #6 by using Taylor Swift as backing music, but that was actually a song that we listened to at tons of points during the trip, so it had significance!