Our trip to Hawaii definitely didn’t look like we expected it to (we booked this in February 2020 with NO idea how the world was about to change)!  Back then, if you told me that in order to fly to Hawaii, the whole family would have to spit in cups- WHILE ON ZOOM with the testing facility- I would NEVER have believed it.

I love making these little custom videos for our trips and the kids LOVE watching them. Now that I’ve done a few, I have some tips to share:

1️⃣ Begin with the end in mind.  Decide you’ll be making a video before you go on the trip.  You’ll take more intentional footage. 

2️⃣ Get buy-in from the family by sharing your intention to make a film.  My kids loved our previous videos so much that they asked me MANY times while we were in Hawaii if I’d “film this for the video!”  Bonus: it also held me accountable for making the video ASAP because they wanted to see it immediately after we returned home.

3️⃣ Shoot all video in landscape/horizontal mode.  These will fill the screen better when you play the final video (especially if you stream it to the TV).

4️⃣ Get in the shot too.  This is hard for me and I certainly could have gotten in the frame more during this trip, but at least I make a few appearances.  I find it’s easiest to flip the camera into selfie mode, but you could always hand the camera over to someone else to film too.

5️⃣ Don’t stress about getting perfect footage.  When you add a fun soundtrack + clip the videos down to fit the music, it all becomes more fun!

I used my iPhone 11 Pro to shoot 100% of the footage and compiled it with iMovie on my Mac (learn how to use iMovie in my Mac Basics course). The song is called “Good Times” and was licensed from MusicBed. I started with about 15 minutes of footage to make this 3.5 minute video.

If you want tips for capturing better video clips, song suggestions OR want someone to make the video FOR YOU, Kalee at Isbell Family Films is your girl!