Austin Vince’s How To Make An Adventure Travel Film

Top tips from the man who knows adventure travel films better than anyone else...

Adventuary Day 13 - Film your next adventure!

Half the fun of going on adventure is sitting down to look through the pictures or watch the vids you took afterwards. Well what if you could make a film of your next adventure? Austin Vince has produced two documentary series about his motorcycle adventures for TV and now he's sharing his knowledge on how to make film of your trip too. Maybe yours will be good enough for the TV or maybe just something to show the grandkids one day - only one way to find out! Here's Austin's top tips for making and adventure travel film.

You Must:

1) Keep the camera still. This includes pissing about with the zoom facility. This single fact gets you 50% to being like a pro.

2) Have a story, however simple and include yourself in it. Add 10% pro to cart…

3) When you get an interesting place, person, experience etc, shoot a proper sequence. Sequences are the meat of your finished show. This means say, twenty separate shots at a given location that tell the story visually. If the story isn’t interesting then put the camera away until you ARE somewhere memorable. This moves you 22% closer to pro.

4) In the edit, back home, after the trip, intersperse your sequences with transitional shots that get you from one location to the next. Drive bys, maps, roadsigns, day counters and local colour all make great transitional shots. Cover this with commentary and music to suit your taste. This augments you by 7%.

5) Keep production values high. Being an amateur doesn’t mean that focus, exposure and sound issues are ‘beyond’ you. This is the ‘grammar’ of television and amazingly, every modern human subconsciously acknowledges it as a result of zillions of hours of watching TV. It’s what they are used to, you HAVE to serve it up this way, the public are not capable of digesting your blurred, wobbly cam, wind-noise-drenched masterpiece. Collect 12% pro credits.

Austin putting in to practice the key ingredients from above whilst sticking to tradition and wearing one of his legendary boiler suits!

You Must NOT:

1) Move the camera around

2) Ever give a running commentary from behind the camera unless you are Ben Dover.

3) Confuse the fact that your trip was amazing with the idea that the film you are making will also be amazing. These two ideas are totally unconnected. Each needs its own discipline and efforts.

4) Confuse fancy camera HD gear with the solid principles outlined above. Notice how NONE of the principles are related to what camera you own.

5) Underestimate how much time and effort it takes to make even a 20 min watchable film. However, be encouraged, like motorcycling around the world, anyone can do it, you just have to try…

So that’s it! Follow those 5 do's avoid those 5 don'ts and get that film made!