I went to the Puerto Plata, in the Dominican Republic this month and decided to make another travel video. After my last travel video, I picked up some new gear to improve my video capturing as editing my footage from La Paz was quite difficult as most of the shots weren’t smooth. The gear I picked up was a Zhiyun Smooth Q gimbal in which allows me to take smooth video footage with my phone. A DJI Spark drone which allows me to get additional shots that you normally would not be able to get without a drone. If you have never used a DJI drone I highly recommend them. In particular, the DJI Spark has impressed me thoroughly, it is small enough to throw in your backpack while being able to take moderate winds and capture a gorgeous video and photos. In addition the app and the software on the drone was really well done and well worth the cost of the drones.

This was my first time flying the DJI Spark so I did not fly it out too far. Some of the higher and farther out group shots were taken by a friends DJI Phantom 4.

Let me know your thoughts of the video and if there is anything you think I should change for my next video.

I went on a trip to La Paz Mexico last year and had a bunch of footage from my Cell Phone and Action Cameras however having a bunch of random footage is basically useless. You or anyone else doesn’t want to sit while you scroll through random footage to find the good parts. So for Christmas this year I decided to put together all of the footage into a travel video for my parents. I have dabbled in video editing before but nothing like this.

For this project I used Adobe Premiere Pro. For anyone looking to make a travel video or undertake a larger video editing project that hasn’t previously used Adobe Premiere Pro, I highly recommend watching some tutorial videos about Adobe Premiere Pro on YouTube as they were a game changer for me. The YouTube videos taught me tricks such as organization/ hotkeys/ title sequences that really sped up the whole process of creating this video.

I have learned a lot from this whole process and what I would change next time is:

• Better organization of my video files
  • Naming
  • Folder Structure
• What footage to take and how to take better footage
  • B-Roll Footage
  • Getting a gimbal to get stable footage
  • Using a tripod for more filming