STEP ONE - MAP OUT A ROUGH PLAN
There are many ways in which you can create fun, exciting and attractive content for your reel. But before you start creating, it’s important to think about how you want your reel to come across to the viewer. You can ask yourself “What feel do I want my reel to have?”. Do you want it to feel joyful, fun, adventurous, colourful, muted, dark or dreamy? You can then choose your filters and format accordingly. Try and stick to a maximum of two to three similar looking filters or feels within the one project or it will lack cohesion, continuity and flow.
Secondly, ask yourself, ‘what message do I want to send to the viewer?’ Will its purpose be to educate, or entertain, will it be just for fun, to market a product, tell a story, will it be just for beauty’s sake, or will it be funny? A purpose and direction will help you edit your content to fit the vibe you’re going for. If you’re a brand, make sure you consider that the feel, styling and content fits within the ethos and identity of your brand.
Considerations: Purpose, mood, message, and brand identity
STEP TWO - CREATE YOUR CONTENT
Where you record your app is up to you. I often use Instagram Stories to film things or a combination of a few different apps to create the content I’m after. Reels of course is great, but it’s important to remember to save along the way or else you can easily lose your work.
In order to keep the reel interesting and engaging, I record dynamic content that varies from section-to-section. What I mean by that is taking footage from altering angles, panning, speeding up or slowing down the recording, and using simple techniques such as stop motion or time-lapse to diversify the content. Often, but not always I record larger times than what I need and trim down in the editing stage. I do multiple takes of shots (excluding things like stop motion and time-lapse) and choose the most fitting one for my reel when it comes time to put it together.
Considerations: App choice, diverse, dynamic content
step three - putting your reel together
Now to the best part, putting it all together. I choose thirty second reels every time as I can always make it shorter. I like to remind myself during the process that more is not always better and to keep it succinct by only including footage that is interesting, beautiful, and relevant to the goals I set out in Step One. Quality over quantity, always.
The musical element is one of my favourite ways to add another dimension to my reels. It can evoke a sense of adventure, change the mood, be fun or silly. I love the process of searching for songs that enhance the reel I want to build and trial and error until one fits perfectly! I edit footage to coincide with the beat or flow of the song. The way the editing section is designed in the app, makes this very easy to achieve once you’ve practiced a little bit.
I like to keep my individual reel sections short and sweet - one to three seconds max. I do this in order to keep the flow of the reel moving and to tell the story in a fun and interesting way. I find matching well with the beat of the music easy when the reel frames change at this pace.
Considerations: quality over quantity, matching your visual story to the music, relevance, frame length (short and sweet)
And that‘s it really. I Can’t wait to see what you create with your reels. Feel free to tag me and I’ll be sure to give your reel a like and a comment!
Instagram: @ashwhite.co