Tips for Making Your Videos More Stylish Than an 80s Renovation

Video is everywhere these days, right? Everyone’s doing it. 

I blame Instagram.

And Youtube.

And smart phones.

And teenagers. Most things are their fault. Troublemakers. 

Recently technological leaps have allowed children to do stuff that used to require a Hollywood budget and enough specialised equipment to send a person to the moon. Their feats of video prowess would have had Stephen Spielberg weeping with envy in 1992.

And I’m not complaining. In fact, I think it’s bloody awesome. There’s been an explosion of video creativity in the last couple of years. The sheer number of human brains trying new things out, mucking around, problem-solving, having fun and developing new techniques is mind-boggling.

But the thing is, when something gets popular on social media, everyone… and I mean EVERYONE starts copying it. There are a plethora of video trends that have exploded in the last couple of years - video inside text, sideways motion in every shot, light-leak transitions and the use of slow motion for nearly everything. 

Trends are okay, but I feel like… if you use ONLY these trendy elements, your videos are going to look cool, but they’re also going to look exactly like everyone else’s…. and in a couple of years, when the fashions have changed, they’ll look about as funky as a 1980s kitchen renovation complete with colonial pine furniture and a brown microwave. 

It’s great to make videos that are fashionable. But it’s even better to make videos that have a twist of your own unique style. Let me show you how.

Start by finding a video that you like. 

It’s always much easier to make a good video if you’ve found something you like that you can use as a model. Not to copy from, but to give you a starting point. I know, it sounds bad, like you’re stealing but trust me. It’s okay. You’re not going to make a replica, you’re just going to model your video on it. This will all be so much easier if you choose a video that is made with the same purpose as your video… for example if you want to make a 10 second video to showcase a product, then try to find a video you like that is roughly 10 seconds long and that is showcasing a product.

Write down everything that you think is cool about the video.

Write down what it is exactly that you like. The slow gliding motion in each shot? The bright lighting? The clever point-of-view camera angle from inside the fridge? Make a list.

Pay attention to how the coolness was achieved.

Now write down exactly how each of these effects was achieved… what equipment did they use? How did they use it? If you don’t know just by looking, get on youtube and search up some tutorials, do some research, ask on Facebook groups or find a teenager and ask them.

Make a plan.

Once you know how it’s done, you might realise that you can’t do some of it because you just don’t have the right gear. That’s okay - a wise person once said “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”. In other words, just do what you can with what you’ve got. List what you’ll put into your own video, and how. How are you going to do exactly the same things in your video, when shooting your product (or whatever it is)? Incorporate all the cool shots and effects you admire.

Think about something YOU do that YOU like.

If you’ve been taking photos or making videos for a little while then you’ll almost definitely have made something you were proud of, at some point. Don’t worry if nobody else seemed to notice. It doesn’t need to have gone viral or anything - just something that you liked, that you found satisfying or were proud of.  You might have stumbled across a particular way of editing to the beat of the music, or found a funky spot to mount your action camera or have a really nice lens that you love to shoot portraits with.

Now incorporate that YOU-thing into the plan.

Find places that you can stick this into the plan for your film. This is a little red-hot chunk of your own sizzling style. Now you can throw any residual guilt about modelling your video off of someone else’s, right out the window.  

And go!

Now go film it! For the rest of the process don’t look at your inspiration video. I personally, find this is the point in the process where I’m most likely to get frustrated, discouraged or confused by looking at other peoples work. You don’t want to give up and you don’t want to lose confidence and end up just copying someone else. Now is the time to just do it the best you can with your own noggin.

That is all.

Try it out and let me know how it goes. If you really get stuck, drop me a line and I can probably give you a hand. 

Just remember, some stuff goes out of fashion but never stops being cool. 

The buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, for example. 

Or Tears for Fears. 

Or stovetop mocka-pots. 

While some stuff, when the fashions change just becomes charmless, naff and icky. 

Like P.M. Sampson. 

Or Che Guevara t-shirts. 

Or colonial pine furniture and brown microwaves.

The difference is, the stuff that’s timelessly cool was made with an injection of creativity, experimentation and the unique personality of the creator; whereas the stuff that is now awful… it slavishly followed the fashions of the time. 

Would you rather be P.M. Sampson wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, sitting on colonial pine furniture, eating cheese fondue that was warmed up in a brown microwave? Or would you rather be Tears for Fears drinking strong black coffee from a stovetop mocka-pot in a kitchen designed by Frank Lloyd-Wright?

I know which I’ll be choosing. It’s a mad world. Cheers!

I used this method to produce this short video for Wattle Tree Country Retreat. They needed a video that would showcase their beautiful facilities, so I started with a real-estate video, (shooting with a wide-angle lens) then added my own unique touch - the detail shots for which I was able to use my elegant vintage Super Takumar 135mm f2.5 lens.