10 tips for basic video filming

by Steve Keenan

1 Buy a tripod. A Joby Gorilla is small, flexible, around £30, and incredibly useful to have in your bag. Nobody wants to see a wobbly film that makes them feel seasick. Virtually all video cams have a thread in the base to screw the tripod in – but check first. If not, stand the camera on a table/book – anything. Failing all of that, grip the elbow of the filming arm with your other hand, holding that arm tight to your stomach.

2 Buy an external microphone. Small video cameras like a Flip will have a built-in microphone but on a Kodak Zi8, something like a Sennheiser directional mike or Rode gives a much better recording sound. Check whether your camera has an external jack for a mike. If not, make sure you are in a VERY quiet place when recording an interview. Stay out of the wind. Stay away from external noise. Give your subject a chance of being heard.

3 THE STORY - don’t film 100 clips from your trip. A total of 20 minutes will do, with clearly marked notes as to what the clips are, and names of places and people, so that whoever is editing has a better-than-even chance of making sense of it all. Try and get an interview if possible - otherwise pieces to camera yourself (setting up camera on a tripod ideally). Get lots GVs as they call them (general views) which locate where you are (tower blocks, road in, signs) to edit it into the film.

4 Usually one interview unless wildly different subjects. And do try to plan what your story will be, as far as is practicable.

5 Try not to zoom or pan. The shots very rarely work. If someone gestures to a spot while filming them, resist the temptation to swing the camera around to follow the hand. Film it separately later.

6 Light. Don’t film into the sun, as you wouldn’t with a normal camera. But don’t make the subject squint directly into the light either – so film obliquely, with the subject lit well (no deep shadows). No hats or sunglasses either.

7 Compose the frame. Don’t stick the subject dead centre – position them left or right of centre, with some interesting background related to the subject. Or just a pretty pot plant.

8 Think abut music when editing: there are a number of royalty-free sites like premiumbeat.com.

9 Avoid mentioning dates – it will date the film rapidly and you want this to have long shelf life.

10 Enjoy yourself. Prize-winning documentaries are welcome, but I’d settle for an entertaining/thoughtful/provoking film about your subject.

Did social media contribute to easyJet’s shift to seat allocation?

by Steve Keenan

Easyjet this week began an interesting experiment, in which passengers were allocated a seat on an aircraft.

I know, I know, it’s a bit of a radical concept isn’t it?

Just fancy, no more shuffling in queues; no more standing for an hour to get a window seat; no more last-minute barging in from the sides.

The airline says it has been listening to customers, which makes for a change. But as the most social media savvy airline based in the UK, perhaps it really has been taking notice.

The man in charge of the UK market, Paul Simmons, told me that social media is linked to everything that the airline does. “We take it very seriously.”

And queuing and jostling for a seat after the security experience at an airport is not top of anybody’s agenda.

“People do want it,” admits Simmons. So the airline is trialling seat allocation five years after it introduced ‘Speedy Boarding’ - in itself a name that has long caused fury on Twitter and message boards.

The experiment has been 18 months in the planning and began on April 24 on flights from Luton to Malaga and Sharm-el-Sheik.

Of course, a cynic would say that it could just be the latest twist in money-raising that the low-cost airlines have dreamed up.

Passengers booked on those two routes are offered allocated seats with extra legroom for £12, or seats in rows 2-5 for £8. Or they can book any other seat for £3. Those who don’t want to pay will still be allocated a seat from those remaining.

As the trial develops, more routes will be added. “We need to see if people want it, how it works,” says Simmons. “It is a risk.”

Well, it’s not a risk in the sense that passengers would prefer a civilised boarding, obviously.

The airline means risk in the sense of slower turnaround times for aircraft and other operational factors, plus loss of income. It’s also a risk in alienating the business passengers it increasingly aspires to attract (the airline’s biz pax now generate 20 per cent of revenue).

It’s a big move by easyJet, however, and there is no halfway house: it will be pre-allocated or back to ‘Speedy Boarding.’

Yet, this feels like people power, partly through social media. The negative noise generated by queues, aggression, split-up families and partitioned buses has been widespread.

And nobody is going to mourn the death of a demeaning system that forces you to pay to avoid the crush and walk in front of others - then be looked at sideways by everyone boarding.

Hail a return to civilised boarding. And hail the power of SM to help force that change.

How travel companies can best make use of Facebook Timeline

by Mark Frary

The airline Emirates this week became the latest company to update its official Facebook page to take advantage of recently released features that make the 850 million+ social network a much more visually interesting place for travel brands.

The social network introduced its new Timeline feature for a selected group of individual users in 2011 and rolled it out for businesses worldwide in March 2012. The change totally reorganises the Facebook user interface, allowing users to promote the stories they like (favourite posts, photos or events) and the apps they use (what they have been listening to on Spotify, buying through Amazon or the latest movie quiz they have completed).

One of the most popular features of the new Timeline has been the addition of cover photos. These allow users to place a letterbox format picture at the top of their profile rather than being restricted to having a small square profile picture at top left. The extra space means there is plenty of scope for creativity and you can see how some of the world’s top brands have jumped at the chance to push their brands online.

However, travel companies should be aware there are strict rules on how these can be used. They cannot contain price information, offers or contact information, must not encourage people to click Like or Share and should not include any call to action – just the sort of things a travel brand on Facebook might want to do.

While this seems very strict, it is common sense. The travel companies that are using Facebook best are those that are not using it overtly to sell. This was clearly highlighted in last November’s TNS Digital Life survey, which showed that 57% of social network users in developed markets, including the UK and US, do not want to engage with brands through their networks.

Facebook Timeline, as the name suggests, also allows brands to share their heritage with their fans. Instead of having a static profile page, the new look allows companies to share key moments from throughout their history. Emirates’ page shows how the airline was launched in 1985 with just two aircraft.

Retro travel images, customer memories of trips from travel’s “golden age” and clips of crackly cine film are online gold dust and travel brands should embrace them.

Coming soon from Facebook will be real-time data on how your new timeline is working. At the moment, companies have to wait for anything up to 48 hours to see how well their social content is doing. The company promised at its first ever marketing conference earlier this year that it would soon update its Insights tool to allow users to see straight away which posts are working and which are not.

The first post

Welcome to our first post on Socialtrav. We talk all the time about the increasing importance of blogging and thought it was high time that we walked the walk as well as talking the talk.

The Socialtrav blog will look at the interaction of social media, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more, and the world of travel and tourism. We intend to cover things such as how travel companies are already using social media to great effect, the changing face of travel in the MSM (considering we both come from the old school) as well as lots of cool, fun stuff we pick up on the way.

We hope you enjoy reading it and we look forward to engaging with you as we embark on this exciting journey.