How To Film Paris In 48 Hours

As the director of a content business, I am always experimenting with how to capture and document travels, but most importantly how to make this as efficient for my own time as possible. This helps me understand the process of making content for my clients and also how to direct my teams and crews when in the field.

I was recently invited by Adidas to attend the French Open Men's Final in Paris. My strategy was to create a story for my Instagram and Facebook that was engaging in :30 secs, and make it more than just a montage cut to music.

What I did was sound bite updates, real raw and fast. In any moment, when something cool was happening (or even not) I would give a 2 - 5 sec explanation of this. My number one rule was always be honest and don’t sell...just be real, this meant that out of all the little bites I recorded I saw honest storytelling over the 48 hrs, and I could use these clips as narrative to structure my video and give my audience more of a reason to watch.

The second rule was shoot anything that looked interesting - both wide and tight. For example, a tennis fan looking cool, a french building, out the window of the taxi, etc. This meant that I have a lot of travel-style video to cut with my narrative clips.

The last thing I will say is always shoot more then you think you need. And when you feel awkward about recording something, that is the moment that is real and it will be great!

Happy shooting,
JD