13 Tips to Get Better Videos with Your Spivo 360

Most of us only get to travel a few times if we’re lucky.  The odd weekend road trip or adventure has to suffice in the meantime. When it comes to those big trips or adventures, it’s important to make these ones count. We started Spivo to help adventurers like you make the most of your precious travel time. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so then what’s a video worth? The Spivo 360 is one of the best tools to easily make videos using your GoPro or phone. Let’s go over some of the tips we use when we’re out exploring a new spot. Whether it’s exploring an abandoned mine, hiking to catch that amazing sunrise, or an epic road trip across Iceland, Andre and I use these 13 tips to make the most of our adventure videos.

To ensure your videos look as stable and crisp as possible, always try to keep the horizon level when filming. It’ll make your videos look nice and smooth, and won’t disorient the viewer. 

Panning with your Spivo 360 is a great way to show where you are and to offer a realistic view of what it felt like to be in that spot. The possibilities are just about endless when it comes to panning shots with your Spivo 360. One of our favorites can be seen below. Start filming and panning with the selfie perspective then click the button to show was is in front of you, while continuously panning. When your arm is in line with your body, click the Spivo 360 and bring your arm up to show yourself from behind. When you're doing the "look back selfie", you can either smile at the camera, or simply look away at the horizon to get a “no look back selfie”. Spivo brand ambassador @itsmechand is the king of the no look back selfie. Panning your Spivo 360 and integrating a few Spivo 360 clicks is a great way to capture many different angles. Give it a try next time you're on a hike or on a mountain top! 

If you’ve ever transferred files from a GoPro or your phone onto a computer, you know it can be a time-consuming process. Do yourself a favor by taking shorter length video clips instead of longer ones. It’s quite rare that a certain spot or moment needs more than a 30-second clip to truly show off and capture the moment, so keep your clips short to make editing, transferring, sorting and deleting content a lot easier.

There’s nothing worse than filming for a whole day only to realize the camera was pointing the wrong direction, or it wasn’t angled just right. Get in the habit of viewing your videos on your phone or GoPro to make sure your video is coming out as expected. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find there’s water or dirt on the lens. All it takes is a minute or two to view the footage, and it might save you a whole day worth of footage.

Hop on Instagram and go to your favorite adventure account (@Spivo, of course ) and you’ll notice a lot of pictures and videos which have an item, or person in the foreground, as well as the beautiful background. This type of image composition is stunning and impressive because it gives perspective to the area or spot you're in, as well as causes the eye to wander to different areas of interest. 

When you press the button on the Spivo 360, the camera rotates quickly 180 degrees, which creates a video transition from one scene to another. This effect is commonly referred to by professionals as a whip pan transition (more on that below). It’s best to press the button every 5-10 seconds when filming as this helps keep viewers engaged by creating many scene transitions, which catch the eye and retain the viewer's attention.

A follow cam shot is when you're following someone and filming them. With the Spivo 360, it’s super easy to switch between yourself, and the person in front of you. Have fun with it, scream their name or say something silly and capture their reaction. This can be really fun and spontaneous which is why we highly recommend follow cam shots.

Want to change the angle of your GoPro or phone to get the Spivo 360 out of the shot? This can be done by angling the camera by approximately 20 degrees from the vertical resting position. You’ll notice when you click the button on the Spivo 360, the camera will be pointing towards the sky, so bring your arm down and tilt the Spivo slightly downwards to capture a nice shot of the horizon. Do this transition fast for a sweet motion transition.

Here's the result of that selfie:

Tip 9: Use the Spivo 360’s built-in transition

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When filming with Spivo 360, there are only two perspectives to choose from: the selfie perspective, or the forward perspective. We made it this way because we wanted it to be super simple to use, in any condition and during any activity. This simplicity ensures that you're always capturing a good shot or angle. With that in mind, there’s no need to stare at the camera (unless you want to get that sweet selfie shot!). Trust that your Spivo 360 is filming either yourself or what’s in front of you. This functionally allows you to take candid videos just about anywhere. Skydiving? Traveling? No problem! 

When storing your Spivo 360 in the backpack or in the included Travel sleeve, store it with either the phone mount or your camera already on it. That way, it’s quick and easy to whip out and use when you get to your spot! The Spivo 360 is 20 inches long, so it fits in just about any backpack or carry-on luggage.

Tip 12: Plan plan plan

Let your creativity run wild! These tips are merely just guides. Have fun. Do whatever you want, like Spivo Customer Ruei who used his Spivo 360 upside down to capture the spontaneous moment he finally landed his skim board trick!

Got any tips you'd like to share with other adventurers all over the world? Leave them in the comments below.