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I really want to emphasize the importance of travel. Besides its obvious and much talked about benefits, travel is incredibly important when it comes to filmmaking. I’ve traveled a lot myself, and I feel it’s one of the best ways to boost your confidence in all areas of life.
Getting put in alien situations and having to pull through time and time again – incredible confidence builder.
I’m not writing this so you can photograph your backpack next to a famous railing. If that’s your thing, enjoy it — but it won’t make you better with a camera. Travel matters to filmmakers because it feeds the work: locations you haven’t already sleepwalked through, faces you don’t already have a shorthand for, light that doesn’t look like your commute. Craft input. Not a lifestyle advert.
Proximity Should Be Avoided
Too many people seem to be caught up in what I call the proximity trap. They grow up in a small town, go to school there, get a job there and then settle down with a wife and kids there!
The only time they see a place outside of their hometown is on their vacations, and those are few and far between. Some people never even leave their hometown!
Thing is, this is marriage by proximity. It’s settling for something because it’s right there and easier than going out and being able to find something of quality everywhere you go.
What are the chances of finding an incredible career/job/etc in your hometown?
It’s possible, but it doesn’t mean it’s the best bet for you.
The proximity trap isn’t just romance and jobs. It’s your eye.
If you only ever shoot the same three streets, you stop seeing them. You start making the same film with different clients in it. Same brick. Same sky. Same café interior. You tell yourself you’re “developing a look.” Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes you’ve just run out of input.
I’m not saying you have to abandon your town to have a filmmaker career. Plenty of people make great work where they are. I am saying that if you never leave the loop — house, set, house, same pub — your work starts to smell like the loop. Travel is one way to break it. Not the only way. A serious one.
Charge what you’re worth — and hear “yes” more often
Positioning and follow-up tactics from the Get More Video Clients guide so you stop under-quoting and start winning work that fits your rates.
Something For You Anywhere In The World
This really resonated with me today. I stumbled upon a chart showing the world’s populations by country. Next to the population, it showed the % that that country’s population made up of the world’s whole population.
The UK (where I live) represented less than 1% of the entire world population! Incredible.
So if you never left the UK, you’d only ever meet a tiny portion of the world’s people!
Obviously, some people will come to your country from abroad, but you’re not putting yourself in the best position to meet high-value people with who you can foster incredible and rewarding friendships/relationships.
There’s so much out there, guys. Get out and see the world. Experiment. There’s a lot out there.
That UK number is the one that stuck in my head. Less than one percent. I’m not going to dress it up with extra figures I don’t have. It’s enough. Stay put forever and you are, by design, sampling a sliver.
For filmmaking that’s not a guilt trip. It’s a reminder that stories, faces, and ways of moving through a day are bigger than your postcode. You don’t need to “collect countries.” You need to put yourself in rooms you didn’t grow up in.
Travel As Craft Input, Not A Flex
Let’s separate two trips that look the same on Facebook and are not the same in the work.
Flex travel: you went somewhere photogenic, you stood in front of it, you came home with proof you went. The camera was a prop in your holiday. Fine as a holiday. Useless as training.
Craft travel: you went somewhere and you used your eyes like a camera even when the camera was in the bag. You noticed how people wait for buses. You noticed how harsh the midday light is in a square with no trees. You noticed a colour combination you’d never put in a grade because you’d never seen it in real life. You came home with a head full of pictures that aren’t your high street.
That’s the job. Locations. Faces. Light.
Locations. You start to realise how many “cinematic” places are just places people live, shot with attention. A market. A stairwell. A harbour at an hour when the workers are there and the tourists aren’t. You also realise how much of your hometown you’ve never actually looked at, which is a cheap gift travel gives you when you get back.
Faces. If you only ever film your mates and the same type of client, you get good at one kind of person. Travel — even a couple of hours away — puts you opposite people whose default expression isn’t the one you grew up with. For a videographer that’s gold. Interviews change. Street scenes change. You get less lazy about casting “whoever is nearby.”
Light. This is the one that made me take travel seriously as craft. Different latitude, different streets, different weather, and suddenly your usual exposure habits are wrong. Overcast England is a teacher. Hard sun is a different teacher. You can read about it. Standing in it with a camera is the lesson.
I’ve written about lifestyle design and travel elsewhere. This post is smaller: take the trip as input. Come home and make something with it.
How A Videographer Actually Uses A Trip
Practical bit, because “see the world” is not a shot list.
If I’m travelling and I want it to count for the work, I do some version of this:
I pick one constraint for the camera. One lens, or one camera, or “only available light.” Constraint stops the holiday turning into a gear panic.
Stop under-scoping jobs on the discovery call
The Discovery Call Checklist walks you through the questions that surface scope, budget, and timeline — before you send a quote you’ll regret.
I shoot people in places, not just places. A doorway with nobody in it is a postcard. A doorway with someone waiting is a scene. Ask. Be decent. If they say no, you say thanks and you move.
I keep a tiny log. Not a travel blog. Three lines a day: what the light did, one face, one sound. Sound matters. You forget sound. Then you’re in the edit wishing you’d stood still for the market, the bells, the rain on the hotel air con.
I steal hours, not whole days, if I’m with other people who did not sign up for a student film. Early morning is yours. The rest can be human.
I come home and I cut something within a week. A minute. Two minutes. A sequence of light. If the footage dies on a hard drive, the trip was a holiday. Holidays are allowed. Just don’t lie to yourself about which one you took.
If you’re starting a video production business, cut a personal piece from the trip. Work from a place you actually paid attention to will do more for your reel than another grey interview in the same meeting room. Become a story maker on the train and in the hostel kitchen. That’s material if you’re awake.
If You Cannot Leave The Country
Alright. Money, passports, jobs, kids, timing. Not everyone can get on a plane this year. I’m not going to pretend that’s a moral failure.
You can still break the proximity trap without a stamp in a passport.
Nearby travel. A town you’ve never bothered with, one train away. A coast you always said you’d shoot. A night in a cheap room so you’re there for last light and first light, which is the whole point — day-trippers miss both.
Different rooms in the same city. If you live in a city and you only shoot your neighbourhood, you haven’t finished the city. Other end of the line. A community you’ve never been invited into (go with someone who belongs there, don’t just turn up like a wildlife cameraman). A workplace that isn’t yours.
Walk a new route with the camera as an excuse. Same town, different input. That’s travel for the eyes. It’s not exotic. It works. Foreignness is the point, and you can find it closer than you think.
The proximity trap is settling for the nearest version of everything because it’s easy. Travel, cheap or far, is how you stop marrying the first location you see.
Get out. Even if “out” is one town over. Then come home and use what you saw. That’s the importance of travel for us, guys. Not the stamp. The input.
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