I almost deleted the only good footage i have of my grandfather. that’s when i realized what my job actually is
so a client once sent me raw footage from a family trip. mostly shaky, boring clips. buried in there was 4 seconds of her grandfather laughing at something off camera. she almost didn’t send it, said it was “unusable.”
that 4 seconds became the entire heart of the edit. she cried watching the final video. he passed away 3 months later.
i think about that a lot. most people record trips to post them. but somewhere in that raw footage is always something they’ll want back one day and won’t even know it till its too late.
been doing this 4 years now, travel edits mostly, some weddings and events too. and the pattern is always the same. people focus on getting the “aesthetic” shot. the sunset, the drone clip, the perfect wide angle.
but the stuff that actually hits, later, is the messy 3 seconds nobody planned. someone laughing with food in their mouth. a shaky clip of someone waving from a boat. the stuff that feels alive instead of staged.
if you’re traveling soon or even just going through old footage, don’t just keep the pretty clips. keep the awkward, real, badly framed ones too. those are the ones you’ll actually want back one day.
(also if anyone wants a second pair of eyes on trip footage lying around, happy to take a look. seen a lot of buried gold in “bad” clips)