How to Create Professional Looking Instagram Stories

On Instagram? Awesome, chances are you’re using Instagram stories. If you’re not, you’re missing out! They are great fun, basically a version of Snapchat stories that many more people use and engage with than anything on Snapchat.

So chances are you been flicking through one day and come across a really high quality story that is clearly not shot on a phone. You definitely will have if you follow me ;) how do I do that myself I hear you say!? We’ll check this out I got you covered, grab your DSLR we’re gonna shoot something awesome!

Now the first thing you’ll notice is that the majority of Instagram stories are shot in portrait (unless you add a flip to view header before it starts). But let’s be honest you’re gonna flick on if you come across one of those aren’t you? This next bit is gonna sound a little alien but the first thing you need to do is film your video in portrait so flip that camera like this:

When you’re shooting think about the framing of your shots. Think, ‘Is this going to look good in portrait?’ Things react a little differently in portrait than in landscape, but you also have more vertical space. Creatively, you just need to think a little differently about the shots you take and how you see them fitting in the edit once you get back to your editing suite.

Now imagine you’re back from your shoot and ready to edit. For ease of use here I’m going to refer to the editing process in Premiere Pro, the processes that I mention here will be available in other editing suites and there’s plenty of YouTube tutorials that will help you get what you need. So to start here you need to change your aspect ratio of your sequence. Standard widescreen is 1920x1080px or 16:9 so you need to flip this around. So head to sequence - sequence settings and change you frame size to 1080x1920 or 9:16. This will give you a portrait project to work from.

And you’re away! Get editing as normal just remember to rotate the video files so they're correctly orientated. But wait! before you export that incredible Instagram story, remember that you can only upload videos to stories in 15 second increments. So make sure you mark your in and outs accordingly and export your whole video in 15 second sections. Finally Airdrop them to your phone or whatever method is best for you and get them uploaded to your epic Instagram page! My advice here, make sure you save them as highlights so they stay on your profile as examples of your best work!

As you can imagine there’s a plethora of possibilities creating Instagram story content on a DSLR and I have only just scratched the surface here of what you actually CAN do in instagram. So get out there, get creating and get posting and of course make sure you tag me in them so I can see what you have made! I’d love to see them! In the meantime keep up to date with my stories here and Total Guide to's as well!

For more information on creating video content or to enquire about how we can help create content for your business drop us a line on 01793 823000 or email me at [email protected]!