Creating an Instagram Reel

For my portfolio website I thought I would used a video I created for advertising my own artwork, but these skills can easily be applied to your products, services, and company! Here, I cleaned up some scans of some licensed Star Wars artwork I had created. I then created a template in Photoshop that was sized for Instagram reels. I created three folders, with one being for the background. This folder had numerous layers that played upon one another to give a dark and starry background. The second folder had all of my images and a mask on the folder itself so that edges of the drawings wouldn’t show. I then created guidelines on the artboard so I can center each drawing the same, and for this project I chose the Star Wars logo that was on every card. This allowed for each image I saved to be uniform. The last folder held the branding files. The logos went to the top of the image but was still in the safe zone -not in an area to be hid under Instagram Reel elements. Once everything in Photoshop was built I then toggled the drawing layers on and off saving each one as a jpg. These would then act as cards that would be cycled through the Reel I was to create.

Next step was to import all the photos onto my phone and then into Instagram. I will sometimes use other apps on my phone to create videos, such as Splice, but for this one the static jpg images made more sense to be imported directly into Instagram -if I had video elements shot on my phone I probably would’ve used Splice first as I can edit video easily there. 

In Instagram, I select ‘create new reel’ and then select which images I want to import into the reel. You can also select a trendy template for the reel but these often have limitations like how many images you can use. After selecting the images I want I then select music to accompany the video. I always pick music that goes with the imagery /video I’m posting and try to keep it upbeat and catchy. I then select edit video and shorten the duration of each image to around 45 seconds and try to end them with the beats of the music I chose. I add a bit of text at the beginning and end of the videos but this is no more than a short sentence as most people won’t really read it. I will add sticker gifs to a few parts of a video as I find it adds a bit more motion to it and that increases the average watch time for a video. 

Finally, I add a short caption with a few hastags and share it during a time the majority of people are active on Instagram -activity times are found in your Professional Dashboard. I share to my Instagram Stories and then elsewhere like Youtube, Twitter, and on a website like this one!