Neftali is a Cinematographer from Costa Rica who embarked on a journey around the world, creating incredible videos.

I started about 6 months ago a project of traveling solo without an agenda, in other words:

You Choose – I Go.

At least that was the concept. How did it work? I would ask my FB friends where I should go next. With no plan or tickets ahead – just I go wherever they told me to go. The most votes/comments would determine my next destination.

How did I manage to cover this idea (economically)? 

I work as a designer full time. I work from Monday-Friday, but remotely, so it allows me to work wherever I want as long as I have a good WiFi connection. So I said “WHY NOT?” Gotta travel right?

My first destination was Italy. I spent two weeks sailing across Amalfi Coast, Pompei and Sorrento. I made a couple films, and people (friends mostly) started to react positively, so I got motivated on this whole idea of travel + video + anywhere. I decided to stick to it and continued doing this for:

Barcelona, Egypt, Turkey & India.

I started realising my friends were my biggest motivation, but I needed to push this a bit further and get people outside to watch too, including analytics on who is watching my stuff.

So I decided to start a mini-series in India called “inda por media calle” – it translates in English “India in the middle of the streets.”

It’s a Costa Rican slang term we use for people that for some crazy reason decide to walk in the middle of the road instead of the sidewalk. So since my biggest audience was Costa Rican, they identified with and loved the concept.

Basically, I have never really given importance to Facebook Pages before, so I decided to start one for my travel videos – I called it “Lost N Free.”

It rapidly took off. Friends started sharing it, and in the first five days I was up 2000 followers. I was impressed and shocked how well these mini-vids were enticing people to follow and watch more.

Once India was completed, I took a short break at my brother’s house in London to begin editing the film “Land of Kings,” which took me about three weeks to prepare and launch.

MUSIC

I had started a playlist for all the locations/countries I visit prior to arriving via Spotify .

For Iceland, I had a good idea for the feeling + style of music, but the Track “Solo Dancing by Indiana” was chosen right on the last day on my way back home. It was like those glorious moments where it was extremely rainy and hard to drive, and then suddenly the track starts to play and I saw a huge ray of sunlight shine through the whole sky, and that moment sparks.

My whole body went numb when it all clicked together. It was so cool. I had goosebumps running down my spine and chicken-skin all over.

The editing process started in my head almost after hearing the song, repeating it 100 times on my way home. I had the whole video in my head, seriously – everything I had captured was already put together in my head, and I was so excited. I needed to get home and start the edit as fast as possible.

I am glad I did. It took me about three days in total to get all footage indexed, filtered, rough cut, preparing the sound to make it shorter, color grading it, and adjusting everything to match the flow nicely. I was finally happy with it, and decided to give it an early launch.

Unfortunately it didn’t make it into the “Vimeo Staff Pick,” but they certainly loved it so much they put my video in top Travel & Performance films category!

I am extremely satisfied with how it ended up, short film with a bit of a my own flavour of Iceland – a very personal experience alone in heaven.