How to Make Voice Over and Mini Vlog Reels for Instagram/TikTok in 2025

I'm sure by now you've seen this voiceover style of video over on Instagram or Tik Tok the color corrected this footage using only my iPhone Day in the Life as a 29-year-old who lives in New York City I'm going to teach you two ways to convince yourself to do hard things and you probably thought that they were easy to make until you tried it yourself and realize it's a lot harder and took you a lot longer than you expected and how do I know this it's because that was my experience that's why in today's video

I want to show you my process on how to do this voiceover Style video because once you learn to Master it efficiently this can be one of the easiest videos to make to help build your community grow your audience and keep viewers really engaged so let's dive in before you start creating your video the first step is to think about what you want your video to be about using this voiceover style specifically this is you're assigned to have a date night and make a joint vision board with your partner for me I found that this

style works best for showing a routine a process behind the scenes Vlog Style videos like a day the life the reason why is because the voiceover Style video allows you to be present in what you're actually doing and decrease your filming time in more than half for example if I was showing my hair routine and I was talking to camera at the same time as I'm explaining the hair routine if I mess up talking to camera I'm going to have to redo my entire hair routine but it would be really hard for me to do

that because I've already done the routine like what am I supposed to do dry my hair start over it just really becomes a Gong Show when you mess up talking to camera on something that you really want to be present for if you want ideas on what to create videos on this is my recommendation of a prompt that you can use on Chachi PT notion AI or any AI generation tool you're using so first give context on who you are and what you do I the co-founder of super Boba a superfood milk tea brand that

sells online only then share your constraints and the goals that you have so I wrote I want to make Tik toks in reals that are maximum 60 seconds long that will have a voice over over a series of b-roll footage my goal is to show more behind the scenes of our business and allow people to get to know me better as a Founder can you give me a list of ideas of videos that I can make with this style and include the b-roll footage that I should be taking and I was really impressed by the

results not only did Chachi PT give me pretty obvious ones like my day in the life as a founder or why I started the business but it also came up with really great creative ones like what's in my founder bag or if you're thinking of starting a business watch this I also love what I eat in a day as a found the struggles of working from home and so as you can see when you're doing this voiceover Style video you're able to do more storytelling you're able to show your audience a whole different side of

you that you wouldn't otherwise be able to show just by doing talking head videos or doing Carousel posts and the truth is your footage can be about anything for example I saw this video right here where this girl was just making a matcha and her voiceover really had nothing to do with the matcha at all so let me play it to give you some inspiration my number one piece of advice for anybody who wants to get into shooting and editing content is film random stuff because if you can make the most random thing look interesting

that's already setting you up for success I make art content and I'm not going to be filming my matcha making process on the daily basis but just telling myself hey let's do this in 10 minutes and just see what kind of cool shots I can get really challenged me to think about Framing and all this type of stuff right just next time you're like cooking dinner or whatever the heck you're doing film it see if you can edit something cool out of it you don't have to post it and then kind of apply those techniques

that you've used to whatever your Niche is and whatever video you want to make next Once you have an idea of what your video is going to be about the next step is to create an outline now this is optional for example if I was doing my hair routine I do this routine every single week so I'm just going to document me doing it I don't need to do an outline but there are other types of videos where I might do an outline so that I have a better idea of what specific be- roll footage

to take and so that I am really being more ient with my time for example if I was doing a day in my life I would then outline my schedule for that day and then under each section I would think about what b-roll shots I should be taking or at least being more mindful of or let's say the video I'm making is more story driven or lessons driven then I will definitely do an outline for that for example with super Boba we have a behind the Boba series or a lot of our videos are actually

very educational about our product and so I will sit down and write a script for that and as I'm writing the script I will also think about what b-roll footage I already have or that I need to take to really help move the story forward in that video now an outline doesn't necessarily mean that's your actual script it's just giving you some structure so that you're not scrambling the day of and not knowing what footage to take now speaking of b-roll that's the next step capturing b-roll regardless if you're winging it or you have a

clear outline the key to capturing b-roll is keeping in mind these three shots a wide shot medium shot and close-up shot this is the same principle that I use for vlogging and it also applies to short form content as well especially if you want to keep the viewer visually entertained as they're watching your real or Tik Tok if I could break it down for you the wide shot is going to allow people to see more of your environment and create that context that people need whereas a medium shot allows people to feel like they're with

you as you're doing the action and then finally a close-up shot allows people see the little details so let's say I wanted to do a video of me working well I could do a simple video like this of me working but if I kept it the same frame throughout the entire video it would be a little bit boring now instead what I would do to make the video more engaging and to also give me a little bit more variety when I'm editing the video is with this one action of me working at my desk for

the wide shot I would actually move my tripod farther in the room so that you can see my entire office maybe you can see me walking on my walking pad so people have more contact for the medium shot I would move my camera closer to me on the desk and show footage of me staring at my computer screen and typing away at my keyboard finally for the close-up shot I will maybe do a closeup of my shoes and walking on the Walking pad my fingers clacking away at my keyboard even though it's this one action

of me working while having these three shots it really allows people to paint the picture of the environment and provide way more visual interest of course not every single footage is going to make it to the end video but if you have that rule of thumb in mind for every action you have at least three varieties of shots you're going to have way more to work with when you're editing the video also do not be afraid of audio I find that even though you think voiceover vide should be 100% voiceover the best ones actually have

a few Clips where you could hear more of the sound effects so if I was making a drink I would make an effort to get the sound of the ice cubes clinking into the glass or if I was working I would make an effort to get the sounds of me typing on my my keyboard now speaking of sound and the importance of using sound to make your video more engaging one thing that has leveled up my videos personally is using epidemic sound the sponsor of today's video now you all know that I use epidemic sound

for my YouTube videos and ever since using them I've actually noticed my average view duration increasing but what you don't know is I use epidemic sound for Instagram as well and yes I know that using trending audio for Instagram is a best practice but there are times when using Instagram's audio will actually hurt you for example if you have followers from different countries where Instagram music is banned or not available then your whole video will be muted for them how I know this is because I have followers that have encountered this issue or let's say

if you're using original audio to use for your Instagram reals if the owner of that original audio deletes their video then your video will also be muted as well not only this if you are a business owner like me if you ever want to run ads on your content you're not going to be able to if you use music from Tik Tok or Instagram because it is is not commercial free music that's why for a lot of the videos that I post over on my business account I actually use epidemic sound this allows me to

maximize the usage of that video the best part is that epidemic sound makes it so easy to find the perfect song with their curated playlist so I'm never really at a loss of what music to use what's also cool is with their commercial plan they're beta testing this voices feature where you have access to all these professional voice artists that will say whatever you want thanks to AI let me show you an example Instagram voiceover reals can be really easy to make when you learn how to do each step in the right order keep watching

this video to learn how now I can see this being really helpful for those of you who have a faceless account who want to do ads who want a professional intro outro for your podcast a narrator for your audiobook or if you're someone who doesn't like your own voice but you want to get started with doing voice over videos so definitely consider getting the commercial plan if you're interested in using this feature now if you want to try epidemic s for free click the link in my description box or in my pin comment below and

make sure you use the coupon code Vanessa to get 50% off your first two paying months with the epidemic sound but make sure you take advantage of the coupon quick because the offer only lasts until April 15 now at this point you would have captured the footage that you need to make your voice over video and this is the step that most people Skip and that is organizing your b-roll even though in the short term you think that you're saving time by skipping the step in the long term you're going to wish you start sooner

because the more voiceover videos that you do you're going to notice yourself reusing a lot of the old b-roll or refilm the same b-roll over and over again so at minimum as a best practice when you're done filming create a separate album on your phone and then drop all of those b-roll clips in that album that way the day that you're editing you have everything organized in one folder versus you scrambling going into your main album trying to find all the footage now at some point as you make more voiceover videos you're going to notice

a pattern there's going to be certain b-roll footage that you always need or that you always have to refilm over and over again this is when you want to start creating folders for most of the categories that you see yourself using most often for example folders that show you working working out taking client meetings filming eating celebrating crying it really depends on the niche that you have but I guarantee as you do more videos you're going to start to notice those patterns and those categories will naturally emerge now if you are someone that prefers editing

on your phone then you're going to want to create these folders on your phone natively it's going to be a lot easier anyways for you to organize within your phone but if you're someone like me that has video editors or you just prefer editing on desktop which we'll talk about later in this video then I recommend actually creating those folders on your computer you can do this locally on your computer or you can use any type of storage management tool like Dropbox Google Drive in my case I use frame.io and this Boll library is essential

for my physical product business because we have so much documentation of our entire journey and most of the content that we make are voiceover videos and so you'll see here that there's tons of different folders categorizing each part of our journey this makes it a lot easier for our video editors to have autonomy to edit the videos without asking me all the time to make new content welcome to day two of me filming this video class is officially in session we are now going to talk about editing the bane of most people's existence when trying

to make these videos now a question I often get is whether or not it's easier to drop your footage first and then do the voiceover later or do the voiceover first and then drop the footage later I have always found it to be easier when you do the voice over first so let's use this video as an example where I talked about a date night I had with Leon where we made vision boards during this night I took a bunch of b-roll footage knowing that I definitely wanted to make a voiceover real about this experience

on the day I wanted to edit the video I then wrote the script to do the voice over 4 now you could just do this on your own but with the help of AI it definitely makes it easier and so what I did was I went to notion Ai and I said can you help me script a 30second reel the hook is this is your assign to have a date night and make a joint vision board with your partner here are some of the things that happened and then I started listing all of the things

that happened that evening keeping in mind all of the b-roll footage that I have and what happened was notion AI spat out a 30-second scrip now you don't have to use notion AI for this you can use chat GPT CLA AI whatever AI generation tool that you're using but this has helped me so much when it comes to making voiceover reals and having a better idea of what to do with all the footage that I have now there are exceptions where maybe doing the voice over after is actually easier for example in this video where

it was more of a day in the life as a Founder I dropped all of my Clips in chronological order and then I did the voice over narrating what I did that day it really comes down to personal preference and the style of video that you're doing but on the topic of voiceovers there are three ways that you can record your voiceover if you are editing on mobile my recommendation is to use the cap cut app and if you're wondering why I'm using cap cut and not Instagram directly it's because I have trust issues I

have spent hours editing videos only for Instagram to glitch out delete my entire video and so now I use third party apps like cap cut or descript because yeah I just don't trust and then record your voice over natively in the cap cut app if you want crisper audio my recommendation is to use an external microphone I use the DJI Mike mini which I am obsessed with I use it for YouTube I'm using it right now and it comes with an adapter so I can use it on my phone too now the second way to

record your voice over specifically if you are editing on desktop is to just record your voice over on a voice memo and then airdrop it to yourself on desktop if you're editing on cap cut desktop there is a button right here called voiceover if you click it you can also record your voice over directly within the cap cut desktop app finally the third way that you can record your voice over is to do a talking head video like this I typically like doing this for super Boba when I am not sure I have enough Boll

footage to actually tell the story this does take a little bit more time than audio only because you have to memorize your script but I personally find it to be worth it just to have that insurance and make sure that I have enough visuals to fill up my video now that you've recorded the voice over the next step is to actually edit the video but my recommendation is before you start trimming your b-roll footage and doing all the things the first thing that you're going to want to do is to edit your audio this is

going to save you so much time because once you have your audio locked in you're happy with the voice over it's easier to determine what you need to trim for your roll footage personally I like editing on desktop and later you are going to understand why but if you are editing on mobile it goes without saying when you're editing your little voiceover clip you want to delete any mistakes that you have but you also want to delete any major pauses when you look at the audio track it becomes clear the areas where maybe you're taking

a breath and if you don't see it I recomend recommend that you actually zoom in on your audio track so you can clearly see all of the Dead points where you're not really saying anything or maybe there's a pause simply just trim those out this is not only going to help the video flow better but it's also going to help you keep people's short attention spans for those of you who like to edit on mobile keep living your life on hard mode but if you are someone like me and likes to live life on easy

mode I highly recommend switching over to desktop for all of your editing where once you upload your video and have your voice over you can transcribe Des cribe that audio so you can now edit via text this is going to make it so much easier to see any errors that you've made and delete them in one go you can also identify filler words and make it so that it will automatically delete any pause that's over a certain amount of seconds that you set and then from here most of your time is going to be spent

trimming those clips so on mobile you start splitting the clips and deleting the section you don't want and then on desktop all you have to do is click on the area where you want to split and automatically you're going to have a button that you can press to help you split that clip and then you delete whatever section you don't want now once you are fully happy with how your voice over sounds you've deleted all the gaps mistakes and your filler words like ums and A's the next step if you haven't done already is to

drop your Clips if you are editing on mobile and choosing to live in hard mode make sure you pre-trimmed it on desktop you just transfer your Clips over and then from there you can start trimming and splitting and doing all the things one thing to keep in mind is after you've dropped all those clips regardless if you're doing it on desktop or mobile is to make sure all of those clips are muted you definitely want to make sure your voice over can actually be heard now earlier in this video I did mention to make your

video sound a little bit more interesting you can leave a few clips unmuted for example if you're making a drink and you want the ice cubes to be heard clinking into the glass or if you're waking up in the morning and you want your alarm to actually sound off then what you want to do is you want to just split that specific section that you want to have unmuted and then unmute that specific clip on its own hatch alarm my usual alarm is this sound where it makes me feel like I woke up in the

middle of a Chinese restaurant I washed my face and went straight to doing 20 minutes of red light therapy as it heads up majority of your time will be spent splitting and trimming all of these clips to make sure that it lines up with your voice over this is where I really want to give a shout out to my favorite editing tool descript this video is not sponsored by them but with descript I love how at the bottom I already see the text so when I'm adding my b-roll footage I can easily just line up

the footage and see exactly where I need to trim the clip based on the transcript that I see I noticed that you can't really do this on cap cut so for me it actually takes me a bit longer to edit on cap cut versus on descript but I also understand why most people like using cap cut because most of the features are free once you are fully happy with your video the last step is to add the captions the reason why you want to do this last is because if you end up changing the voice

over or you change the clips a little you're going to have to go back retranscribe the video fix the captions all over again and just speaking from experience it is a lot better if you are fully happy with the video and then add the captions last now when I autogenerate the captions on dis script I generally use their default template I really like using this font because it's a common font both on Instagram and on Tik Tok so it just makes the video look more native and organic afterwards I will click edit caption and start

fixing any of the typos I'm very particular about this and if I noticed there are way too many words on the screen or things aren't lining up properly then I will just hit the enter space so that the captions are more spread out and each frame isn't too text heavy and if I also notice that cap cut split my captions in a weird way I will hit the merge button to merge all of the words together and then hit the enter space to split where I want the caption to split with desktop you do something

very similar where you'll click on captions right here then click on generate and then click on text where you'll be able to play with the font size and the style there are also other templates to choose from if you want to break up the captions then you just click on the text and then hit the enter button and then if you want to merge them again you just hit the backspace button from here you can also correct the text as well I'd like to mention that the video you're watching right now really covers is the

basics of editing through cap cut but if you'd like to take it a step further and do editing similar to this style you need to remember you are literally the main character in your movie the idea of talking to a camera makes your skin crawl you're not alone I think we put way too much pressure on Fresh Starts go to Tik Tok or YouTube and search up cap cut editing tutorial and you're going to learned so much more about this editing software this is the tracking effect that you see all of the cool kids do

I'm going to teach you how I did this transition using only cap cut and also don't be afraid to play around with style of the caption because there are tons more templates that cap cut has and way more advanced ways to actually make it look even more aesthetic this is a really cool edit so you're a content creator that wants to learn how to add any font to cap cut this is how to add caption your video the right way now for me I like to keep things really basic so everything that I'm showing you

in this video is everything that I personally do but when I went down the Rabbit Hole I definitely learned that there's a whole other world of cap cut that I haven't even mastered yet myself now once you are happy with your caption the style of the caption the last step is to export your video personally I just export in 1080P if I'm posting on social media I'm not too nitpicky about it I think one time or a few times I've exported it in 4k and it's almost as if Instagram cannot handle super high quality stuff

cuz it made my video more pixelated ever since then I've just been doing 1080P and that's worked fine for my account once you've exported your video the next step is to upload it to Instagram over on the Instagram editor there's really only three things that I do the first is adding music second is adding the cover photo and lastly the caption so if my video doesn't already have music from epidemic sound I will pick trending audio from Instagram a pro tip is whenever you are on your explore feed and you just hear music you like

make it a best practice to save it so that when you post you have a library of music already like I find that if I don't do this I spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect song so just do yourself that favor because your future self will thank you and then when it comes to the cover photo this is always something that I forget to do until last minute so the lazy way that I do it is I will pick a frame from my video that I think could be a cover photo

I will screenshot that put it on my Instagram stories don't post it I just put it on my Instagram stories and then I write some text over top and then I save that video and I use for the cover photo nowadays I don't really stress too much about the cover photo because you can always update and change that later once you were done all of these steps now you can just save it to your drafts or post it directly to Instagram now if you want more strategies on how I do my Instagram real specifically how

I make content that actually generates income then make sure you check out this video next as always guys I appreciate you and I will see you in this video