Jonna Jinton has been inspiring viewers with her YouTube channel for over a decade. Based in a tiny village in a forest in Northern Sweden, Jonna showcases her lifestyle as a multidisciplinary artist through long-form videos with beautiful cinematography. Her beautiful camera work won the 2021 Streamy Award for Best Cinematography, and she has amassed over 5 million YouTube subscribers.
Building a personal brand
Jonna’s approach to content creation on her YouTube channel stands out for its authenticity. Jonna has a whimsical style inspired by her remote surroundings and is focused on storytelling above all else. She’s grown her following without relying on sponsored content or product reviews. Instead, Joanna’s personal brand is dedicated to showcasing slow-paced living, her art practices, and revealing the magical qualities of living in a remote location. Her authentic approach to content creation lends itself to videos that are extremely engaging and inspiring.
Jonna started her YouTube channel shortly after she moved to the remote village where her mum was born. She was inspired by the fresh air and the beauty that her new home provided and started documenting her creative journey for social media.
Overall, her YouTube channel’s style is very personal, cinematic, and often focuses on the beauty of the great outdoors.
Camera techniques
Regardless of the topic she’s covering, Jonna uses a few different styles of shots in her videos. These are some of Jonna’s most used camera techniques.
Time-lapse video
Time-lapse video captures how a scene changes over time at a sped-up pace. It allows viewers to watch how something changes over time without having to watch it in real time. Jonna often uses this camera technique to showcase the unique lighting conditions in her tiny village in Sweden.
She has used the time-lapse technique to capture the Northern Lights, shooting stars in the night sky, and as clouds move over the horizon at sunset. Her time-lapse video shots also often feature interesting low angles to make the trees look taller and the sky more expansive.
If you’re looking for some stunning time-lapse clips of the Northern Lights for your projects, check out this royalty-free footage from the Artlist catalog.
Drone video
Jonna’s channel also uses a number of shots captured from drones. Drone shots allow for a bird’s-eye perspective of the massive forest and beautiful lakes surrounding her home.
Drones are a great way to capture dramatic, wide-angle establishing shots when shooting video outdoors and these stabilized shots. They add a cinematic flare to Jonna’s videos. Because of her remote location in Sweden she also likely doesn’t have to worry about violating any airspace rules.
Live in a region with stricter airspace rules or aren’t confident in your drone flying skills? Take a look at Artlist’s catalog of stabilized drone footage from locations all over the globe.
Tripod-stabilized
The tripod-stabilized shots that Jonna uses in her videos help place the artist in the context of the storytelling. Sometimes, these shots are filmed inside her home, capturing her getting out of bed in the morning, preparing breakfast, or working on an edit on her computer. More often this style of shot is filmed while she is outside, taking a walk along a frozen lake, plunging into an outdoor ice bath, or hauling her trash can through a massive amount of snow. The tripod-stabilized shots are also crucial for capturing those beautiful time-lapses.
Walk and talk
The “walk and talk” shot, where a content creator speaks directly to the camera as they walk around their environment, is all over YouTube. Although it doesn’t appear often in Jonna’s longer-form videos, her occasional use of the style is great at placing viewers in the moment.
The walk and talk shots in Jonna’s videos are particularly successful because she’s using an external lav mic to capture quality audio of her voice and the natural sounds of the environment. When Jonna uses this style of shot we can hear the wind rustling the trees behind her while she’s speaking directly to the camera. In wintertime these shots also capture natural sound effects that enhance the storytelling — like Jonna’s heaving breathing as she shovels the steps of her home before she takes her dog Nanook for a walk.
You don’t have to live in a remote region like Jonna for this style of shot to be effective. Having an external lav mic that can clearly capture your voice, but also the sounds of the environment around you, is an effective way to make viewers feel like they are right in the action. If you’re using walk-and-talk shots in your YouTube videos, make sure to capture the natural sound of the space, too. The background sounds of a bustling, crowded city block or the sounds of crashing waves and chattering birds are elements that will add authenticity to your YouTube videos.
Award-winning cinematography
Jonna combines these various shot types to create a signature style of cinematography that keeps viewers coming back. This style is one of the keys to creating her viral content and led to her winning the 2021 Streamy Award for Best Cinematography for her work.
Many of her videos showcase a juxtaposition of very dark shots and light and breezy shots. The contrast in these shots creates a natural tension in her storytelling style, but is also a feature of living in a region that is so far north.
As she explains in many of her videos, living in Northern Sweden means that the lighting conditions are very different depending on the season. In the winter months the sun never really rises, while in the summer the sun never sets. Lighting conditions affect everything when it comes to filmmaking, and it’s no surprise that living in a place with such dramatic lighting conditions is a recurring theme on Jonna’s channel.
Jonna’s creative practices as an artist and her day-to-day activities living in Sweden shift with the seasons. The video content on her channel also changes with the seasons, but the themes of living with extreme darkness and lightness regularly come up.
Voiceover and sound effects
Jonna’s most viral videos generally rely on a combination of voiceover, her talking directly to the camera, and field recordings from nature.
Her cleanly-recorded voice over tracks are likely scripted and then recorded inside a quiet space in her home studio. The field recordings from the forest and the frozen winter lake are what really place viewers in the moment. Jonna is known for adding field recordings of singing ice, capturing the unique, ethereal noises that it makes as it freezes and cracks each winter season. According to Jonna, the sounds the ice makes are different every winter. The field recordings that she captures provide an added level of authenticity to her YouTube channel.
Looking to add some realistic sound effects to your video project? Explore Artlist’s searchable catalog of field recordings.
Royalty-free music
As a final touch, Jonna adds royalty-free music to her videos to create natural pacing and build drama. Jonna often works with very cinematic and emotional music for the videos on her channel. The music style fits well for her, since she regularly explores themes of light and darkness, emotional well-being, and the subtle ways that our environment can affect the mind.
Choosing music that fits the mood and themes of your channel adds a level of polish to your videos. When choosing what style of music might be best for your project it’s helpful to consider the takeaway message of your video. Music can also be a great tool for figuring out pacing within an edit. Artlist’s catalog of royalty-free music lets creators search by mood, genre, instrument, length of track, and BPM — taking the headache out of finding the perfect background track for your videos.
Looking to add some cinematic music to your video project? Here are some royalty-free Artlist tracks inspired by the sounds of Jonna’s channel.
Trusting her instincts
Jonna has been using YouTube to promote her personal brand for nearly 15 years and she’s built a loyal following of subscribers without relying on branded content. She’s never been afraid to do things her own way. She’s followed her gut instead of the trends and it’s worked in her favor.
Her fascinating channel has found success through simple storytelling techniques, consistently beautiful cinematography, and a desire to share insights into living in a unique region of the world.
Ultimately, Jonna’s YouTube channel inspires us to embrace the beauty of the natural world and to keep on creating. Creating a viral online following like Jonna’s requires a strong point of view and a belief in yourself and your stories. But you don’t have to live in a beautiful and remote location to find success like Jonna has — authentic storytelling is what matters the most.
Trust your inner voice, focus on the story, and don’t be afraid to break some of the rules when it comes to creating viral content.
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