There are no hard and fast rules to storytelling. This is especially true when using video as the medium. The opportunities, tools and platforms we as production companies have to tell visual stories rapidly change, especially in the last decade we’ve been doing this work. That pushes us to transform the way we tell stories. Over the years editing has become tighter, shot selection more intentional, soundscapes and visuals more sumptuous, and casting of characters more critical than ever. Yet there are some conditions to creating effective nonprofit video storytelling that have remained constant:
1. Make Me Care
There’s a Maya Angelou quote that continues to inspire me: “People won’t remember what you said. They’ll remember how you made them feel.” At the core of every story must be an emotional truth; something that universally moves people to care about something or someone. It’s hard to pull off, but this is why authenticity is so critical in video production. It’s that elusive commodity everyone is after and the key ingredient to getting people to care. For our nonprofit and corporate clients, an authentic story makes your audience invest in the idea, policy, mission or product you are selling. At the center is an authentic person, someone who truly believes in what they are saying. And as a result you can’t help but believe it too. It’s an intangible quality to pinpoint, but one you’ll know when you see it in someone. And when you do, you must build access to them and their story in your ever-critical quest to make your audience care.
2. Hold My Attention
With so much visual stimulation these days, grabbing the viewer’s attention is harder than ever. The knee-jerk reaction is to develop content in ever smaller bites. And while there’s value to brevity, especially on social media platforms, grabbing and holding attention is all about the storytelling. A key way to do this is with the opening of a video. There’s a school of thought that says you should immediately tell your audience what they are watching, hence the prevalence of text screens at the beginning of many videos. But, ugh, why? We prefer to open with a relative amount of intrigue. We believe there’s value to developing a 5W lede (who, what, where, when, why) and leaving out one or two W’s. This is in the pursuit of your audience digging into the content to find out, say, the when and the why. Once the audience’s attention has been captured with an evocative opening, it’s the storyteller’s mission to hold it. Set the stakes and structure your story in a way that the main character is able to confront those stakes. For nonfiction stories, this begs the production company, in partnership with the nonprofit or corporate client, to seek out stories in which there are tangible stakes and that they are unfolding in the present.
3. Help Me Understand
Storytelling is a form of communication. It’s how we share our histories and understand our present, all in a higher pursuit of moving humans to connection and action. Yet without clear and effective communication, that lofty goal is moot. In the application of artistry, it’s important to never lose clarity. Those 5W’s (who, what, where and why) still need to be present even if we become open to re-ordering them. The biggest challenge we have as storytellers who know everything is to present the story clearly to a viewer that knows nothing. Knowing this inevitable handicap, we are careful and thoughtful about capturing the images and asking the questions that will provide the information and context we need. And in the edit, we are working to arrange those ideas in the most simple, logical flow as possible. Only then can we play with visual metaphor, foreshadowing and all the narrative tricks that make our stories interesting to watch.
