How to tell a story with using video
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This document provides tips for making effective videos, including defining your audience and goals, structuring your narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, telling stories from both a macro and micro perspective with personal anecdotes, using proper pacing and organization, capturing useful interviews and b-roll footage with good lighting and composition, and keeping videos short at around three minutes. The document also provides example videos and resources for visual storytelling.
How to tell a story with using video
- 1. Tips for making a VIDEO (by Karl Gude) Begin by asking, “Who is my audience?” How can I construct my narrative so that it is interesting and entertaining? What are my goals? What do you want people to do? Generally, you want to educate them, and then persuade them to take some sort of action. How will I get there? What little stories do I need to tell that will make up the bigger story? How do I get my shots? What are my locations, interviews, etc.
- 2. Tell a Story. Outline the key points you want to make. Have a beginning, a middle and an end. 1. Identify the issue (toxic site next to school) 2. Is the issue with it? (it’s leeching into the water table) 3. So what? (Kids are getting sick!!) 4. What can be done? (Remove the threat) 5. What will it take? (Resources)
- 7. Tell your story from the macro to the micro: What is the big picture here. If talking about breast cancer: The macro: the total number of people who have it, how many die each year and the demographics of who gets it. The micro: One person’s story. Personalize it. Bring it home.
- 8. Pacing: Pace your video appropriately, depending on the subject. If it’s a fun story about a carnival clown, then have lots of fast cuts to different shots and scenes. Keep the story lively, flowing, fun. If it’s a sad story about someone’s battle with cancer, then make your scenes longer and pause on someone to add drama and create mood, even if they’re not saying anything.
- 9. How will you organize your story? Keep the editing process in mind when shooting. Chronologically: Narrative moves from beginning to end. Mix it up: Start with the end and work toward how you got there. Or start with the present and mix in flashbacks. Thematically: Group interests and activities.
- 10. Key visual elements to video storytelling: Shoot wide, middle and tight shots: Wide sets the overall scene, middle comes in closer to someone talking and tight shots show details, like the person fiddling with their glasses. Shoot B-Roll: Shoot scenes to that will illustrate what someone is talking about, and for filler while you’re narrating (like a river flowing, a bee on a flower, a street scene, etc.) Interviews: (next slide)
- 11. When interviewing someone: Shoot them early. You may want to go back and illustrate what they say. How much of the story will they tell in their voice, vs. your narrative. Let them tell the story whenever possible. Let the person interviewed do the talking: Don’t ask, “Are you feeling well today?” because they’ll answer, “Yes,” which is useless. Instead, ask them to talk about how they are feeling. Don’t you say a word while they’re talking, like, “Uh huh, yeah, right.” Get in close for good audio. Don’t conduct an interview in a loud coffee shop or on a busy street corner. Take them somewhere quieter.
- 12. Think about these things when shooting: Use a tripod. If you must hold the camera, don’t! Set it on a wall or a table. Jittery film looks amateurish. Avoid slow (boring!) pans and zooms!!! If you do shoot one, chop the middle out when editing. Jump from close to far, left to right. Don’t drag us along on a slow moving pan/zoom. Get good angles. Put your camera on the ground and let people walk by. Get up high. Shoot a scene several times if necessary
- 13. Choose your shots carefully. Pick your shots. What tells the story, what would make good B-roll? Do you really want to edit all that footage? Lighting: Make sure you’re not shooting into the sun or in the dark. Is your subject squinting? Bring them into the shade. Composition: Before you start shooting, ask if the shot is interesting, well composed. Is there a phone pole coming out of someone’s head? Action: Show movement. Keep it short! Three minutes is long for most attention spans.
- 14. News report parody link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4 Karl’s free visual tools wiki (video hosting, etc.): http://freevisualtools.wikispaces.com/ An interview of me shot by a student. Notice the B-roll shots of the monitor, etc. as I talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHYmkq_biw Student work: Brace yourself: http://jrn203-fs10.wikispaces.com/Video+Storytelling