Easy-peasey video storytelling. Follow these 6 simple tips to get started.
If you're reading this, the chances are you are not being employed because of your years behind the lens or in an editing suite. This shouldn’t stop you from adding video to your communications toolkit.
I use video in my role as a senior consultant at Fluxx to tell stories that I need time poor and distracted clients, stakeholders and colleagues to engage with and understand quickly. For example, stories about global trends, a day-in-the-life of customers, project progression or experimentation.
Other tools are available, but video has a special ability to engage people. Video is particularly useful if you want to bring to life the kind of agile, hands-on experimentation and customer insight gathering that we do at Fluxx. This is stuff that is hard to convey in a Word document or Powerpoint alone.
Whatever stage you are at technically, there are ways to get your story out quickly using video. I started from a pretty low base: I had no dedicated filming equipment, no formal training and only the internet to instruct me.
There was a learning curve, but it was nowhere near as steep as I thought it would be. Hopefully these few simple tip and tricks will help you to get started telling stories with video:
1 Big reveal, you don’t have to shoot any video to tell a video story
You’ve a story just burning to be told. You think video could be the way to tell it, but the only filming you have ever done is in service of your instafeed. Never fear.
A great way to get started is Biteable: an online service that enables you to piece together pre-canned, animated video sequences. Biteable allows you to produce high-quality, engaging videos in your lunch break that will look like they took you all day. All you need is a simple script.
Top-tip: the range of clips on Biteable is limited. Don’t be frustrated by this, rather see it as a useful constraint and be willing to let the clips guide the story a little e.g. one of my first attempts with Biteable to explain the transport opportunities being created by urbanisation.
2 Edit. Then edit again.
It might seem pretty obvious, but how you edit and stitch your video clips together to form a sequence is what creates a cohesive narrative.
It’s easy to settle on your first edit. However, like writing, you may need to re-edit several times before you arrive at your destination. Don’t be afraid to chop, change and leave things like Johnny Depp’s role in Platoon, on the ‘cutting room floor’.
Top-tip: Edit using the simplest tool to hand. You’ll find this focuses your attention on the story you’re trying to create rather than the polish you’re trying to put on it. iMovie and Windows video editor are straightforward and relatively intuitive and easy to use. You can also try editing on your smartphone with an app like Adobe’s Premiere Rush for maximum constraint. Remember, Orson Welles, never needed Premiere Pro.
3 Don’t let technical stuff get in the way
As well as software, it’s super easy to get caught up in the hardware and spend more time tending to kit than telling the story (you become what Adam Westbrook calls ‘depth of field Dave’.)
The focus of your story is never going to be the hardware. So stick to simple kit that you know will do a good job and concentrate on the subject of story, the characters it portrays and the information it imparts.
More than likely, your focus will be a person. Before you conduct an interview, put the camera to one side and spend a little time just chatting with your subject. You’ll find this puts your subject a bit more at ease and can also give them a better understanding of what you’re trying to achieve.
As most people have the means to capture footage, another way to approach things is to incorporate ‘selfie’ style clips shot by people themselves. This completely takes the technical component out of your hands and is great for injecting authentic first-person commentary.
Top-tip: Leave the video camera at home. A smartphone is capable of capturing near pro-level footage without you having to do very much more than point and shoot, so have some faith and let it do its job. However, do invest in a decent microphone. More information on this topic can be found in this excellent article by my colleague Tom Whitwell: ‘I spent two hours with a mobile video genius and learned 26 useful things’
4 Shoot with your end goal in mind
The majority of video content we produce at Fluxx is for rapid consumption, and less than 3 minutes long. We’re not shooting documentaries or feature films.
If your end goal is to create a short summary video, be it a weekly project update or a round-up of consumer insight gathering, it’s pointless shooting hours of rambling interview footage or lengthy incidental shots, you’ll just be creating more work in the edit.
Keep things short and sweet and remember to shoot lots of ‘general view’ footage (also known as ‘B-roll’) that you can use to smooth editing, add visual interest and provide context. To quote TV and Film industry veteran Viki Carter, “You’ll always run out of visuals to cover cuts before you run out of interview footage”.
Top-tip: To help you in the edit, shoot lots of general-view footage clips of around 7 secs in length. Also, If filming someone talking directly to the camera, try to cap clips at 30 secs. And instead of letting an interviewee ramble in response to a single, broad question, ask a series of specific questions to elicit succinct responses.
5 Reuse and recycle elements and styles that aren’t intrinsic to the story
It’s tempting to think that every new video project has to break the mould and look substantially different from the last. However, consistency has an upside.
Using tried and tested title styles, stock footage and audio means you have less to think about when you are editing, so you can stay focused on telling the story you need to tell.
Top-tip: At Fluxx, we use a video style guide. This reduces the amount of things we need to think about while editing. It also makes it clear to our audience where the content has come from and what to expect. Here’s an example of it’s application https://vimeo.com/330757303
6 Video storytelling abounds. Watch lots and borrow from the best
There’s a massive amount of visual storytelling to observe and learn from. Whatever you enjoy watching, watch with a critical eye and seek out different approaches to emulate in your own projects.
For instance, when we wanted to produce a short video uncovering the stories behind the people who work at Fluxx , we borrowed stylistically from interview series by Romesh Ranganthan and Jerry Seinfeld .
Also be aware of how things are changing. For example, mobile video is driving an explosion in vertically shot (portrait) video stories e.g. from traditional news outlets such as the BBC on instagram to edgy indie producers getting the most out of snapchat .
Top tip: While focusing on the story, try to emulate one specific device or technique on each new video project that will help create interest or increase understanding for your audience. If you find you’re using a technique purely for its own sake, drop it.
If you’d like to see ways we’ve helped companies and could help yours, take a look at our site: Fluxx.uk.com, subscribe to our newsletter and/or read the free download of our new book The Plan Sucks.
You might also enjoy: 31 lessons from startups doing it better than you, or How Fluxx uses jugaad innovation Every Day.
Dean Wilson is a Senior Consultant at Fluxx, a company that uses experiments to understand customers, helping clients to build better products. We work with organisations such as Legal & General, Southern Water, M&G Investments, Atkins.
