The SF Urban Film Fest’s Storytelling Services
Our Storytelling and Creative Strategy Services Are Designed to Invoke, Reflect, and Fulfill Community Needs
Lasting change — whether it’s within your city, your organization, or your movement — is sparked and sustained by inspired design and effective communication through stories. The SF Urban Film Fest (SFUFF) was founded on the idea that developing and sharing authentic stories is crucial to move the needle towards justice — and we have been offering community storytelling and creative strategy services ever since. Our services are designed to invoke, reflect, and fulfill the needs of the communities your organization is trying to reach, paving the way for sustained transformation.
The Storytelling Journey is a highly customized community storytelling model that we have applied to the work of public agencies, nonprofits, and private sector organizations. Our team is led by Fay Darmawi, Founder and Executive Director of the SF Urban Film Fest, and Keith Battle, storytelling instructor at Bay Area Video Coalition and filmmaker. We also engage professional filmmakers and storytellers as breakout leads to facilitate the generation of unique narratives that can ultimately form various types of multi-media collateral.
The Storytelling Journey consists of three modules. Although they can be implemented separately, we recommend all three modules in the following sequence for full impact.
Module A: Film Screening and Panel Discussion
Experience the power of interdisciplinary storytelling in establishing urgency and building collective motivation.
Watching films together establishes common ground and fertile soil for discussion, forming the basis of community organizing. After deep consultation with organizational leaders on themes and goals, SFUFF curates a film program and interdisciplinary panel discussion to kickstart the process and serve as an example of compelling, interdisciplinary storytelling.
Module B: SFUFF Storytelling Workshops Levels 1 and Level 2
Demystify the art of storytelling & develop unique narratives through interactive workshops led by professional filmmakers.
Level 1: A 1-hr interactive workshop to understand the basics of storytelling. We will introduce the four main components of a story — Story, Audience, Message, and Style (SAMS) — and analyze a few short videos using the SAMS rubric.
Level 2: An advanced 2-hr workshop to generate unique narratives and simple storyboards using the SAMS rubric. Your team will break out into small groups, each led by a professional filmmaker or storyteller. These storyboards can form the basis of videos in the future.
Attendees walk away feeling confident in their ability to present any topic in a compelling way and with a more comprehensive understanding of your organization’s story. In addition, SFUFF can be available for one debrief/evaluation meeting and write a recap blog with all rights to your organization.
Module C: Video Production and Ongoing Consulting
Put your new techniques to work & articulate key concepts to a wider audience in a short video or multimedia production.
After multiple narratives are generated during the storytelling workshops, we assist in refining the storylines and selecting one or two to advance into video pre-production and production. The cost of production varies depending on desired production values and the length of the videos.
