5 Things I Learned About Virtual Storytelling From My 3-Year-Old’s Online Music Class
Okay, look: I’ve never written a listicle before. I’m the freaking creative director of a boutique agency. I’ve sold movies to Hollywood and been shortlisted for an Oscar! AN OSCAR! The kind with the gold statue!
But everything sucks right now and so I’m writing a listicle. And you’re reading it. Thanks for that.
The other day, I told a story on a virtual storytelling show. Eight other storytellers and I logged into Zoom and told true stories about our lives to thirty-five strangers on the internet. Now, I’ve told stories on stage in front of a thousand people and performed stand up comedy for fifteen disgruntled drunks in a tiny bar in Brooklyn. I’ve had my voice beamed across the country on The Moth RadioHour and stared into the abyss of interviewing my own father, but NOTHING was as scary as that silent Zoom audience.
And here’s the thing: I’m not alone. If you want to have the ego-equivalent of a gentle warm bath, then watch Tom Hanks’s monologue for the first SNL@Home show. Watch him flail as he tries to be funny to a “live audience” of a cell phone duct-taped to a broom. When you take away the warm lights and glow of adoring fans, even America’s beloved neighbor, Tom, looks like a 13-year-old delivering a stilted Bar Mitzvah speech. I mean I’m talking about cringey delivery, awkward timing, and the general sense that I know he wants us to watch… but I hope no one is recording this.
And yet, every Wednesday at 10AM, the music teacher at my daughter’s preschool logs on to Zoom and kills it. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I mean I’ll spend 3½ hours trying to get my daughter to stop eating her underwear and then Emma says “okay friends time for singing” and my little beastie is rapt. I find it infuriating but Emma from Music with Emma is a master and I am her humble student.
In fact, the other day when I sat down to record my story for our new series The Quarantine Sessions, the very first thing I did was my Music With Emma checklist to make sure I didn’t suck.
So here, now, is everything I have learned from Music with Emma about storytelling in this new age:
Know your audience
Okay, so this might seem like an obvious one but maybe that’s just because you’re smarter than me. But Emma connects to her audience on their level. She’s empathetic and kind, and tailors her presentation to a length and pace that works for 3-year-olds.
“Okay,” you ask, “what if my audience is potty trained and/or c-suite level execs and not expert fish stick eaters?” Well, the same is true for them too.
When we tell stories, we are engaged in a dialogue, albeit one that is one-sided. On stage, in the conference room, or in person, it’s easier for us to sense the second half of the dialogue. You feel the warm smiles and hear the laughter. You can adjust and ride the emotional wave of the room. But in a virtual setting, you have to intuit your audience. Do they want to laugh right now? If so, what kind of laughter? Do they want a loud garrulous booming joke? Or do they want a smile, a way to feel fellowship with the teller? Maybe they just want to feel a little less alone in this moment and a joke is the last thing they want.
There’s no formula to this, but I’ll say that on the virtual storytelling show the performers that were successful had stories that moved quickly and carefully through multiple emotional states, were respectful of the attention span of people at home, and seemed to intuit that what people want right now is emotional connectivity and not simply a cheap version of what we used to have.
Which brings me to #2.
Use the medium, don’t fight it
As much as we are getting used to disembodied heads on every conference call, this is not normal and pretending that it is won’t help you succeed. But the key isn’t to fight against it, the key is to figure out what opportunities a virtual stage affords us.
Emma from Music with Emma places herself in a medium shot with very little “head room.” In other words: the camera frame that she chooses goes from around her belly to just above her head (with about an inch or two to spare). This isn’t too close which can feel overwhelming, and isn’t too far away which can feel cold and impersonal. It’s Goldilocks. Just right. She’s using the camera to frame herself in a way that is basically how we experience conversations with people in real life and therefore tricks her audience into relaxing a bit.
But it doesn’t just stop there: she also uses the fact that there’s an artificial frame around her to incorporate hand puppets. What would normally be an awkward moment is made magical for the kids because a puppet appears from out of frame as if magic. I’m not suggesting that your next presentation includes hand puppets but I am suggesting that if you use the frame to your advantage great things will happen.
Which is why #3 is…
Use props
Okay, this sounds funny, but it’s true. On stage or in a conference room, you have an artificial context that helps the audience forget about where they are. There’s a reason that comedy clubs put the jokester in front of a brick wall… they want the wall to dissolve and let the jokes do all the talking.
But in Zoom, we don’t have that possibility. Instead, we have a window into your (messy) life. To make matters worse, because we KNOW that you’re at home, we can’t help but think about it. If there’s too much clutter, we can’t see anything else. And if you clear everything out of the frame, it looks like a hostage video.
The key is to find one thing that connects you to your presentation. Talking about travel? Hang a vintage cruise poster behind you. Discussing urban agriculture? There better be plants or blueprints in your space. That one little prop allows the rest of the world to dissolve away and lets us forget for a moment our own messy context.
Audio audio audio
Emma and her guitar sound great. And that’s huge.
Other than touch, there is nothing more intimate, more fundamentally human than our voice. And we have to convey that with an abundance of care. We can forgive a LOT of things but we can’t forgive bad audio. Hollywood movies have been shot on iPhones with zero lighting in one take with amateur actors. BUT they always have well-recorded audio. And that’s no accident: radio programs like “This American Life” and podcasts like “Radiolab” have been downloaded millions and millions of times because great sound can transport an audience to practically unimaginable places.
There are countless blog posts offering to sell you expensive packages (and crushing it on their Amazon affiliates page) that will “elevate” your virtual presentation. And they’re great. Buy them if you can. But if you have to choose just one piece of kit, make it a microphone with a windscreen. Get your voice in your audience’s ears in the cleanest and clearest way you can, and they will forgive everything else about the setting.
And finally…
Bring it!
The last thing is, in some ways, the easiest and the hardest. Emma from Music with Emma just absolutely brings it. She’s present, she’s enthusiastic, and she doesn’t wait for feedback that isn’t coming. She completely suspends disbelief and just plows ahead, past the awkwardness until you forget that there was anything to feel awkward about in the first place.
But there’s one more thing that she does: she NEVER breaks “eye contact” with the camera. It’s relentless but totally effective.
It’s easy to get hung up on the audience that you’re looking at — the little boxes of faces that are bored or disinterested or getting another cup of coffee. Ignore them. For every disengaged person there are a dozen who are with you, and they deserve your full and undivided attention. And the way you give that attention is by looking DIRECTLY into the camera and bringing it. They will feel your gaze even if you don’t feel theirs. And that intentionality, that presence, that suspension of disbelief will win over the others on the call.
…AND FINALLY if you want the tech stuff, too:
Buy a ring light, a good mic, and upgrade your webcam.
Don’t put yourself in front of a window. No one will be able to see your face.
Try to keep a little distance between you and the wall behind you. It just looks nicer.
Don’t forget to wear pants. (Or at least stay seated if you don’t!)
That’s really all you need to know.
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