Why is a good story key to video making?
We asked our Director, Senior Producer and Marketing & Sales Manager at Mission Control their experience of telling a good story for video. Here is what they had to say:
Briar (Senior Producer)
I was reading a marketing report sometime last year that featured the quote:
“Humans talk in words, think in pictures and learn from stories.”
I am still yet to find the origins of the quote and wouldn’t for the life of me be able to remember which report it was in…but I have had it stuck on a bright orange post-it note on my computer ever since.
Those who know me well know that I am a serial learner – if I don’t know how to do something…consider the challenge accepted! So, when I read this quote, my love for storytelling suddenly made a lot of sense.
Storytelling is such a key part of learning and has always been fundamental to human development – even the cavemen did it!
It has been proven time and time again that people are much more likely to engage with information if it has come in the form of a story. Even the things that most people find mundane are fascinating to me – sometimes, those are the most interesting stories!
I love being in the business of storytelling. It may sound like a cliche but it’s absolutely true – everybody has a story worth sharing.
Lisa (Marketing and Sales Manager)
People are engaged or act, when they’ve been told the full story (in brief). Our clients customers ask – what are these people like, do we trust them, are they speaking to me in my language. Is it real or just for the cameras? Once they hear the story (when it is told honestly), they do the old ‘aha’, breathe out, and engage!.
This story can be straightforward or delivered in a super creative way.
We know that when people are ‘moved’ by some emotion, they buy in quicker and more deeply into your brand or product or message.
This is where having a top class Director is key – often people have a good story, but struggle to tell it in front of a big camera sticking in their face. It is absolutely imperative that the Director knows how to bring the best out of everyone in front of the camera.
A more recent example was our client Red Shoots – they had a story to tell and a good one. But one of the owners was sick to the stomach about being in the front of the camera – our Director got in there and got them in such a space that the video is warm, inviting, funny and definitely engaging!
Calvin (Director)
Since Briar and Lisa have done such a great job at stealing all the things I was going to write about, I thought I would just add this little nugget of advice. It’s small, but can have big changes to the storytelling of a video.
Keep it simple! Don’t overload your audience with information. Some clients will want to hit off ten key selling points about their business, when they should just be talking about one or two. Audiences will mentally switch off, and the actual important bits will get lost in all the noise.
People only remember one or two things when a video finishes anyway, so you should really think deeply about what you want people to remember and make sure you tell those things really well.
We’ve all been to a conference where the keynote speaker talks for an hour, but when they leave the stage, you only remember a couple of the things they’ve said. It’s the same for video. And much more so when your video is only a minute or two long.
It’s tempting to think that putting more ideas into a video will make the video better, but the complete opposite is true. If you end up with a video that is trying to cram in ten things, the audience will leave confused. If your video says two things really well, the audience will actually take away what you want them to. Any other information should be in a different video, or on a website page. With attention spans getting shorter and shorter, this becomes more important every day.