There’s no doubt about it, the best professional film and video scripts are well-thought-out and re-written multiple times. I had a friend sell a movie script to actual Hollywood producers, and they drove him NUTS asking for re-writes.
Every word has to be approved by a chain of command, which is usually a maddening process.
Well, that’s Hollywood.
Carefully planning out every detail is vital in huge projects. That seems to translate into much of the instructional material I see for how to make a video, begins with advising an extensive pre-planning phase and careful script consideration and rewrites.
However, it’s not always necessary and might even be an exercise in spinning your wheels. Here are a few tips to let you skip the scriptwriting stage and quickly gather storytelling elements that can serve as a substitute for narration.
If simple video production is your goal, then you can narrate as you go. Ad lib. It’s one of the best ways to simplify your production. Even if you end up writing a script and adding supplemental narration, narrating as you shoot is perfectly adequate for many low-budget endeavors.
To ad-lib well, it helps to know your subject well. You need to know basically what you want to say, even without writing out every word first. Some people find an outline helpful. I do for anything long enough to cover several points.
Quality ad-lib is an art unto itself. Rambling off-topic is the most common mistake. Droning on forever would be a close second. You would also need to be careful about long pauses and saying uhhh too often.
With the camera hand held on your shoulder – or close to your shoulder, perhaps a selfie pose – the onboard microphone will work fairly well because it is close to your mouth. This means you can use a less sophisticated camera with no external microphone inputs and still get reasonable quality audio that’s already right there on your video. You need to record in a quiet environment, so you just don’t have to deal with unwanted ambient sound.
(Having said that, it’s ALWAYS better to use a microphone other than your onboard mic. The onboard mic is good mostly for what’s called ambient, or natural sound. Sounds of the cars, birds, chain saw, or whatever is making noise in your shot. You get the best sound of a person speaking by plugging a supplemental mic into your camera that the person speaking wears or holds.)
To narrate as you go, simply describe what you see as you shoot it. Try to sound intelligent, but you can always edit later. (Obviously it’s cheaper and easier if you don’t edit much.)
Also, listen to what other people are saying as you film. You can use their sound to add a narrative. Listen as they speak and keep the camera rolling on a usable shot as long as they’re saying something interesting. A professional video photographer is always paying close attention to any sight or sound within their range. If that doesn’t get you enough sound on tape, ask people for an interview.
Interview people and Use Their Expertise
Many videos rely heavily on interviews. I often say that interviews, which are called soundbites when broken into smaller segments, form the skeleton of any documentary style video.
You can use the interview as voice-over and let it function much like narration.
One trend in documentary making is to allow interviews to replace narration completely. If it’s done well, this is an effective technique. However, it is not quite as easy as it looks. Narration often serves as a transitional vehicle between soundbites. Narration serves as a supplement to interviews and helps weave divergent ideas together. To do a show based solely in interviews requires the interviewer to get the person explaining any tiny detail that you might need. This technique not usually done to make things easier, rather it is seen as an artistic and non-intrusive way to tell a story.
Extensive planning is sometimes completely necessary, and I am not trying to imply that it’s not. What I am saying is that simple videos can often be kept simple in ways that can help you keep the time and money involved with your videos to a minimum.
If you follow these tips, you can cut the work of script writing down to a manageable size or even eliminate it altogether.
I hope this helps you make simple, yet awesome videos.
Lorraine Grula
