What Makes a Video Worth Watching?
Story, characters and emotion are key elements in creating a video that’s fun for the audience to watch. You have to entertain people, or they will be gone in a flash. Even marketing videos benefit by being fun, or they will not be effective, because few will bother to watch.
Especially in the world of online video where the average attention span is slightly less than .0002 seconds, presenting a story that appeals to human emotions is crucial. Consider your storyline to be the core element in creating a video that viewers will agree to watch, which should be the #1 goal of any video. You can not sell people something if they will not even bother watching your video!
People love stories. So draw viewers into your information by presenting it as a story.
- Stories affect the viewer’s emotions.
Stories are based on characters that viewers can relate to emotionally. Almost all fiction starts with the author conjuring up the characters first, then coming up with the plot second. So first, create characters your audience can relate to. That’s not as hard as it sounds.
Characters are really nothing more than people who experience things and react in emotional ways.
Characters for your story will be people who have the experiences, emotions and characteristics you wish to convey to the audience.
Generally speaking, the easiest character to use is the “every man/woman/child,” someone who is typical, and probably much like your average viewer. Place an “every person” character into a situation, have him react according to his personality, which brings logical consequences, which he then reacts to, and there is your story.
The viewer will relate by saying, “Gee, I know how he feels! The same weird stuff happens to me, too!”
- When you’re doing marketing videos, your product or service can be the “good guy” in the story that solves your every man’s dilemma.
If you want more diversity with your characters, start by imagining the many different characteristics that make them up.
- Are they good or bad? Defining what “good” and “bad” mean in your story is a big step.
- Nice or mean?
- Smart or dumb?
- Brave or timid?
- Funny or serious?
- Cheerful or gloomy?
- Outgoing or shy?
- Seemingly real or totally imagined? Think the Geico Gecko or Flo from the Progressive insurance commercials.
Characters become more interesting if you combine seemingly contradictory traits, like gloomy yet funny.
Remember, too, that you can also use real people who are willing to share their story. A character in a news story is definitely always a real person, but that’s not true of commercials of course, but you certainly can use real people. Often their stories are more persuasive than an animated lizard.
You can even make the product your character, such as M&M candy, or your spokesperson, such as Ronald McDonald.
If you are making up multiple characters for one story, ensure conflict between them by having them be diverse people who would never agree on much of anything. Then, no mater what situation arises, there will be conflict, which drives your story.
It’s much easier to write meaningful dialogue if you know your characters well, and if all your characters are opinionated loudmouths, then dialogue will flow like a river.
Telling a story visually is fun for the mischievous. As you prepare your shots, be aware of creating first impressions with a LOOK. Video is visual (no kidding!); so much of your storytelling relies on visuals, not words. An exaggerated facial expression can replace the dialogue that says, “Oh, that’s gross and disgusting!” and can immediately tell the viewer the character is squeamish. The gal pictured below looks pretty excited about something! That obvious excitement would be part of the story. Her personality would be shaped around the visual impression the character exudes.
Creating characters on video means relying on visual cues and visual information. How they look, dress, wear their hair. What do their surroundings look like? You can impart A LOT of information about your characters using visual information alone. Don’t worry too much about being stereotypical with your characterizations, especially if you have limited time. (But never be mean.) Professionally done TV commercials often tell amazingly complex stories in 30 seconds.
- Relying on instant visual identification and communication means you have to tap into the familiar. We’ll have to save in-depth, nuanced characters for much longer stories.
Use close-ups to show details. Is your character is a spoiled, gold-digging tramp? Make sure and get a close-up of that pile of gift boxes thrown on the floor. Can you see all the different name cards? Make sure they are closeups, so we can see names well enough to know that she has many admirers. That tells the audience the gifts come from more than one guy, but she doesn’t care too much since it’s all tossed onto the floor. Now THAT is visual characterization without using a single word, which is the unique beauty of video communication.
As a person who has taught video production to others, it’s quite obvious to me that storytelling is usually the LAST thing people master. Newbies to video feel the need to get all the technical stuff down first. What kind of camera to use and where to put the lights and microphones are their first questions. Understandably, newcomers focus on such technical matters long before they contemplate storyline. Personally, I think it is a good idea to focus on storytelling from the beginning.
While technical stuff is important, in the end, it is not nearly as important as your storyline and your characters. So get those creative juices flowing and come up with a story for your video. Make it as emotional as possible, because that’s what makes your video interesting to watch.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
- In your own words, explain why it’s a good idea to hang your story on compelling characters.
- True or False: Characters often embody whatever information you want to impart to the audience. (True, but not always.)
- Look at the picture of the woman in the article surrounded by presents. Thinking visually, what does this image convey to a viewer? How does that differ from the impression one gets from the picture below? Think of as many reasons as you can for the different impressions you get. Is it the style of image? Expressions on the faces? Colors used? Subject matter? Lighting?
