How to get started?
When video storytelling has the potential to be so powerful and effective, it might be tempting to sit back and let the story do all the heavy lifting. But digital learning with video storytelling still needs a rigorously designed instructional approach.
Good storywriters research their subject, set specific goals and plan how they are going to tell their story to their audience. It’s in the planning where the creative ideas start to happen. To help fuel this creative process, we are sharing some ideas that have helped our projects and clients meet their goals.
Five creative storytelling approaches
There is a wide variety of approaches to video storytelling. These can be tailored to the requirements of the digital learning and to meet different learning needs and preferences. Let’s take a look at a few examples in the next section.
Street casting
Street casting, also known as open casting or casting “off the street” involves selecting people who are not professional actors to support filming for interviews and documentaries. This allows filmmakers to cast based on life experiences rather than conforming to conventional standards of casting actors.
They offer authenticity, diversity, and credibility to the content; a human voice. They are not professional presenters or actors, but they are still specially selected through a street casting process to ensure they all are confident, eloquent and screen-ready.
We created a film which used street casting for a documentary-style, high impact film for a learning launch event. Each talking heads video clip showed a customer sharing a story about when someone went the extra mile to deliver excellent customer service, reinforcing the key behaviours that our client wanted to drive. For example, in one of the clips, a young woman describes the extra advice she got buying a pair of boots in a shop, in another clip a different woman describes a bakery’s positive response to her complaint.
Take a look at the video:
The short inspirational film brings the behaviours to life, allows the audience to reflect on the impact of those key behaviours and powers the learner investment in the messaging.
Animation
From the realism of street casting to the abstraction of animation. Through animations we can do anything which enters our mind. And the result of that is that we can communicate any point we need to, everything is possible!
We can create people and worlds that don’t exist in the real world, or that we can’t access for some reason. For example, if the film needs to be set in a high security location, or even a very busy office, it might be easier to create an animation than to arrange access for a film crew.
In our off-the-shelf ESG training courses, we used a collage-style animation approach to storytelling. The collages build up visual scenes as the messaging builds through the animation voiceover and onscreen text. The collage style allowed us to build a much richer picture, linking to the courses theme and content, than a single image or live action video would have been able to.
As with all animations, the art direction style here plays an integral part of the overall story, building up key points and messages.
Video diary
Film can be most effective when there is emotional engagement with onscreen characters. In this example, we used a video diary approach to create a human story that shines a light on being customer obsessed. We follow a couple to hear their story, dipping into their work life and their home life, mentioning the forthcoming arrival of their baby – all shot using a video diary approach.
They talk openly about their thoughts and feelings, providing commentary and insight into their world. The video diary entries act as a device to allow them to speak candidly and confidentially in a way that allows for authenticity and to build a connection with the learner. Ultimately, the film sets up the rest of the learning, allowing for rich interactivity and deeper thought as the learners are asked how they would help this couple.
Breaking the fourth wall
Our fourth example is breaking the fourth wall, a technique similar to the video diary approach outlined above. Rather than addressing a video diary, in this technique the character (or characters) speak directly to the audience through the camera lens – breaking the fourth wall – as the drama unfolds.
This device has been used in a wide range of films and television, from as far back as Buster Keaton’s silent comedies and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, to Fleabag and Goodfellas. It always feels fresh, surprising and arresting.
Check out this clip from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off which brilliantly demonstrates the technique.
When using this technique for learning content, it might go something like this… We begin our film with our character in a meeting with their team leader, being told to dress more professionally. Our character turns to the camera and says, “Did you hear what they actually just said? Unbelievable! They want me to change the way I look? Sorry, but take it or leave it, this is who I am!”
We follow interactions and situations playing out where we occasionally break the fourth wall to offer the audience information and insight, or to share characters’ hopes, fears and feelings. Again, this is about creating an emotional bond with our audience, creating empathy and delivering a human voice to situations that can be hard to describe through text and graphics alone.
You can learn more about the effect of breaking the fourth wall with viewers through this film from the PBS.
Mini documentary
For our fifth and final design idea in this deep dive of suggested video approaches, we’ll look at the idea of a mini documentary. A mini documentary uses real people, real locations and real speech and activity.
Our client SafetyOn wanted to create a campaign that would raise awareness of hand injuries at work and help mitigate the risks for the thousands of workers employed in the UK’s onshore wind industry. In this video, Charlie – an experienced wind turbine mechanic – describes how in a split second he sustained a life-changing injury to his hand at work.
We film Charlie at home and at work, in his own environment, allowing him to feel comfortable and relaxed whilst also setting the scene for the wider story.
Charlie tells his own personal story, in his own unscripted words. We interview him from off-camera so the audience can hear only Charlie’s words and the raw emotional responses of his experience as the narrative unfolds.
We film Charlie at home, on his own and with friends and family, doing ordinary everyday activities, like making dinner and walking the dog. We use this footage to intercut his narrative, demonstrating how the experience and trauma of the accident has had a lasting effect on his personal life.
This intimate ‘slice of life’ mini documentary style is rich in authenticity and credibility for the audience. The content says with the viewer and presents the subject in an adult-to-adult way.
The possibilities are endless
By embracing diverse storytelling approaches like these you open a world of possibility for engaging your audience and delivering more memorable learning. From the raw authenticity of street casting to the boundless creativity of animation, each storytelling approach offers a unique avenue for engaging learners and conveying complex concepts effectively.
We hope these five examples of creative video storytelling techniques have given you some good ideas for your next digital learning project. A number of the examples referenced in this deep dive were delivered via a partnership between the team at Kineo and Zing Films. If you’ve got a story to tell through video, get in touch with the team today.
But for now…