The Importance of Narrative

Eva Solberger, Lost in Vermont

Yesterday I got a posting on my Newspapervideo newsgroup on Yahoo (NewspaperVideo@yahoogroups.com) from Eva Solberger, a very talented VJ who works for Seven Days in Vermont.

She posted the video above and asked for comments from the Newsgroup.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really like her work…

but the piece above, in my opinion (and of course, this is all only my opinion) suffers from a fairly common ailment in videomaking and that is FON, or, fear of narration.

There is a very deep belief amongst filmmakers and videographers that ‘narration’ is some kind of sign of weakness. That really cool stories are the ones where you let the characters tell their own story.

Nothing, to my mind, could be further from the truth.

Rather than being seen as ‘boring’ or a cop-out, narrative – well written, clear and direct narrative, is absolutely essential to great story telling.

I know the kind of narrative that inspires FON – endless, droning, fact-filled, explain every shot you see to death.

This is not what I am talking about.

If you have taken the seminars, then you are familiar with the ‘Pirate Walks Into The Bar’ sequence; how clear and to-the-point narration is absolutely essential to great storytelling.

In the piece above, Eva has found a fantastic location, great characters – she clearly has their total trust. Beautiful pictures. What she is lacking here is a narrative flow to the story. What the hell is this all about. Instead of telling me a story, she’s pinging me all over the place with soundbite after soundbite after soundbite – some of them work together, some are just jammed in there and the thing goes on unrelentingly.

In a really good piece, I would come away with the sense of having spent some time in this place and with these people. In the piece above, I come away with the sense of having spent time there and with them, but on acid.

Why does this approach not work?

Well, these people run a fishing shop. That’s what they do for a living.

They are not professional storytellers, nor should we ask them to be.

Eva is a professional storyteller. That is what she does for a living. So it is her job to tell us a story.

We cannot visit this fishing spot. She has done this for us. Now, it’s her job to tell us all about it in a very compelling way.

If she came over to the house for a cup of coffee and had just returned from a day at the fishing lodge, we might ask, “anything interesting in your life lately”? And she might respond:

“I just spent the day at the most incredible place……”

“really…what made it so special?”

“Wait… let me read you a bunch of quotes….”

um….

yeah….

doesn’t really work

and neither does this.

Your job, if you want to make compelling video, is to tell me a story.

That’s what Don Hewitt, (the late Don Hewitt – founder and EP for 60 Minutes used to say. He even named his bio the same thing – Tell Me A Story). So that’s your job now. Tell me a story.  Be a storyteller.

You have a very powerful medium at your fingertips – video: pictures, sound, music, narrative, writing,, graphics.  Use them all, but use them to tell me a great story – one that will really grab my attention.

And a very important part of storytelling is the telling of the story.

If you’re a good storyteller, you have been doing this all your life… “You’ll never guess where I went today…”

That’s how we tell a story to our friends, our family, our co-workers.

Well, if you’re going to post video, the people looking at it ARE your family, your friends, your co-workers… or people just like them.

So tell them the story the way you always have.