How to tell your company’s story with web video

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

The mantra of the YouTube age is “tell a story.” Websites have become TV channels. People watch tons of video on their computers, from cats playing the piano, to corporate videos, testimonials and how-tos. You could have great production quality, and an amazing product or service, but without a good story people will get bored (in 2 seconds flat) and go snack on someone else’s video.

Fortunately, storytelling is an art that can be taught. Here’s part one of a series of tips from the Captains on how to tell a story on the web with video.

#1. Sometimes the story has to find you.

You go into any project thinking you have a pretty good sense of what the story should be. Most of the time, you’ll be wrong. Often times the story crystallizes only after you’ve started the research process, or when you’ve already done three drafts of the script, or you’re already in production. Here are a few real world examples of how this has happened in different media.

Book: Who cares about Abraham Lincoln?
Pulitzer prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin set out to write a biography of Abraham Lincoln. But when she delved into the research process, she found the story about Lincoln’s political enemies, the men who ultimately worked in his cabinet and grew to revere him, to be much more fascinating. The result was her best-selling book, Team of Rivals.

Feature film: Don’t show the shark.
Steven Spielberg was a young and unproven film director when he was given the task of directing JAWS. At first, things didn’t go so well. The giant mechanical great white shark kept malfunctioning. Spielberg adapted on the spot. He knew he couldn’t show much of the shark, so he made this work in his favor. He created a sense of dread around the unseen, lurking menace. The music is ominous, like a heart beat: Dum-dum-dum-dum. A woman swimming at dusk is attacked from below. Blood curdling screams. Much popcorn is consumed, and the movie became one of the first true summer blockbusters. Ultimately the movie was much more horrifying because we couldn’t see the shark. And none of us will ever swim in the ocean at dusk without thinking about it!

Web video: People are more interesting than wind turbines.
Captains of Industry was tasked with documenting the construction of a wind farm in Milford, UT, for First Wind, a leading wind energy company. But the wind farm construction at that point was virtually complete. We couldn’t make a good story out of shots of wind turbines standing in the desert. So, instead of just shooting the wind farm, we focused on the people of Milford. Fred Surr, the director, interviewed people who had benefited from the economic revival that resulted from the wind farm’s construction. Their personal stories were woven together to create a moving and very American story.

That’s our story for today. More to come.