>>STEPHANIE Hi there and welcome to another episode of Sound Stories - an inspirational
podcast for creative professionals and storytellers who want to improve their lives at home, and
at work.
I'm Stephanie Ciccarelli, your host and co-founder of Voices.com.
Today in studio, I am so happy to be joined by a longtime friend Voices.com, and also
just of us in general: Adam Caplan.
He's the founder of Webisodes and he's an amazing storyteller using the visual medium
of film.
Welcome Adam.
>>ADAM Thank you for having me.
>>STEPHANIE We actually shared office space at one point a number of years ago so we go
back a long ways.
>>ADAM It's true and actually I was reminiscing last night as I was at your new offices that
on a number of Sunday afternoons I'd watch David come into the office with a couple of
new computers under his arm and set them up himself for the new hires coming in the next
day, and how far you guys have come from there.
>>STEPHANIE Oh well thank you.
Yes we did just have a big office reveal it's pretty cool, nice space be sure to check it
out online on our social channels, but today we're going to focus on a conversation about
storytelling with video.
and you are the expert I would say in the city for what we're doing here but I wondered
you know Adam, just wondered about this for those of us who maybe don't know where to
start with video it can kind of be a little intimidating perhaps, maybe someone thinks
it's too expensive or or they frankly don't know where to start.
What would you say to somebody about that?
>>ADAM The reality is that it's... video is no different in terms of storytelling than
the things you learned in grade school.
It's the same idea that you've got to kind of hook someone in, deliver a message to them,
you've got to end up with a conclusion except instead of using a you know a pencil and paper
to note that you're using a more complex set of tools to be able to tell that story.
So what that means for a lot of folks is they have to make some bigger decisions earlier,
because obviously the risks of production are much greater than sitting down with a
pencil and paper or a word processor.
What we tend to start with is something we call the A5 system and the it's really, anybody
who's worked in marketing communications will immediately recognize it as a marketing communications
standard plan.
We've just renamed everything to begin with the letter A so it sounds like we invented
it.
>>STEPHANIE I see because you're Adam.
>>ADAM Because I'm Adam.
Absolutely.
>>STEPHANIE Oh I like it go on.
>>ADAM So the the first sort of, set step is to really assess who your audience is and
really understand who you're talking to.
Very similar to what you would do on Voices.com when you're selecting a voice actor.
Understanding who you're going to be speaking to will help you make some big decisions later
on, for instance you know if you're going to be doing a video that's targeted at grandparents
and you know seniors you know selecting a death metal stock music track probably isn't
going to be an appropriate choice.
>>STEPHANIE No.
>>ADAM And being able to communicate that early on helps make some creative decisions.
It also helps you understand things like the length of the video, how long it should be,
what kind of tone, and what kind of pace it should have, those sorts of things.
The other thing it allows you to do is kind of define who you're not talking to, and by
excluding audiences and by creating a focus... a narrow focus, you're able to again make
some strategic choices later on.
The second area we work with people to develop are the aims.
What are the goals?
What do you want somebody to do after they finished watching the video?
Is it... or maybe even in the middle of the video?
Do you want them to visit a website, do you want them to purchase a product, do you want
them to pick up the phone and call you?
What are the outcomes that you're hoping for with regard to the viewer.
It also helps to recognize that...and video has changed pretty radically in the last decade
because previously we thought most video was a "leanback experience" you'd sit in your
chair you'd lean back you'd watch the TV, watch the movie screen, even if you were watching
something on a laptop like a DVD you're still leaning back you're still not interacting
with it, and there were probably longer things that you are watching.
Today we have very "lean forward" experiences, and what that lean forward means is that the….
Or what that lean forward refers to is that video is sitting within a continuum of user
experience and that continuum means that someone's arriving from somewhere, they're having an
experience with the video, and then the going somewhere afterwards.
And we want to be able to figure out what influence we should have over that individual
to help direct them to the next place in their in their user experience journey.
>>STEPHANIE Right because this is web video, we have to remember... right so not just film
or documentary or something you're watching on Netflix, like this is actually you're in
an environment where you literally could go click somewhere else, you could decide to
search, for something you you're in a virtual environment on the internet and I just want
to make sure everyone remembers that when we're listening to this, because it's key.
The messaging in the story arc that you're building will lead to hopefully a conclusion.
That they will go and do something.
>>ADAM And what's interesting is even longer form content has recognized this.
You know our notion of binge watching and even our notions of appointment viewing.
You know, why did HBO start developing story arcs with the Sopranos that would leave on
these crazy cliffhangers?
They wanted you to tune in next week.
They didn't want you to cancel your subscription to HBO.
Netflix is cued up the next episode so that it plays right away, YouTube is doing the
same thing but in the longer form.
Even some of our "lean back" content experiences are also starting to mimic some of those "lean
forward" content experiences, because they don't want you to leave the walled garden.
>>STEPHANIE Right and I like that and the whole concept of leaning back is in I'm passively
absorbing this information, I'm enjoying it might be just you know something with a start
and an end.
But this leaning forward it seems like that's much more of what people want to do these
days is to be engaged with the content that they're watching.
>>ADAM Absolutely and they want to tweet about it, they want to share it, they want to talk
about it on Facebook, they want to comment on it.
Those social activities can also be part of the aims that you're developing for your content
both you know on the web and then also in longer form content.
>>STEPHANIE Wow.
>>ADAM The third piece is approach, and approach is where we start to think about strategy.
What are the key messages we want to deliver?
What are the…
What's the tone?
What's the style that we want to start to wrap around it?
My favorite quote from Jean-Luc Godard is "style is the outside of content and content
is the inside of style".
And for him this was a reaction to the modernist movement that said form follows function,
he was saying: No no no, form did not follow function, function and form are intertwined,
and that's where we are today.
The way we communicate things kind of has to be in a wrapper of style that informs what
we're consuming.
You know the branding rules that we've all developed for our companies mimic that.
We want to we want to have an emotional sensibility that's tied in with the content and the two
kind of are inexplicable.
The approach kind of covers all of that off an approach allows us to understand what bright
what branding considerations what messaging and how are we going to achieve that.
It's also where we make decisions around is this going to be sort of a documentary style,
it is going to be someone talking to camera?
Is this going to be something where we're only going to have a voiceover and images
on screen.
That's where we, in our approach section that's where we, define the creative strategy.
>>STEPHANIE And so the approach considers not only how this information will be received,
but who's receiving it right.
>>ADAM That's right.
>>STEPHANIE Because that's how you can package it to be more attractive to the viewer.
>>ADAM And we depend on everything from our aims and our audience, to be able to help
inform that part of the process.
The next two steps action and assessment start to work sort of recursively with the approach
section.
So what will happen next is we start to figure out: okay well how much money do we have to
spend on this?
When do we need to have it delivered by?
What resources do we have where should we shoot it?
And now you have to start to go back into your approach and modify it around the realities
of your of your circumstance.
And similarly with assessment.. the question we talk to people about when we're looking
at assessment is you know, what outcomes at the end of this would you consider a success?
At the you know... at what point... what needs to happen for you to think of this project
is having been successful?
And then we might need to go back and tweak our aims and our approach a little bit once
we understand what the assessments are, and again those also need to figure in with, you
know how much money do we have, how much time do we have, all of those sorts of things.
You know if someone comes to since as well I would consider this a success if we had
a million views on YouTube that's great, but if we've only got a 700 our budget it's probably
not going to happen.
So we've got to figure out what you know can we manage the you know how can we maximize
our resources to be able to comment accomplish a successful outcome for the video, for the
project.
>>STEPHANIE Wow.
So Adam do you find that it's difficult to manage people's expectations of what their
video should do.
Like, do people come to you thinking you know I want to get a million views on YouTube like
that sounds quasi unreasonable.
You know sorry to burst anyone's bubble there but it has a lot of views like unless you're
like a Mike tompkins or somebody, you might not be seeing that kind of play.
But like how can someone maybe adjust their expectations to be more realistic, so that
when they come to you, or another video producer they don't have that bubble burst they're
actually thinking in terms of what is possible and doable.
>>ADAM We've been fortunate so far in that our folks that have approached us, and the
folks that have talked to us to have not had that expectation.
You know they wanted to be as successful as possible and those who have approached us
and said: how can we get twenty five, fifty thousand views out of this have also been
open to paid promotion.
And that paid promotion can really give a good push to a video.
And we've started started to adopt paid promotion as some of the service, that we're offering.
We did some tests last year with it they were fairly successful, and with not too much money
we're able to really give videos a good boost over what they would achieve organically and
and that.
What we hear a lot though is "I want our video to go viral".
>>STEPHANIE Oh yeah.
>>ADAM "We want to make a viral video" and the reality is that there are so many...
there's so much clutter, and there's so much there's so many people vying for our attention
even the things that do quote-unquote "go viral", you know the most recent one I can
probably think of is the "Chewbacca mom" from last year having been probably the most
probably the most successful truly organic viral video, tend not to have a product associated
with them there's nobody's kind of selling anything.
Other videos that have gone viral and been and been associated the product I'm thinking
particularly of Poo Pourri.
>>STEPHANIE Oh goodness!
I must admit, I did see that ad that is a yes I could see what people would be sharing
that one.
It had some some good use.
>>ADAM Well we actually I got a chance to hear from the fellow who produced that ad,
and one of the things that surprised me the most about that was that there was a 1 to
7 ratio of organic to paid views, for every one organic view, he has seven paid views
and so it's it's viral but it's sort of also a little bit artificially viral, in people
are seeing it people are watching it through and such good retention someone who watches
the paid version may share it and that might increase some of the organic views but it's
it's still very much a paid delivery.
>>STEPHANIE Yeah well it was basically a video that rolled before another video.
I remember... and it it takes a lot of good storytelling and creativity to actually get
past that five to ten second window where someone might decide to jump ship and hit
that you know, next, get me out of here, I want to see the actual content that I click
through for so that was a successful one but as you say they paid for it though.
>>ADAM They did and they they tested a lot of different formats in a lot of different
videos, and they had a pretty crack team working on it, and that that was that was a successful
you know use of video.
Another example that comes to mind was the Old Spice.
>>STEPHANIE Oh yeah.
>>ADAM The videos where he spent a day and a half you know or a day, I think it was a
full day you know in a towel making videos that responded to tweets and facebook messages.
And but again they had done a lot of work to previous to that to be able to get to a
place where they could have that carry in a viral way ,and they spent a lot of money
to be able to develop an audience that could carry that.
>>STEPHANIE Oh yeah, well they need to have someone almost recognizable you create a character,
someone who's recurring because there are multiple ads from from that a campaign I believe.
But I don't want to get too far off track on your wonderful list so where were we I
think the might be one more, two more?
>>ADAM There's the five so Audience, Aims, Approach, Action, and Assessment, and but
you did say something really interesting and this is...
You know we start to look at how do we structure the video you know we talk about those 5 10
seconds and and that pre-roll, it's not just critical for pre-roll it's, for really any
story telling.
You want to be able to ask a question that engages the imagination of the viewer.
You want to be able to open up with something that's going to give provide the viewer with
a reason to continue watching.
And this is a system and I love alliteration as you'll discover you know we use for words
to describe this process and that's Engage Entertain Educate Emotionally.
So we engage the audience and again, it's not their different than any other storytelling.
We're just using different tools for it, but we have to engage the audience we have to
entertain them so they stay engaged, but we also want to deliver a message, and video
is a profoundly emotional medium and so we need to be able to maintain that level of
emotion and even sort of adjust it so that we're drawing someone through the story and
giving them real reason to keep watching.
>>STEPHANIE Yeah well there are so many different elements and here's another "E" for you
(your "engaged, entertaining") yeah but just thinking like this isn't like the audio
medium where it's very much a controlled environment we're here we've got all these kind of dampening
materials, beautiful studio setup, but when you've got video you have all these other
considerations, and I think that that might be part of why people shy away from it.
They just honestly don't know what it looks like to make a good video and one that will
be proud of.
>>ADAM Today we're you know we're in a really unique time I think in history and certainly
in the history of film and cinemas and that's the the access to the tools of production
has become so affordable and the you know kids are learning to make videos in grade
school.
And they're beginning to understand the language, the grammar of filmmaking, and so means we
also have a generation of young people coming out of school that are in some cases very
gifted storytellers as they enter college and as they leave college and university.
But it still means that you have to figure out what you're going to do and more to the
point.
Michael Porter's really famous for saying this about business strategy: "strategy
is the process of understanding what not to do" and in video that's... you have to make
those same concessions.
You have to figure out what do what can I do with the money that I have, with the time
that I have, and with the available resources that are around me.
And that process is can be challenging because you know you have these you have the sense
that oh I want to make it you know cinematic, or I want to make it epic, or I want to make
it this... you know whatever adjective you use to describe it.
You can still make a very powerful and effective video and have it be very simple.
And so it's understanding what you're trying to do going in and message you're trying to
deliver and then being very creative about ensuring that you stay within the band of
resources that you have open to you available to you.
And that's what that approach process kind of allows you to choose what to do and also
your audience helps you do this and your Aims help you do this, it helps you define what
you're going to do but really it helps you exclude lots of activities.
And you know we've gone from we've had customers approach us and say I want to do this video
with an actor and do on screen and then we start to put together a budget they're like
well I don't have that much money, and we you know is one case where we actually ended
up doing a photo slideshow with on-screen text because they didn't even want to spend
money on a voiceover actor.
>>STEPHANIE Oh, that's sad.
>>ADAM I know its very sad.
>> STEPHANIE we know this happens and it's okay but we really do have to think about
what is my budget for this because everyone should have a budget you should know what
you're working with and certainly mapping out what you're not going to do would help
you.
So what are some of the things that you would recommend people not do if they are being
a little cost sensitive.
>>ADAM You know there's a couple of things I'd recommend that they not do, and I know
that there's been some discussion about cell phone video and so on, and and you know if
that's a look you're going for there are a whole bunch of reasons why you might use a
cell phone video.
We've done some... we actually did a test a little while ago with something that we
were going to put into a video and I have you know a fairly new iphone, and it's got
a very nice camera in it but we had trouble with the video had produced.
It didn't match some of the other things we shot, we had to go back and shoot shoot it
again.
I had a teacher in University and the fellows name was was George Tiner or Buddy Time and
he'd been a very talented and promising film director until a senator asked him if he had
been or was a member of the Communist Party at which point his career was over, and this
is back in the in the 50s and after that he kind of had disappeared from film and then
came back and directed episodes of New Heart and Mash and and other sort of shows of that
era but he became my filmmaking narrative prof.
And one day I was talking with him this was in the early 90s, I'm about to age myself
here.
>>STEPHANIE In Los Angeles Right?
>>ADAM In Los Angeles, yeah he was in LA and I was in this thing was like 1992 and I was
talking with him after class about a project I was working on and this kid who I knew to
be the son of a fairly well-known producer literally elbowed me out of the way to talk
to buddy and he had he was on a cell phone while he was talking to Buddy.
Now this is 1992 so this cell phone call was probably costing him 899 a minute like it
was like a brick probably and it was huge it was this huge thing he said "buddy my
dad wants me to shoot a short film to enter into the festival's" because back then there
was no YouTube.
The only way you could you know get your film in front of producers was to have it be in
festivals and and that was the way you became a director was to enter your your stuff into
festivals and get noticed that way.
His dad wanted him to enter in vessels what the kid wanted to know was to the festivals...
would the festival's prefer that he delivered something shot on video tape or shot on actual
film.
And buddy said (and this conversation made my whole tuition for the four years that I
was there worth it).
>>STEPHANIE Ou, do tell.
>>ADAM The good Buddy said "what's your story about?"
And the the kid said well we're still working on the treatment and the script but we have
to reserve this equipment now so for the shoot so I just need to know if I should reserve
a film camera or video camera.
And Buddy said you don't have a script you don't know what your story you're telling.
And this went back and forth comically for probably about two or three minutes or seventeen
dollars of cell phone time and finally buddy said kid you could shoot this movie on your
grandfather Super-8 if you got a good story and you tell it well people are going to want
to watch it, if you don't have a good story or you don't tell it well no one's going to
want to watch it.
So if you can tell a good story with your cell phone, great.
If you have the ability to shoot something on a on a DSLR that's a little more expensive
but not too much, great.
But ultimately does come back to the story, and making sure that you have you a compelling
message and an engaging way of telling the communicating that message before any technical
consideration.
>>STEPHANIE I'm so glad you said that because when people go about making something they
shouldn't just be making it for the sake of "oh I've got to put a video together want
to get in the film festival I want a claim I want some kind of prestige for myself".
Its like, no you you make a story and you tell a story because there's a story in you
so you want to tell.
>>ADAM Absolutely and as a service provider we have to get engaged in the story emotionally
too, we have to believe in the stories we're telling the only other technical consideration
that I would put forward is this and this is one another reason to sort of consider
about cell phones, and that's don't forget the audio so frequently when people are out
shooting video, the shooting in noisy environments or the shooting in places where there's lots
of background noise, and it's difficult to hear or the audio isn't always… is muddy
it doesn't have to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
And you don't need to have studio quality pristine audio but making sure that your audio
is considered that it's relatively clear, that you've got a mic close to your subject
or subjects though those considerations are absolutely essential.
>>STEPHANIE Wonderful tips especially for people on this podcast listening who are into
audio definitely love that.
So if I were in the stage of planning out my video what is the first thing I should
do is there like a worksheet, or a couple first ideas steps that you can recommend?
>>ADAM Start at your ending.
Understand where you want to conclude, and work backwards and for many people in promotional
video that's a call to action.
So that's a what are you going to do at the end of this?
You know what do you want something to do at the end of this that will then kind of
help you decide what your opening question should be the next step breather there is
to draft a very quick paragraph or treatment to help you understand you know what the flow
of the story would be and then from a script that actors are going to read or that voice
actor is going to read at a different time, absolutely put that out.
What we've done is we've got a template where we have and it's an old TV and on the right
hand side is video and it allows us to create a textual storyboard if you will, that helps
production understand what visuals are going to line up with what audio.
And then from there if you want to develop a storyboard even a rough sketch, so that
you can communicate with the people, or even just remind yourself what you're thinking
that's a great step.
We don't tend to use a lot of storyboards..I don't..
I find that we develop them and then dismiss them the next week into the project.
But they can still be very helpful for if you especially if you've got a more complex
project that requires a lot of moving parts to all be in coordination.
>>STEPHANIE Wow.
Well you know what?
I want all of you to go make a video.
That's what...
I want you to take what Adam just said, really think about your story though obviously if
you don't have a story then you really don't have anywhere to start from as that prof in
LA had said, you need to have that.
But anyone can tell a story.
>>ADAM You know again what's really in...
Francis Ford Coppola talked about this in the in the 80s and even earlier than that.
He saw a time when there would be a young I think he actually said a young six-year-old
girl who would be the Mozart of filmmaking.
Who would take... that, back then he said you know the family video camera, because
I don't think he could see a time when we all had 4k cameras in our pockets, but you
know I think that they're absolutely is an opportunity for a whole generation of people
to tell stories not just in ways that we've seen before, but in totally new ways.
Developing a new syntax and language around the way we're constructing story, and storytelling,
through video, and through transmedia.
Where the story can be told not just through one channel like video but can be told through
podcasts, and through video, and through Twitter, and through blog posts, and books, and really
any way any media that you can think of.
And Ramona Pringle who of course had hosted the event and one of the things she said that
impressed me the most was "today we think of it as transmedia, in 10 years we're just
going to call it media", and one of the panelists had mentioned that her child has
an expectation of transmedia has an expectation that that Dora the Explorer character is going
to be in the video game on the on the TV with the action figure.
That she's going to be able to experience Dora in whatever channel she desires, and
that really is I think exciting for video, because video now becomes part of its not
the only part of its... it's not the only story… it's part of a larger story and that's
really exciting.
>>STEPHANIE Thank you for tuning in, and if you haven't already done so, I'd like to invite
you to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
As well as give us a rating.
We love hearing from you and gathering your feedback.
Once again I'm your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli and I hope you can join us for our next Sound
Stories podcast.
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