Chris Ryan, ONCE Films
What is Video Storytelling and why?
Video can be a powerful tool for your business, but where to start? Chris Ryan of ONCE Films taught us how to take our social content from vague to viral. During his presentation, he shared five steps and a multitude of key takeaways to more effectively incorporate video into our social strategies.
Step 1: Understanding Your Audience
Who is your audience? What do they like and what do they want to see? This will determine how you tell your story.
Example: Are you talking to consumers or investors? Investors want graphs, metrics and numbers to prove why their investment is a good one. Consumers want something completely different. Shift into the mindset of each audience type and what information will be deemed valuable to them. You can’t give the audience what they want if you don’t know what they need.
Step 2: Identifying Elements of a Great Story
Christopher jokingly said, “Great stories begin with ‘once,’ so come talk to us.” Emotional appeals are great—“Come to us when you want to make people cry … ” It goes beyond that. Does your audience care about your work? Visceral reactions are what we’re going for. Are you laughing, proud, nostalgic, etc.?
Social media doesn’t need to have a story arc. It is an opportunity where the story lives and the video component is a “peep through the keyhole.” It becomes a mosaic that plays into how you are crafting your story.
It’s challenging to slice a storyline into little windows, but it’s possible and impactful.
Step 3: Planning Your Story
If we have the time … who has the time? … traditionally, we would begin with a storyboard, workshop it and labor over it for hours.
We’re all pressed for time. Biggest thing to takeaway when it comes to planning is to know the big picture story. Know it. Be passionate about it. Create content that can always be drawn back to that larger story.
If you know your story, then you can always see your story come through. Keep dropping breadcrumbs leading to the bigger story, “The Story is all around you.” ONCE believes in the power of “story” so much that every piece of their office ties back to a story of how it came to be.
Step 4: Shooting Your Story
Video
Some of the most popular content is shot on a phone. There used to be a high barrier to entry. Being a videographer used to mean operating a thousand dollar camera. In about 2008, a DSLR camera (with a switch) changed the game for all of us. Video became more accessible for all.
Christ has even been hired to shoot projects using a phone.
The origins of photography are “writing with light.” Color temperature, source, quantity, quality, etc. are all factors involved in producing great shots. “I’ve actually taught a whole class on just lighting.”
Audio
“People will forgive bad video, but not bad audio.” Audio is critical. You should know at least a little bit about it, so you can determine when it’s bad.
Subjects
Getting the right subjects in front of the camera goes beyond just finding the right people. It’s staging the environment and ensuring that they feel comfortable in that environment, so they can properly convey the story.
Step 5: Editing Your Story
“You may spend a day shooting, but you’ll spend four days editing.” It’s easy to shoot, but good editing will make or break your story. Some creators will opt to just post the raw video, but it’s only critical if you want to post a video of a certain style.
My humble tips for creating video of use on social media platforms:
Know your story, know your audience. Venn diagram that shit (where is the overlap?)
Align your content with publishing platforms and expectations
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good (put it out there, learn from it and keep going)
Fail fast, but consistency is key (don’t overthink, just try — sunk cost fallacy)
Brand repetition takes time, but sometimes quantity and frequency trump quality in the long game
Believe in what you’re doing
Stop them in their tracks (Attention is the currency of the internet)
BONUS: From tip to tail, use it all. Slice and dice your content to squeeze out all the juice. Recycle and reformat what you’re doing. If it has supported your brand once, it can do it again. Build out your content library, so you can keep posting.
“This week at ONCE” — End of week lo-fi video grabbing clips and having fun.
At the end of the year, they compile all of the videos and watch them at their Christmas party as “This year at ONCE.”
This gives people a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the fun aspects of our work, “It also features our clients and sometimes they even send us clips to contribute to our videos.”
Find them at:
@oncefilms
@chrisatonce
Q&A
Vertical vs. horizontal shots — How are you making the call?
First step is asking clients what their preference is (16:9, 4:5, 1:1). Chris loved shooting vertical in portrait mode. He also likes medium format (square). He is also really into composition. Knowing ahead of time where those applications are is key to capturing the right composition that can be altered later, or, just shoot both (to satisfy both needs). Sensor density and resolution are so high now-a-days that we can more easily get away with either.
We have 8 cinema cameras and lots of drones. We don’t usually show up without at least 4 cameras and usually shoot with 2 to 3. We don’t always have that for social.
We get asked for a square ratio more often than not. Sometimes we will back off, so we can shoot super wide and slice things out.
2. When you are interviewing, do you have any tips for getting your subjects to get comfortable and dive in to provide those key nuggets?
Standard interview time is 20 minutes (no longer than 30. Sometimes 5-10). Keep the energy high and get deep, fast.
Two tricks:
Really know and care what you are thinking about (usually goes off-script knowing what he needs to get out of the conversation to create parody. Having a script can make interviewees uncomfortable. Relaxing people by making yourself “more foolish.”
Have nuanced approaches to shooting. Make it feel seamless and easy. Even stuff that looks highly produced is stripped down to take away the intimidation factor.
3. Thoughts on .gifs? The Retta Jane examples could have been .gifs without the logos. Are you thinking about this as you’re shooting?
Yes, it is all one in the same. We’ve used cinemagraphs before and we’ve also experimented with six-second videos. We haven’t monetized content that is THAT short-form yet, but I think it could be huge for brands moving forward. Grab the attention (by creating brand recognition), then say what you want to say.
It’s all about quick hits. I don’t think our work is so “precious” that it can’t be repurposed in those ways. If content exists, it has a shelf life. Use it while you can.
4. When planning for a large event or something to that effect what are the most important factors at the top of your mind?
Sometimes clients ask us about things that aren't top-of-mind. Keeping things cohesive tends to be our biggest focus when creating video content. We have been a part of events with a live production component (LED lights, live-streaming, etc.) while we shot video to be edited later and repurposed.
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