Thomas Clifford
“Taking the “yawn” out of corporate films,” a tag-line found on filmmaker Thomas Clifford’s blog made me curious to explore his blog where he produces company mini-documentary films focusing on capturing the “heart and soul” of organizations.
Our goal today is to apply what filmmaker Thomas Clifford, a Honda mini-documentary, and a scene from the movie Adaptation can teach non-filmmaker company storytellers.
The big ideas we can learn from this Honda mini-documentary on video storytelling:
- Capture passionate storytellers. This is obvious, but overlooked. It seems like every company defaults to taking the CEO or the small business owner and putting them in front of a camera. They/you may not be the messenger, so find the right storyteller based on passion and ability to connect with people and not just the senior leadership team.
- Music. Notice how the choice of the right music can set the scene and tone, even if one can’t see the video. One of our new favorite creative commons license music sites is ccMixter. Thomas Clifford, his original blog post, urges us to have a variety of music instead of just one song. As a Mac user, we use iMovie and Screenflow to create a mix and mash-up of video and music.
- Conflict. A story must involve a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. What are the frustrations that face your customers and your believable stories that produces the call to action resulting in your company having the opportunity to be the conflict resolution.
- Testimonial power. Customers sharing their experience with other prospective customers is the highest form of selling. Here is my recommendation on how to ask people to share a testimonial on video: Tell the person you are asking to give a video testimonial, “Imagine you are talking with a person who does not know about ____. Now share your experience using _____to a person that might want to continue their education with our company and determine if we can be a unique solution to their top frustrations and challenges.”
- Free or minimal expense. Today, you can purchase a $200 dollar HD video and use free or $100 dollar video editing and you have the means to record a professional looking video.
- Minimize movement, but emphasize flow. Consider shooting video that frames the person speaking vs. all the other junk outside of this frame. Now, like your favorite TV show, focus on a logical flow from scene to scene ending in a tactful way of sharing what you would like people to do next.
- The Law of 1/3. Notice how the videographer places the subject 1/3 to left or right of frame for optimal scene visual.
- You can get by with inferior video if you have superior audio. Here is how we completed one video on a very tight budget. We used our relatively inexpensive Flip HD video and then borrowed a great lavalier microphone from our local home town church for free. The sound was superior, even though our lighting and video were not the greatest.
For example, here is a video that Miles Redmond from our team at The Strategic Incubator created as a super quick call-to-action video opt-in using Keynote (PC-PowerPoint), some images, and a free score of music. Miles recorded his voice using a $99 dollar Blue Snowball microphone.
Any small business owner or marketing communications manager can learn to create this simple style of video production ideal for opt-ins or even registrations.
One last video for you…
*Warning this video contains extreme foul language to demonstrate a valuable lesson on storytelling. If you can just get through the dramatic language, there is a great storytelling lesson to be learned.
The video you are about to watch is from the movie Adaptation. In this scene, Nicholas Cage plays a struggling screenwriter who attends the legendary Story seminar led by the colorful real-world screenwriter Robert McKee.
This blog post is inspired by Thomas Clifford & his blog post, 5 Big Ideas: What Honda’s Mini-Documentaries Can Teach Non-Filmmakers. Read his entire article here.
You may order Robert Mckee’s book, Story here.
We would like to give you a complimentary consultation where we listen to your greatest challenges in producing and delivering content that your ideal clients want to share?
We promise to not be lame and try to sell you stuff you don’t need when we talk.
