Storytelling for Short-Form Promos

[Music] [Christine Steele] Hello, everybody.

I'm so happy you came here today to join me. I hope you are here for Storytelling for Short-Form Promos. I am Christine Steele, and I am a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. And you're going to see me pacing around because otherwise I can't connect with all of you. So, I wanted to say good morning. No. Was it? Good afternoon. And just give you a little bit of background, I have been in filmmaking for 25 years. I started as an assistant editor, and I worked my way up to being an assistant editor at Pixar on feature animation, and learning story in that context has informed my entire career. And then I moved into documentaries. Documentaries are my passion and it's very similar to building animation, in my mind, because I tend to craft story from the sound and the audio portion of the story and then construct imagery to that. And it felt really similar in a lot of ways. I spent five years working in entertainment marketing at Disney making promos. And so, I got really good at short form, and I just wanted to share with you today some of the structure techniques I use so, that I can sit down with any content and craft something that I feel like will capture the audience's attention and speak to people. So, I have my own techniques that I've come up with and I'm sharing them with you today so, you can steal them. And I hope that this will help you when you sit down to work no matter what kind of a day you're having that you'll have something to think about to get you going and help you structure something that is exceptional, ideally. Even with boring content, you can do something special if you really think about it in the right ways. And ideally, we won't have boring content, we'll actually have something good to work with. So, I'm killing a little bit of time here for a second in my introduction because I see a lot of people still filing in and finding seats.

And I will begin the presentation shortly when these people take their seats.

So, this is all about story, and we are addressing story specifically for short-form promotional content, these types of things. So, if you're working on any of this, you will benefit from this. And I will give you a couple of different really solid solutions for how you can craft any of these types of things. It does not matter what the length is. It doesn't matter to me if you're making a 30-second commercial spot or you're making a 6-minute promotional for somebody's website or you're making a 20-minute piece for YouTube. If you're making a broadcast TV series of packages, all of that is going to be something that would benefit from this type of story structure.

So, the first thing I like to tell people is when you sit down, define your goals. And in order to do that, you're going to have to ask who your audience is and most people are aware of that. You do need to keep that in mind throughout the entire construction process. When you define your goals, you can discover what story's present in the material you have, whether you shot it or someone gave it to you. You can start looking for what in this content, which sound bites and images support my goals, my end goals. Is that to deliver a message? Is that to sell someone something? Is that to ask them for money? It could be a number of different things. But once you define that goal, you can discover in your media what your story is. And then you need to structure it so, that it captures people's attention and holds their attention. Okay, so, I'm going to step up here and point out that I simultaneously work on one, two, and three, as I think about A, B, and C. I define my goals, and I choose a theme based on what my goals are. I discover the story within the content I have, whether I shot it or someone else did, and in that content, I'm looking for truths that appeal to all humans. And then as I structure this, usually in Premiere Pro in my case, sometimes on paper before I even start the edit, I look for how I can create progression, how I can hook the viewer through progression. So, number one, I start with the basics. I determine the goals, keep the audience in mind, and explore my content to look for those things I just mentioned. And then I move into the most important key I can give you to unlocking story structure for anything you're working on, which is theme. So, you need to identify the most powerful themes within your content, then examine supporting themes. Think of the theme as a hub and you're shooting off of the hub, you're looking for the spokes that'll help support that structure that you're creating. And that supporting theme can be a beeline to your A story. It might be just support and strength for the existing single theme that you have and we'll take a look at this. And what you want to do-- Why is this not working? There we go. So, you want to hook the viewer. So, you want to hook the viewer by creating progression, and that means you need to sequence the events so, that something changes or evolves whether that you're showing a person who's changing and growing or an organization or a situation that's evolving over time. So, that's how you build progression. You also want to structure the pacing of the progression. You don't want to just give them exposition, and by that I mean who, what, where, why, without pacing it in a way that is both fun and able to be absorbed. Right? So, start with the theme. Here's the generally accepted definition of theme.

A central idea in a piece of writing or other work of art. I didn't find that very inspiring or helpful. So, I define my own themes and I developed my own definition and I encourage you guys to come up with your own definitions. What does theme mean to you? Or borrow mine. So, I started by thinking about what do I think of as a theme. Well, I think it's the unfolding advancement of an idea or a character or an event or a situation. Progression. It's progression. It's an idea with evolution. And then I started thinking about what makes a theme really great in the episodic series I love or in a book that I really love. And to me, that was the unfolding advancement of an idea or a concept that also contains universal human truth. What I mean by universal human truth is something that speaks to every single human on the planet, and it doesn't matter what country they come from, what language they speak, or, and this is key, what age they are. So, when we talk about these, most people go right away to stuff like, hmm, love, right? Jealousy.

But I encourage you to go a little deeper, to be brave enough to come up with subtleties around your theme. Now, that doesn't mean you can't start with a theme that's really just basic, and I'll give you an example. A car commercial. Everyone's seen a car commercial.

They focus on a universal human theme to all people, including small children anywhere on the planet of safety. Right? You can build a whole spot around the concept of safety because we all understand it, or typically, they'll make it about the safety of a loved one, family members. Right? But for crafting a really great promo that hooks the viewer, you want to go deeper than that. So, let me give you some analogies. All right. So, let's say I have two children. And I give one of those children a cookie and then I take five cookies and I hand five cookies to the other child. What do you think those two children experience right away? Yell it out. Jealousy. What else? Anger. Anger. Anything else? Yeah. Now, here's going subtle, this is what I mean, you have to use your imagination. Pretend that those two children are siblings. Now, what comes up? Sibling rivalry, right? And so, that's a form of universal human experience that we, most of us, have had. Right? So, you can start thinking about this. Another one, hard work. Everyone. I was teaching a four-year-old the other day how to make sweet potato pie. And I started watching her and she's like, "Can I lick the spoon? Can I lick the spoon? Can I lick the spoon?" And I'm like, "Does that look smooth enough?" I said, "Do you want your pie lumpy or smooth?" "Smooth." Like, "What do you need to do?" I say, "Got to work harder." She got the potato masher. She's like in there, she got her little tongue out. She's mushing that stuff, and she really starts digging in and working hard. Even a four-year-old understands that. I've seen a two-year-old obsessed with a certain Legos, Transformers, a particular princess outfit. Obsession. And to some extent being addicted to a particular thing, not just social media. I see that in very small children. Even something as complex as obsession is something we've seen in really young people. Think about even if someone spoke a different language from you, what types of experiences you've had as a human being that they would recognize without any description in a language they understand. We all can tap into this type of empathy, and this is what I mean, by be brave and get subtle. Now, here's a real key I want to share with you. It doesn't matter if your audience knows what the theme is. If you are building around the theme you have in mind, and you stay true to that, the piece will hold together. So, I built a project, a rounded theme I had in mind, and one day we're reviewing the cut, because I've done a lot of editing over a lot of years, and the director says to me, "Yeah, this is great. It really shows the theme of--" And she said something entirely different than I was building it around. And both themes were present in the piece. I just was holding on to one, she was holding on to one, and the whole piece held together anyway. Now ideally, if you do it right, your audience will know what your theme was, but they don't have to. It will give you a sense of having a skeleton to flesh out with all your beautiful images and sound bites. Right, so, start here, identify your most powerful assets, and you do this by listening and looking at what will best support the theme you have in mind for this piece. And that theme needs to connect with who your audience is. Got it? Okay, great. Then, you're going to structure the content to show progression of whatever your primary idea or concept is around that theme or themes. Now, do you remember that I said the main theme is like a hub and there's spokes of that hub. So, lots of themes have supporting subthemes, that helps me craft a story arc and it helps me interweave A and B storylines. So, we're going to move into that in a minute here.

So, remember to support the theme. And in short videos, universal human truths can be immediately and clearly spoken in narrated sound bites. You can pull it from your interviews or your narrations, you can write it as part of your VO, you can literally say it, or you don't have to use any sound bites at all. You can subtly place text or graphics that, subconsciously, people will pick up on, and those text or graphics relate to or actually explicitly spell out your theme. So, that's really cool, that's a fun way to do it. And themes can be conveyed with a single image. They can be conveyed in song, and there's a lot of different ways you can play creatively with helping people see or feel that theme. They also can be supported enhanced using creative devices. So, you're going to see in a lot of my work, I do this thing where somebody says something I want you to perceive and really hold on to, I'll use a sound effect or a little piece of music to punctuate those sound bites. It not only creates a beat for someone to absorb what was just said or conveyed or expressed through imagery, it gives you a little sound punctuation. So, that's an example of a device. Other devices you guys know about, visual effects can be lighting graphics, and also the way you cut things together, pacing and timing can do that as well. So, let's take a look at my first video and we're going to have you think about when you see this, with or without any narration, if you can pick up on some themes that would be universal that everyone have anywhere speaking any language at any age would feel or get.

[Color my life by Chicano Batman plays] # Are you a lucid dream? # # That's what it seems # # I'm not really sure if it's real # # But I just got to say # # I found my way # # The forest got Some magical feel, yeah # # You've got to color my life # # You've got to fill in my thoughts # Okay. So, I had to show an Adobe ad.

This one has no voiceover at all. They do it with text. But isn't creativity something every human experiences even from a very young age in any culture? Absolutely. What about imagination? What about set your imagination free? How about freedom? Do you think if I sit a kid in the corner who is two years old and tell them they have a time out, that they don't understand freedom? You know what I mean? These things are so deep and we actually perceive them at such a young age. And if you look for things like that, you can do it in text without any words at all. Okay, also, showing a human doing something either benefiting by a product or doing something that's universal. Isn't drawing pretty universal? Isn't making art pretty universal? And today, isn't using a tablet pretty universal? So, Adobe does a fantastic job. I recommend you look at some of their ads. So, I wanted to start with something that didn't have any dialog at all and move on to something that has to do with you actually crafting from content that does have dialog. And how you can jump into a couple of really standard procedures to get yourself going. My first suggestion is you can always with the promo use the one, two punch. And I call it the One-Two Punch because you present a problem and then you show, express, hopefully not explain, show or express the solution. And you don't have to go in that order, you can introduce someone who has a solution and then show the problem later that they're solving. You can have a little bit of creativity in how you approach this, but the One-Two Punch allows you to define the primary problem, the obstacle, or the challenge of the individual, the people whose lives you're trying to improve or of the situation, the organization. And then you present the solution by breaking the problem into two parts. Think of it as this, the keyword here is action. Show an action that shows how the problem was created or show an action that will resolve it if you can. Now, you can certainly do it with dialog, voiceover, interview footage that has pretty good audio. But if you can show it, you don't even need to say it. So, that's something to keep in mind is the One-Two Punch. Here's an example of the One-Two Punch.

[Man 1] Cows were born to roam and graze. But in the industrial confined system, we deprive them of those abilities to express that instinctive behavior. And it's wrong. It's just wrong.

[Man 2] We just wanted to raise them so, that we can see all the vitality and the spirit that these animals had that I could see in Yellowstone. We're doing something that I don't know of anybody else in the world.

[Woman 1] Harvesting an animal is a complicated thing. You are taking a life. There's no two ways about it.

[Woman 2] I think we do need to eat less meat in America, and I think we need to eat better meat in America.

[Man 3] Americans eat a ton of beef, but do we really know what's in our meat? And is it really that good for us? In the 20th century, we took cows off of grass and put them into commercial feedlots. We fed them corn, growth hormones, and antibiotics.

Now, more than 80% of all antibiotics are used on livestock due to unsanitary conditions, creating dangerous superbugs that can harm people. Feedlots also produce massive amounts of waste. Turns out, cheap meat is actually very costly for the animals, the environment, and our health.

Fortunately, there's a new breed of ranchers in search of greener pastures and a more righteous hamburger.

So, you can see you can present a problem. Right? And you can present a solution or you can present a solution and then a problem. One of the things I really like to do is craft media that can be used as a package. Meaning, I've got a lot of short pieces that all interconnect so, that I can join them together or break them apart. And you're going to see that in all of the things I show you because today, we're outputting content in short-form promos that might be going to a lot of different places. I do a lot of commercials that go to broadcast, but of course, I'm doing a lot of things that go to streaming ads and I'm doing things that even go to screens in Times Square, New York that are vertical. And sometimes I'm working to deliver something that is going to be on social media in various lengths. So, I'm really looking for something like this that could easily been broken up into two. That's a group called Food Forward, and I hope you got that their whole mission or their goal is to encourage Americans to eat better and to think differently about our food supplies. Right? That's part of their mission. There's an entire series of these videos including long form films that the director, Greg Roden, who I worked with and created an entire Adobe ecosystem workflow to create the content. He gave me permission to show a lot of the stuff that we built, and this is really fun stuff because everybody relates to food, everybody relates to eating, and you don't really have to explain what that is.

So, moving into another way to work, and I often use this, this is my favorite go-to. I like to build with the three-act structure whenever I can. It doesn't matter the length of the piece, I use classic three-act story structure, and you can look it up, you can listen to audio about it, you can read books about it. Traditional three-act story structure can be applied to something of any length. Oh, that's better. I wonder what happened to the lights.

So, you can take a look at working in three acts even with short form, and I love this. You create a story arc, you give it a beginning, a middle, and an end. So, I want to work you through a little bit of how I use three-act story structure with promotional pieces. And then you'll start to see in my work that I always do a combination of the One-Two Punch, usually, and I do three-act story structure. And I'll point out in some of the videos act one, act two, and act three. And sometimes I can divide one and two and three into three different videos and rearrange them, and sometimes I keep them as one whole piece. It depends on the client's needs. I do find that I have an easier time with this when I am moved by the subject or I like their message. I don't know. For me, that really makes it easier to kind of see how I want to structure the story. But it doesn't matter whether I get that or not, I still use this methodology. So, in act one, you give the exposition. Right away, in the first 30 seconds, no matter how long the piece is. If it's a 30-second spot, then I'll do it even sooner. You have to give the who, the what, and the where. Now, you don't have to give all three of those, you got to give at least two. The who and the what, or the where and the when, or the who, what, where, and when. That's what you're going to do straight out the gate because unless you're trying to be experimental, in promos, you really want people to know what you're talking about. Right? So, you don't really want to go to, "Oh, let's make this mysterious," if you don't have much time, you got to get to the point. In act two, we use the why and the how, and we explore the why and how as a journey. So, act two is longest, usually, not always, but usually act two is the longest because we're going on a journey together to explore the why and the how, or the solutions to the problem. And then in act three, which is the climax, sometimes it's very short, but act three is allowing for conflict resolution or giving information about where this is going to go next. It's the climax of the story and in classic three-act story structure, what that means is the hero or organization or whatever, the subject, returns to the world changed or returns to a changed world. So, you really want to show how does this product change lives, or how does this person or organization change business. It doesn't really matter what the topic is, you need to think about it in classic three-act act structure. The hero or the idea that's evolving should be making change in the world or for people. Right? You're promoting something. So, I build progression through the three-act story arc. Now, here's some of my guidelines I move to as I'm trying to figure out this structure. I start with the opening, I want to open strong with what, who, where, and when, or some combination of those. I also then want to build the ending. I need to sit in my car and type in where I'm going and get the map. So, don't wait to build the end, you can build the end first. The climax is sometimes what we're given first, the product logo or the hero shot of a person whose life is being changed by whatever it is you're promoting. So, you can build the climax or the ending first, or you can build the opening first, but I don't usually start in the middle. I usually build the bookends, and then the center section is going from point A to point Z. So, the crafting of the middle or the journey is where I really start focusing on theme and using sound bites and imagery that support that theme. Now, I often do this, I'll take my footage and before I begin putting it together, or if I'm producing and directing, I give this to an editor. And I'll do this literally, I'll have pages of side by side columns of what I want to do for imagery and sound bites. But also, I'll start thinking about, do I have something I can use as an A and B storyline? In this case, it might center around two different characters. The person whose organization is helping change lives and an example of another person whose life has been changed by that organization or their work or that individual and their work or that product and its impact in your life. So, A and B story lines can simultaneously progress or evolve. Remember, it's the unfolding progression of an idea or a situation or a character. So, the two stories should progress together and they support each other, they lean on each other. So, I will sometimes do this before I even get into something like Premiere, or even making graphics in Photoshop or After Effects. I will sit down and kind of play around with how can I support the theme of transformation, and I will pick my theme, the theme of transformation. Now, whether you see this video when I show it to you as transformation is the theme, I could throw out five other words that could have been the theme and you will notice them in my piece because remember, there's a theme that's the hub and then there's themes that are spokes that are attached to that same wheel. So, I'll take a look at how that looks. It also helps me see visually so, that if I want to use a device that helps explore the evolution, I may try to start with images that are more monotone, black and white, and slowly build to more colorful images at the end. That's a device, one of many. So, brand development. Promoting brand identity for an individual or organization, I really try to show something authentic and stay positive. I always run a positive campaign. I don't get into what the other companies are doing that's bad usually, although in that farm one is a little bit. But normally it's like you want to promote people and their organizations is what we do right, what we do well, what we're doing that's different than our competitors, not what other people are doing poorly. And then you show how their approach to the service or product is different or better, and how it provides value in the real world, and show how they are unique. So, then I move into the messaging. You do have to keep in mind who's my audience and what's the messaging. You need to get that message across. So, a simple formula that helps the audience relate to the message is, for me, accomplished in just a two simple steps. Okay. I need to deliver the message. And I need to show shared human experience to draw upon universal human themes. Right? Okay. So, for story to really connect with another person, I need to draw on my personal experience, what I think might be your or the audience's personal experiences, and use themes and subthemes to connect us.

So, when you're developing a brand, promoting an organization, remember, we all want a better life, we all want love, we all want connection, we all want equality, we all want safety, we all experience jealousy, we all experience lots of things that connect us. And that's what you really want to think about and pick one, and then think about the spokes on that hub of that central theme. Okay, so, when you watch this video, and this is a great organization, I love these people and I checked in with them a couple weeks ago to make sure the guy in the video is still working there 10 years later and his life has truly been transformed. And this is an organization called Homeboy Industries, and they do sell products, they also sell services, and they change people's lives. So, I want you to give a listen for the themes, universal human truths. I want you to see how I wove A and B story lines together. I want you to, if you can, listen to how I punctuate certain key phrases with sound effects or music that I put in. And also look for the three-act structure and see if you can figure out problem solution One-Two Punch. I know that's a lot. But once you follow these guides, it becomes like second nature and you'll end up with something like this. You ready? You could dim the lights now, please.

Thank you, Russ.

[Music] [George J. Boyle] In Los Angeles County, there are 1100 gangs, 86,000 gang murders. More than 600 of those gangs would be Latino. Somebody has to do prevention, keep kids from joining gangs and engage them and somehow keep them connected to loving, caring adults who pay attention. Hey, kiddo, are you working? Gangs are the places kids go when they've encountered their life as a misery. Kids are going to drift, and misery loves company.

I've never met a hopeful kid who joined a gang, never ever, not once. Kids who can't really conjure up an image of tomorrow move closer and closer to joining a gang. And kids don't seek anything when they join a gang. They flee something. You know, he can't say that both his parents were heroin addicts and been long dead. That guy can't say that. You know, my mom used to put cigarettes out on me when I was a kid. Or that kid's going to have a hard time saying that his mom used to hold his head in the toilet and flush till he nearly drowned as a way to punish him.

In '92, we started Homeboy Industries by way of Homeboy Bakery, because we wanted to create jobs because people weren't hiring these guys. Then, each thing was an evolution, you know. As we would progress, we'd discover things. We'd say, "Boy, there are a lot of tattoos. "They really want them off." Nobody's hiring them. This, I'll go over it with a little bit less strength because it's already scarring. I think you're trying to take it away, right? - Yeah. I burned it up. - Yeah. So, we started tattoo removal. We've removed 1200 tattoos last year. We have 400 treatments a month. We have 1600 on the waiting list. This is Roscoe. How many treatments have you--? You just got out of prison. What prison did you just get out of? - Centenario. - Centenario? This place is a touchstone. It's a place where they can come and connect with that sense of resilience. You want to get them to a place where they feel confident in who they are. Because when they leave this place-- the world's going to throw stuff at them that's going to knock them for a loop. [Joseph] I'm 27 years old. I was born in Boyle Heights, Aliso Village Projects. I've been doing drugs and gang bangs since I was a really young kid. Like, some people ask me, you know, "Well, how was it before?" You try to remember the guy before you started gang banging and using drugs and stuff. And when I think back that far, I'm like, I'm roller skates. You know? If we come down here and ride all over the walls and get into the river on inner tubes and float down the river. It's a little deep. You know? It starts way back. I mean, some of these kids out here don't even know what they're fighting for anymore. You know what I mean? You start to see how hard it is for people to navigate these waters here given that enormous gang reality.

I came here as a priest in 1984. We had eight gangs at that time at war with each other. I buried my first kid in 1988. I buried my 141st a week ago. I lived through a decade of death in this community from '88 to '98. In 1992, we had 1,000 gang related homicides in LA County, but we had 500 last year. That's still horrific, but that's still progress. I was shot in both legs. Once when I was 14, I was shot right there. I went in and out with a .9 millimeter.

When I turned 15, a year later, I got shot once here with a .38 special. I think I was just lucky. Yeah. Because he let off the whole clip, but he only hit me once. But I think this person that was once a criminal, gang banger, or whatever it was, can change into a productive member of society. You know? People change. I feel like Homeboy Industries is my calling. I love to do what I do and I love to reach out to these kids, you know, because they're all we got. And I don't want these kids going through what I went through. I believe in giving people chances, and I think that's exactly what father Boyle does. He gives people chances, second chances, third chances, fourth chances, you know, whatever it takes. Forever. He'll never turn you away. You want to communicate always a no matter what ness.

No matter what you do, the day won't ever come when I withdraw love or support or help from you. That day won't ever come. [Music] Oh, that's nice.

So, definitely want to shout out, support Homeboy Industries. You can look them up online at homeboyindustries.org. They gave me permission not only to use this but a whole bunch of other stuff, that we've taken a look at on their website and YouTube channel, but there's not enough time for me to show you everything. But when I worked on this one, I really loved how the cinematographer captured this footage super fast. I mean, he had maybe an hour or two, and I put it together with all of the techniques I just described for you. So, I'm really curious if you guys noticed some themes and if you'd shout out a couple that you felt you heard or saw? Love. Love, definitely. - Hope. - Hope. What else? Redemption. Redemption, that's a great one. - Struggle. - Struggle.

Was there anything that particularly connected with you? You're the audience. [Man] Unconditional love. Unconditional love, which I ended on. Right? It's something that everyone wants and few of us are capable of giving.

So, it's a really powerful one. So, I'll usually save some of the sound bites that are, remember I said, the themes, if you choose some that are subtle and you go deep and utilize that, it's powerful. It's not just in your face, it's like unconditional love is what he's talking about right there. And, you know, he's a priest, that's his whole job, but most of us struggle with that. And did you see how I interwove the A and B story lines which were in this case two different characters, it's not always two different characters. In my feature film, one is the artist who's trying to help veterans with post traumatic stress and the B storyline became the A storyline, the veterans he was helping, but his storyline was actually based around the sculpture he was making. The sculpture was the other storyline and it's developing evolution as people were transforming. And you know, you can work with the theme of transformation in many aspects of promotional work. I wanted to know if you guys, did anyone notice the little sound cues at the end of some of the statements? I pulled a little piece of guitar music, which actually I think might have come out of-- I think I pulled it out of Garage Band or something, I can't remember now. But, you know, just a little guitar hit and used it as a sound effect to punctuate, and it was sort of like melancholic, you know, melancholy kind of vibe as the kids walking through the inner city streets. And then did you notice how some of the visuals were supporting the theme for Joseph of having been a drifter, of having been a troubled kid with a difficult past of-- you know, did you sense that those visual images supported some of his themes which related the problem that Homeboy Industries is trying to address? Did you guys feel all that? I hope that helps you tie together some of the suggestions I've made. So, there is the one, two punch present. The problems were all developed in act two. Right away, I told you who, what, where. Right? And then he gets into when a little bit later but it's still present. So, then act one after you see it's about father Boyle at in an LA area where there's a lot of gang violence and a lot of kids getting killed and you it's not only the problem, it's the act one, you know, it's describing who, what, where and when. And then in act two, you saw that's really drawn out as I explore the problem, support it with the B story line and then explore all the solutions. Tattoo removal, you see visual imagery of a mural that says, 'job's not jail', you see visual imagery of a mural that says, 'nothing stops a bullet like a job', which I put in there twice, both in a photograph that was on the wall and on a mural that was on a wall outside. So, those subtle cues are also supporting the theme when he talks about their solutions. Nothing stops a bullet like a job, he's getting people jobs, the tattoo removal is part of that. So, using those very powerful visual imagery allows you to have people in the film say less because they can say something once but you're supporting it visually with all these graphics that happen to be filmed on location. So, I hope that helps. Okay. So, present people in a positive truthful light.

B roll presents people, but you can manipulate it to present them in the light you want to. I personally know when someone's BS-ing me. And I feel that you as an artist have more integrity if you show people in their integrity and you stay true to what their integrity is, and you don't try to sugarcoat it. You know, Joseph's like, yeah, I used a lot of drugs and was gang banging really young. You know, a lot of people won't say that, but if you can get that out of someone, show it because we relate to that. You know, most people don't want to go there, but if you do tell the truth, you build integrity with your audience and they come to trust you and believe you. So, it's not necessarily when I say represent people in a positive light that you don't show Joseph saying that. Does that make sense? Like, you have to weigh showing someone in a positive light to me is staying true to who they authentically are, and then you build trust with your viewer. Same thing with the product. Don't BS. It's like don't go over the top about what this is going to do, if it's not, you know, really that life changing, you're going to have to find some really truthful ways of showing people who are transformed by the product or benefit by the product. Okay? So, here's an example of a first person direct address. I've done a lot of promos for non profit organizations and they're more comfortable than Disney and Marvel. With me using clips of what I've worked on in a big environment for Adobe, right? So, Children's Action Network is in the state of California. There's like 60,000 kids in foster homes and we make videos of them to try to help them get permanently adopted. This was a young man that I was very, very impressed by. He's now an adult. But, in his high school years we did a video with him. So, you can also do a first person promo, direct address, and show them in their authenticity like this. [Joshua] My name is Joshua, I'm 15 years old. I'm in the 10th grade. Making new grades is very important to me. I really want to go to college. I just want to learn and have a successful life. My favorite sport is skateboarding. I'm not very good at it, but I will practice every day. I'll practice skateboarding the same way I practice Art.

I want to be a teacher for high school and a art teacher. Art is the biggest thing right now. I'm inspired by music while I do my art. I like old school hip-hop music. I like how they speak about what's going on in the world. How the young people can change it. How us kids can change the future. Hardest thing right now is for me to be put in a foster home. I moved around a lot. I would like to be adopted by a family that would actually keep me, a family that can help me with my homework, help me apply to college, either want to graduate it, help me through the hard time. Well, I would like to be in a family like that.

Oh, I love you guys.

So, as you can see, that's a very short direct address promo. I had over an hour of footage with him and interviews. How do you find just that amount of material on Joshua for such a short piece from over an hour or maybe two? Well, did you hear how every sound bite I chose was a universal human theme? What did you guys hear? - He wanted love. - He wanted love. What else? - Family. - Family. Very universal. What else? - Stability. - Stability. - Support. - Education. Support. Education. Every sound bite I chose was like, what's a universe? I have a whole hour of him. Let's find everything that speaks to everyone, right? And how, while I'm doing that, can I present him in his authenticity? And it's not like the best quality audio, but I chose to leave in a lot of the natural skateboarding sound and I used those sound effects and images. I used the sound of the skateboard as the punctuation for certain lines he was saying. I didn't choose hip-hop music even though he loves that because you can't really hear what he's saying. I needed something just sort of that disappears and gives a little rhythm. But I wanted you to see that you can easily make something even short without it taking very long if when you're listening to that interview, you're focusing on how can everything he says touch another human being. So, that's what it is. So, now, another thing you can do is structure time. What was that? [Woman] You know, we want to know if you adopted. Oh, god. I so wanted to adopt that kid.

I did not. My best friend ended up adopting, not him. He went to a family that was a better choice. But it's funny because after I did a lot of these, I really wanted to get back in touch with the kids and learn what happened, but that's a whole another thing that's not usually allowed. Yeah, but so many of these kids that are like want to be adopted are so incredible. It was heart-wrenching, but that's another story. So, anyway, I want to talk about structuring timing, pacing, and rhythm. You can craft story beats, and what that means is just segments of the story, and those segments or story beats can echo three-act structure so that you can divide the story into three different sections, so, it's three acts. But you're not really cutting it into act one, act two, and act three, but they can be act one, two, and three. It's just it's hard to explain this, but it doesn't have to be very distinct division lines of a certain amount of time, it needs to serve the story. But it allows you to either take those story beats and put them together in a longer piece or to separate them into shorter pieces so that we can deliver into all the different outlets for the different lengths we want. So, this allows flexibility for creating what I call value added packaging for your client. You're not just giving them one piece. Now, sometimes I start with the long one and then break it up into shorts and sometimes, I build shorts and figure out how to bridge them together. But that's something that's really wonderful to be able to do.

So, let's take a look at crafting rhythm by manipulating shot length. So, you can decide, especially towards the climax, to quicken the pace and take your shots from three seconds to two seconds to several shots that are one-second long. You can play with clips that are slow and drawn out, and then some that are quick, quick, quick, and then some that are long and drawn out. Play with these, these are devices, but, oh, it really takes your piece to another level. So, this is after you've picked the theme, found the sound bites and the imagery to support that, crafted a basic structure with One-Two Punch, three-act story or a combination of the two. And then you start playing with compressing or contracting time, so, that you can create rhythm and really be able to hook and hold your viewer. That's what helped this rhythm, just like in a song, is what helps you hold on to the viewer.

What you want to do is build the One-Two Punch into that three-act arc, and this is an example of what I mean by crafting something that could be used in separate pieces or together and playing around creatively with timing and pacing of the information. [Music] [Man 1] In urban centers, we're very concerned about the issue of food deserts. The fact that there is a lack of access to full scale grocery stores.

[Man 2] Poverty is still real across America.

One out of six people is eligible. [Katherine Alvarado-Rivera] I am a single mother. I've been a single mother forever.

I'm working, but it's only for the rent and the bills.

Getting paid 600 a month, it's not enough. It's not enough at all. There's nothing left for food.

I'm scared of being without food stamps.

That's the truth.

[Man 3] We need to invest in local and regional food systems because not everybody can be a commercial sized producer. Not everybody wants to be. But there are people that want to farm for a living.

[Man 4] And the only way it's going to work is if people start to wake up and they say it's their money and they care about these laws that govern their food system.

[Woman] So, how will you be paying today? - EBT. - With EBT? Yes. Right now, we have this program where if you spend $10 on produce, you get $10 reward card for Michigan produce. So, you can pay for some of our Michigan produce with that. - Sounds great. - Perfect.

[Rachel Bair] Double Up Food Bucks provides incentives so, that families who shop with SNAP benefits, which most of us know as food stamps, can spend those benefits on more healthy foods from Michigan farmers.

We work with local farmers' markets, we work with independent grocery stores that are here serving the community.

If they have at least $10 worth of any produce in their cart, they qualify to receive $10 in Double Up Food Bucks.

I bought my corn, I bought some extra tomatoes-- some cucumbers. I mean, what more can I ask? Maybe we can have more farmers in Michigan. Maybe more people can get dedicated to that with this program. It's not about education. It's not about what people are interested and want to eat. It's access and affordability.

It's good for us and good for them. Good for our pockets. Good for their pockets. Why not? I am from Puerto Rico but I am also from Southwest Detroit. So, I kind of learned to mix the Puerto Rican and the Mexican and the everything together.

For the rice, I have peppers, onion, and tomatoes.

It's supposed to look like a pasta sauce.

Now, I'm going to throw the rice.

It's already colorful.

Then just mix it a little bit again.

Both things are ready.

This is the beginning of the guacamole.

So, now, I'm making the guacamole for real. Adding the avocados.

And it's good that it's more avocado than the flavoring because I don't want to make pico de gallo with avocado. I want to make guacamole.

Yellow rice, Mexican Puerto Rican style, refried beans, and guacamole on top of tostada, chicken tostada with cheese.

[Girl] Guacamole that's not hot. Since they were little kids, I always wanted them to be part of the kitchen. I want them to know that you can eat Mexican food, you can make Arabic food, you can make African food, you can make all types of food if you want, and every day, you have a different restaurant at home.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm enjoying this. # Moving away I move with the trend # # And we move from within # # I move with the trend # # And we move from within # # Watching the city move up # # New programs to double up your food buzz # # Would he be eating a snap? # # Would you spend their marshes? # # The poor Michigan farmers produce fresh one to patch # # No one sentenced for bread and living got me feelin’ attached # # Locally grown veggies and fruits summer salads # # With a sandwich and soup # # You gotta feel the proof, taking care # # Your body really get you a different feel # # Cultivate your kitchen's skill prepare nutritious meal. # [Man] We're going forward with this-- So, I wanted you guys to see and feel the difference between three-act story arc and what I'm talking about as story beats. So, the three-act story arc and the problem solution was all present in the first story beat, where she's shopping in the grocery store and we're promoting SNAP and EBT benefits and coordinating that with local farmers to get real produce into people's lives that need better nutrition and more food. So that three-act story arc and that first story beat is its own whole standalone piece. The second piece where you see the benefits of that food in her life with her kids is a whole second story beat. That's not act two. I've already given you all that information in the first story beat. But that second story beat can be used alone or pulled out. This third story beat which is sort of an ad for double up food bucks, which coordinates with both of them, all ties together into being able to use these beats separately together in different orders. Does that help? Yeah. So, that's a different than three-act story structure. So, I just wanted to show you that you also can notice in each of those three pieces that the pacing and the way it was cut and the way music and sound effects were used is very different in each of those story beats. And yet because they're all constructed around the same messaging and with similar themes and the same characters and tying together, it all holds and can be used as separate pieces that support a particular promotion, your promotional campaign. So, devices. At the very end, and when I say at the end, I mean, at the end of my process of building and editing and finishing the video content, I go through and add additional motion graphics and text or recut the end to make it quick in the pace towards the climax or add picture and sound effects to give those little flourishes and punctuation to support some of the really important messaging that I'm wanting the viewer to hold on to. I'll take a look at, is the use of music effective? Am I timing this in a way that holds the attention or does someone get bored midway through and I need to cut that out or quicken it? So, devices are really powerful, but none of the devices will matter if you haven't built a story structure that supports theme and touches human beings and connects with them. So, I put devices and use of them at the end because they're less important than crafting a solid story structure, but they're really nice at making the piece feel polished and at holding people's attention. Use them with the crafting of the story structure, it'll be very powerful. So, I'll see if I have time for one last video. Yeah, I think so. So, this is one last video that supports something a lot of people don't know about, again, this is part of the Food Forward project. And let me just play it for you.

[Man] One of the most exciting things I've seen is this explosion of seed libraries around the country.

[Justine Hernandez] We are in the heart of the Sonoran Desert, located in the southern part of the state.

To folks not from or familiar with the desert, it probably looks incredibly desolate and like they've landed on the moon.

But it's really when you start to explore it, you see just life burgeoning out of little cracks. It just is a really vibrant place. I mean, it has its own sort of ecology different than any other part of the United States. [Music] Here we are in downtown Tucson, the Joel Valdez main library on the Hakamai Plaza, and here is the seed library front and center where everybody has incredible access to thousands, literally thousands and thousands of seeds. It's really, really exciting.

We're in eight physical branches, in a 28-branch library system that serves a county of nearly a million people. Anywhere you are in Pima County, as long as you have a library card, you have access to open pollinated and heirloom seeds.

- [Ashley Stinnit T] How are you doing? - [Woman] Good. How are you? Great. Great. I have some seeds and some white eyed peas, seeds, and some sunflower seeds there too, going into the seed library. Are you going to pick up some more seeds today? I'll check out and see what you guys have in the catalog over there. Well, we really appreciate you coming in and bringing the seeds. - Thanks so much. Okay, have a good one. - You too.

You can see, like, some of these have, like, the red dots on them and the green dots. It actually indicates, like, how hard it is to collect the actual seeds because different kinds of seed varieties have different ways in which they pollinate. So, they can cross pollinate or open pollinate, or you have to do it by hand. So, I highly recommend for people that really are interested in seed saving to start with something easy because then you feel like, "Whoo-hoo, I was able to like do it." There's a lot of native seeds or micro acclimatized seeds here in the Southwest. So, the seed library has a good collection of these types of seeds. For example, we have a huge variety and types of squashes, both hard and soft squashes. So, like for example, this is a really famous one, the Magdalena big cheese squash. And it the squashes on them literally get, you know, I mean, when it really says big cheese, I mean, it's huge, huge. You can feed an entire family of 20 off of one of these squashes.

Tucson is an incredibly eclectic community. We sort of feel we're a little bit different than the rest of Arizona.

We're a little funky. We're kind of cool. We're friendly. It's a really warm community. So, it was a really perfect kind of place to start a seed library.

[Bill McDorman] Justine Hernandez is this beautiful and powerful young woman who came to one of our seed schools and learned about the power of seeds.

At one point, the US government gave away 1.1 billion packets of seeds for free to American gardeners and farmers so that we could become self-reliant in our own regions with our own varieties that were adapted to them.

Every little cultural niche in this country had its own corn at one point. In 1900, we figured there were 1,000 different varieties of corn being grown in the United States of America.

But we've experienced this huge sort of narrowing in the diversity-- but we have enough left to grow it back.

If we're going to go forward into the future, let's have seed banks, and let's build sustainable agriculture.

I get excited about stuff in here. It's like a candy store.

We have about 2,000 varieties, 2,000 accessions, as we call it. That's seed bank talk.

We have a seed listing seed catalog where people can get access to it. And this is really unlike any other seed catalog. You look at our catalog, you're going to get access to hundreds of things you've never heard of before. Why? Because they came from more than 50 different tribes here in the southwest going back 4,000 years. These are ours.

Corn has got to be the most adaptable and brilliant and beautiful expression of the dance between humanity and our non-human nature. And I have been blown away on so many occasions just opening ears of corn. First time we harvested glass gym corn at a seed school, and the students were out and they're starting to do it, people were crying.

This is how America is responding to the centralization and the ownership of seeds. We're going to take this back into our own hands. We want our own seeds in our own communities again.

If we're going to have any hope of food security with f5 superstorms and the typhoons and the sorts of things coming, we're going to have to make our agriculture more regional.

[Woman 1] Are those seeds? - [Woman 2] Yeah. - [Woman 1] Oh. [Woman 2] So, we're putting all of this mix-- So, I know that one was kind of long and intense, but I thought about not showing it because the other last one we watch is more exciting to end on. But I really wanted to point out that a lot of the clients I get, it's explainer stuff. You might have to make something that's a corporate explainer promotional or you might need to make something that is educational in nature about a topic that's complex. But if you use a three-act story arc, you can take that messaging, that information, and you can make it feel not only comprehensible but you can take some complex information and hold people's attention. And so, I want you to see that not everything I get is, like, really easy and straightforward to work with, and you have to still go through a lot of content. And how do I get this message across to people when it's something I didn't even understand? By looking for those universal human themes, sound bites that not only explain the message and educate or express what needs to be said, the information that needs to get across, but you do it in a way that helps hold people's attention by structuring it correctly around those themes using the One-Two Punch and the three-act structure. So, I just wanted to end by saying you can reach out to me. I'm based in Los Angeles, but social media and my website are available to you anywhere. And I also have a Premiere Pro quick tips class on LinkedIn Learning. And what I'd like to say to you is I'm about to run off to teach a lab on building promotional content in Premiere Pro, so, I won't have time to stick around. I've got to go set up that lab. But I will probably find you at the bash and/or you can reach out. Thank you guys all for coming today. I hope you learned a lot.

[Music]

In-Person On-Demand Session

Storytelling for Short-Form Promos - S6606

Sign in
ON DEMAND

Closed captions in English will be added in early November.

Share this page

Speakers

  • Christine Steele

    Christine Steele

    Director/Producer, Editor & Educator, Adobe Community Expert, Steele Pictures Studios, Inc.

Featured Products

Session Resources

No resources available for this session

About the Session

Great video stories capture and keep people’s attention. Join Emmy award-winning director, producer, and editor Christine Steele as she shares her experiences and offers suggestions for designing powerful content that can influence people’s emotions and desires. This session will focus on creative techniques and solutions for crafting compelling short videos using examples from both nonprofit and commercial promotional campaigns. Come learn about how to practically and creatively apply these concepts to your own work.

In this fast-paced session, Christine will cover:

  • Best story structures for short promotional videos
  • Powerful ways to keep the focus on story
  • Selecting visual and audio content to support brand messaging
  • Using devices that affect perception
  • Crafting value-added brand packages for clients

Technical Level: Beginner, Intermediate

Category: How To

Track: Video, Audio, and Motion

Audience: Post-Production Professional

This content is copyrighted by Adobe Inc. Any recording and posting of this content is strictly prohibited.


By accessing resources linked on this page ("Session Resources"), you agree that 1. Resources are Sample Files per our Terms of Use and 2. you will use Session Resources solely as directed by the applicable speaker.

Not sure which apps are best for you?

Take a minute. We’ll help you figure it out.