Shaping A Story For Our Audience
Our audience consists of unique individuals. Individuals with varied sets of goals, desires, and time. If we have a story we want to tell, how do we share this story effectively to each individual with that in mind? Where do we start? For me, this story starts with CAKE.
One random weekend, my wife Amanda and I decided to bake a cake from scratch. I decided to capture footage of the entire process, so I could put a video together that I could share. After recording this activity, I realized that I had an opportunity to challenge myself with this project. The challenge was not about my cinematography skills, or even the actual subject matter of baking a cake. The challenge I created for myself was all about the edit. The goal was to tell the same story, in multiple ways. Out of one idea, I created 3 videos:
These 3 versions served specific purposes. My goal was to give the audience the option to pick which “adventure” they’d like to go on. Do they want to watch a refined version? (Main Version) Do they want to invest more time to watch a video with more dialogue and get a deeper peek into our personalities? (Extended Version), or do they want a video that gets straight to the point, and watch a quick summary of our activity? (Highlight Version)
This experience was surprisingly fun and it was a great exercise in storytelling. It showed me that all of these versions work well and really just depended on what you’re trying to focus on. The easiest version to edit was the extended version, naturally. Although it still required some decisions on what to edit out, it’s much easier to leave footage in when you’re aware of having the goal of making an “extended” cut. The most challenging versions were the Main Edit and the Highlight Edit. It was very tough to cut out that much footage. What you initially thought were crucial pieces to the puzzle, turns out are not needed to tell the story. You are always managing the balance of maintaining the heart of the story, while keeping the pace moving.
As creators, we are constantly editing our work, the hardest job is to make sure you edit enough, but not too much.
If you want to practice shaping a story, this is a great challenge to build up your editing chops. Whether your story is in video form, audio form or in a writing medium, creating different versions of the same story helps you identify which elements are absolutely essential, and which parts are just the “sprinkles” on top to sweeten the story. Think about what each version is designed for.
Here are some practical tips you can use to help you with your edit:
Save copies along the way - When working on different rounds of edits, save your projects as completely different and separate copies. That way if you feel like you’ve taken away too much, you can always go back to older versions and decide which one is better.
Stick to the bullet points - Write down 3 - 4 bullet points of the most important aspects of the piece. Limit the bullet points to a specific number! Anything that doesn’t belong, maybe keep in the extended version, but for the main edit/highlight, cut it.
Be the audience - As an exercise, pretend that you’ve never seen that your work before and you have no emotional connection to it. Ask yourself if this version answers the 3-4 bullet points you listed in some way, shape or form. If your answer is yes, then you have succeeded in your goal.
Lastly, the most important piece of the puzzle is to tell the story, no matter what. It’s very easy for our projects to stay stuck our hard drives. Edit your work the best you can, but at some point, decide to call it done, and share it with others. Over time, our skills will continue developing and improving. Soon, we become even more familiar with our process and start discovering our own unique style in storytelling.
