Good bones for product stories.
5 tests to check your storyboard for vitamin D deficiency.
Notes from story telling for product session with Hassaan Bin Shaheen in the Tech Product Development (TPD) course at IBA, Karachi.
Budget in seconds
Creativity is incredibly constrained today. Why? Because audience tastes have evolved for streamed video. The world watches a billion hours of video every day on YouTube. The platform is 18 years old. That is good set of training years for any group to build preferences, filters and immunity to the ordinary.
Our first lesson. Understand that our needs as story tellers and the needs of our viewers are different.
With short take videos, especially 60 second reels, our budgets are not defined by resources, but by time. We have 3 seconds to hook our viewers and then keep them entertained for the remaining part of our clip.
3 seconds is all we have. 3 seconds is all we get.
Every second on the screen, every cut, every frame that follows, counts. It must add to the story or move the story forward. If we don’t do that, the spell of our first 3 seconds wears off quickly.
Our first test? The 3 second test. Would I continue watching this video after the first 3 seconds?
Story boards
Our second lesson. Do we need a story board? It depends on how we think. Some artists prefer to go directly to shooting frames once they have the basic idea of a story. Putting it down on paper allows us to add structure and experiment with it. If we don’t like paper or writing, we could do it with frames or snippets from footage we shoot but remember rearranging paper is cheaper than reshoots.
Structure helps us think better. Clear thinking translates into improved production quality. Live story boards are also a great tool to track your journey from your original design to your final cut.
Our second test? What do we want our audience to do? Does the storyboard take them in that direction?
Experiment
Lesson three. Once you have the structure of the story board sorted, play with it. Shoot as many variations as possible.
How would this work if this was a one person video? If you could use no props or sets or background? If there was no dialog, only action? If you could switch roles, location, time or genders? If you really wanted to get into trouble?
Shoot with what you have. Models don’t show up, shoot without models. Can’t shoot the sunset, shoot the sunrise. A team needed a bustling campus filled with life and students but found themselves with an empty one. What should they do? Wait for full days? Or try a variation of the board where the central story revolves around an abandoned campus?
Play with the emotional response you seek from your audience. If this was a poem? If this was funny? If this was sad?
There are standard templates and variations, devices that you can use to flesh out nuances within your story stand out. Shoot as many of them as possible. Then filter through and keep the very best of scenes and cuts.
Our third test? How many variations of the sotry board have we experimented with?
Version minus 3 (-3)
Lesson four. Your first version is version -3. You need to re-shoot and re-edit it 3 more times to get to version zero. You ship version 1.0. Which means you need to shoot one plus four shoots. Which means you need to allocate time and bandwidth to do 4 retakes.
Budget for it. Twenty years ago you could post and shoot sloppy videos yet still build and capture an audience. Today not so much.
Our fourth test? Which version is this?
Platform choices and production quality.
Lesson five. In terms of audience sophistication and algorithmic acceptance, post your sloppiest work on Facebook. Everything goes and works on that platform. Use it as a test bed but have minimal expectations. Facebook audiences tend to not convert.
Keep your most sophisticated work for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok in that order.
It also helps to understand what the algorithm feeds on. With Insta and TikTok a 60 second video should have 20–30 cuts. The algo feeds on visual simulation. If you are missing visual simulation and coverage you won’t generate reach.
You don’t need that level of editing for YouTube or Facebook. But while sloppy product value may still get reach on Facebook, for Insta and YouTube your game needs to be at a higher plane.
Feeding the algo is also a numbers and commitment game. Are you in to for 200 videos? Because it will take a 100 for the algo to profile you as a regular.
Our fifth test? Which platform and algorithm are we seeking?
Life arc, hero’s journey
Lesson six. Visual story telling is not just about the life arc.
It is more about how you use the arc and put it to work. First comes the story board, then comes the magic.
You can take the standard playbook and tools and craft a terrible story that would put everyone to sleep, or you could use the same tools and write one that your viewers would remember for years.
Lets test the framework above to put together a simple illustrative story as a test case. Nothing complicated, fancy or breath taking.
Version -3
Our first version is version -3. The one we will throw away. The ones that follow are the ones we want to watch out for.
For the longest time in my life I lived what I thought was an ordinary pedestrian life. My life as a teacher. Simple, uncomplicated and as boring as watching paint dry.
The ordinary pedestrian life is the context, the normal world that we live in. It is clearly setting up for something which is likely to be not-ordinary.
Show what a dreary, boring, normal, ordinary life looks like.
Then one day a student asked me a question that I didn’t know the answer for. In my past life, the original, edition, I had always bluffed past an answer. Using my confidence, stature and authority to give the impression that I knew what I was talking about.
That day I was tired and didn’t care. I said I don’t know the answer. Let me get back to you on this.
I said, I don’t know, for the first time as a teacher. After years of denying my ignorance. The one thing that changed? Acknowledging the truth. How did that happen? I slipped. I was tired. I didn’t care.
Sidebar question. How would you shoot this? One way to test a story board is to also prepare a shot list on the side. Beyond helping you visualize a frame, a shot lists serves as a good reality check on the resources you would need to shoot a scene or a frame.
For years I had drifted past that door without giving it a glance. But that day I opened it and became a student again. It changed my outlook.
I no longer had all the answers. I no longer had to pretend I had all the answers.
It was liberating. Acknowledgement was the end of denial because truth bleeds to white, while denial fades to black.
Pretension had been a blinder. Also baggage that weighed me down. Once I dropped it, I could finally see again.
And because I was ready to seek the truth, rather than deny it, the ordinary became extra-ordinary. The boring, interesting. The pedestrian, exotic.
With the end of denial, came sight and light. I could finally see again. A bit melodramatic but, ok, we can roll with it for one iteration.
You can see if you want to see and walk the miles we need to walk to find our version of truth. It starts with wanting it. We are born with the gift of sight, but not every one wants to see the world around them in its true form.
To become a better teacher, I had to become a student again.
That is the take away. The difference between ordinary and extra ordinary is perspective and point of view. Also to become a better teacher I had to become a student again.
There is potential here but we needs work. This is clearly version -3.
Our fifth and final test? Do we have all the elements of our arc together? The beginning, the middle, the end. The normal, the change, the new normal, the lessons and learnings.
Can we improve delivery, theme and structure. I think we are missing want, need and desire in the above version. Can we use the same structure but introduce these themes without changing too many elements of the above story?
Version -2.
For years I ran at sunrise thinking my goal was to get to the end of the run, clock my time, benchmark it against prior times and see if I had hit a personal best.
Many long runs on lonely roads. Many benchmarks. Many sunrises. Limited improvement. Nothing to write home about.
I called those years my chasing years. Every run was focused on chasing a personal best. But it wasn’t meant to be. So I stopped. And one day, many days later, gave up.
In a different life on a cold December morning I ran with a friend. We didn’t run to clock a time. Or run for training. Or for a personal best. Those were all distant memories.
We ran together so we could catch up with each other and with what was new in our lives. An easy comfortable run where a PB or pace wasn’t on the agenda.
The day we didn’t care for the personal best, the day we ran because we wanted to run, the day we didn’t care when we finished the run, was the day I learnt something new. And meaningful.
The end was never the destination. The destination was the journey. The objective was the run; it was never the PB, it was always the run. The outcome never mattered, showing up did. And the company and the act of running.
All those earlier years when I had gone home disappointed and empty handed, I really hadn’t.
Perspective matters. So much better than the abstract seeking the truth and becoming a student perspective. Broader appeal to a broader audience. And much clearer goals and outcomes compared to the first one.
Still not there yet, but the potential is much clearer and visible. What do you think version -1 would look like if we kept on fine tuning this theme? Do you want to take a shot at it? Start by simplifying and shortening it.
Version -1
For years I ran with the sunrise chasing a better me. Always out of reach.
Till the day I didn’t want it.
The better me was always within me but I was distracted by the act of want that I wouldn’t let it step out.
The day I stopped wanting, the roads became shorter. There was enough space in the world for the old me and the new me.
Running had never been about want.
I had made it so.
It hadn’t even been about companionship.
I had thought so.
It had always been about finding myself.
I know so, now.
Now we are getting somewhere. There are two of me in here, which is always nice.
It’s cleaner, shorter and much more elegant. Also more potential. But more distance to travel before we get to version 0. My big challenge is all the metaphors in here. Somehow I feel that we need to still simplify this a bit. While metaphors work when used correctly, they can also be overused. You just want to sear your steak, not burn it.
Version 1.0
The TPD Course
I teach the Tech Product Development course at IBA Karachi at the School of Math and Computer Science.
