The art of storytelling - part 1

Thanks so much for putting together such a nice visual tutorial of story telling. This video, and hopefully your future videos in this series, should be must watched videos blogs for all beginner (actually all) video bloggers.

Your time putting this together is appreciated!

Richard -

A fantastic, well structured lesson! My boys (8 and 10 years old) watched this with me and understood what you were saying with each great example. Would love to see the other two parts.

Now off I go to work on including these fundamentals in my own work ;)

this will be a really great series when it is finished. But Shhh... Don't give away our secrets! j/k thanks for including me in this I think it is a great thought-stimulating project

Awesome Richard! Please make the rest of the videos!

Great job. Yes please, please make the rest of the videos. I have yet to start my video blog but it is in the works. You definately gave me some things to consider. The tips you offer and examples you gave will be extremely helpful to many.
Thanks.

Of course, it's always possible--and often more interesting--to ignore, or at least erode, these rules or principles. Forget the setup, don't have a protagonist, avoid narrative causality, begin and end at completely arbitrary points, and so on. I agree that this is a very good video, but I always get a little uneasy when storytelling is approached in a paradigmatic way. You might answer by saying, "Well, you have to know the rules in order to break them," but one might just as easily contend that there are no rules and these ones are as arbitrary as any other paradigm one might like to impose.

I do think this video is very good, though, Richard. Don't get me wrong. I'm just anti-McKee.

Also, I would argue (perhaps wrongly) that 'Drinking With Bob' is for the most part non-narrative. Very rarely do his rants rely on stories, or narrative evidence, to prove their point or assert their validity. We might assume that something external to his videos, in the grand narrative that is his life, inspires his rants, this making them constituent parts of a story (as opposed to stories in and of themselves), but we might also not. I tend to that his videos a part of an overall story, but one that is never actually the subject of his videos, and can therefore only be assumed, and never known. Josh Leo, obviously, is almost always about story. And a fine storyteller he is, too.

Ahh Matt, the artiste. :-)

Yes, I already knew you had strong opinions on this, so I'm not sure if I can respond in any way that would be new or interesting for you. I'm really interested in your opinions on this by the way, but I'd probably prefer a dialog in email instead of getting all academic in the comments for my storytelling video.

I do believe that the basics of good storytelling comes generally from known patterns of narrative. Most of what I see, read, listen to and watch has aspects of these patterns, and those which don't tend to either be boring or labelled as art. All of the films in your top films of 2005 list (at least the ones that I've seen) have these patterns as well, whatever you'd like to read into that. The trick though is depth and actually how many stories and sub-stories are contained within a work. Sometimes the lines blur enough so that exceptional stories obscure their patterns, but typically if you look hard enough, they are there.

Likewise any written description of storytelling, in books, web sites or academic papers that I've read, are all based upon these same patterns, going way back to Aristotle. Don't get me wrong, I love art and experimental media, particularly music by the way, which goes pretty deep and obscure, so I'm not like a regular film luddite or anything, who always wants a "good story".

The point of my video was to give videobloggers at least some techniques which the big guys have had for centuries. Whether they use them or not is up to them, but at least it will be a more level playing field.

Much of my storytelling experience comes from improvisation and novel writing theory, the former being fairly similar to videoblogging. When writing for film or a novel, you have time to construct. In videoblogging, you do not. You typically turn the camera on, and away you go. In improvisation, we work the same way, you walk on stage and are expected to construct an interesting (and entertaining) narrative on the spot. If you don't, they want their money back, and you don't get cast again. As a player (and director) of improv, you start to figure out what works in front of an audience and what doesn't, and surprise, it generally works the same as the patterns, the same as novels, the same as "movies".

I do agree with much of your comments, but remember that you've had academic training in this, and I and most videobloggers have not. I'm trying to redress the balance, and I'd love you to bring some of your knowledge out as well, so this wonderful medium can blossom and grow.

I did want to add one final comment to what is already too large a comment, however. Robert McKee. Having never seen any of his seminars, (who in this country has?), I don't really know what you're referring to when you say you're anti-McKee. If you mean anti-formulaic, then too bad, because outside of real life, story is ultimately formulaic.

I admit it, I'm no expert, all I know is what works for me, and the patterns I see in pretty much everything I see. And I don't always use them in my videos either, as you've probably noticed, so I'm not saying they must be used or you'll have a shit video. It is all about awareness.

Patterns are typically there in everything we do, it just depends at which level you intend to look for them. Having seen over 2500 improvised (on stage in front of an audience) scenes (stories) this year alone, performed in over 600 and directed a fair number as well, I think I have an OK handle on maybe what makes a good story. Not an expert, but I have a pretty good idea what an audience will pay to watch.

When are we going to see Kite Circuit on the Internet by the way? Seriously I'm dying to see it!

wow ... this was great ... really well done ... once I got over the fact that I was actually interested in stuff that teachers tried to teach me for many years of high school and literature as an undergraduate, I really enjoyed it, and it really did make me more mindful of what I will do in future video blogs ... I'm adding it to richards picks ... nice job

i'm a greeeeeeen newbie to video blogging. I am interested in story telling otherwise I wouldn't be asking. I can't figure out how to get your video to play. I clicked on the icon and nothing happens. I'm using cable high speed and have quicktime installed on my pc computer. I've not used ant before so am unsure about its use. I tried using both netscape and explorer, but no go.

sure would like to see this. . .thanks,

Joseph Puentes
makas@nc.rr.com

at the bottom of the screen I see "transferring data from ia300104.us.archive.org. . ."

This is a pretty big file Joseph, around 30MB worth, so its probably a combination of size and Archive.org running slow. I've had others express the same concern. My recommendation is to just set it downloading and forget about it. Ant would also be good, as it tells you how the download is progressing.

Thanks Richard. I wish I knew what was different from before, but this time I clicked on Play the enclosure: storytelling119.mov and although slowly it started to download and i was eventually able to watch the video. If you wouldn't mind telling what was different I'd like to hear because I think I could learn alot just from this one example.

Great story and i appreciate what you've done. I'm looking forward to seeing the next one in the series. thanks again,

joseph
http://blueheron2.blogspot.com

You have a very interesting idea. I'm not exactly sure if I agree or not.

I like to think of myself as the journalist who asks the "hard questions". I'm not sure how that plays out in the world of "story-telling"?

Just for fun, tell us the story of how you decided to have blue hair. I've been threatening for years to die my beautiful silver hair into a rainbow montif.

Never got up the nerve. But once I experimented and wore a rainbow wig out about town and home on the train. It was a nerve-racking but interesting experiment.

This is the first time I've checked out Josh's picks. I think I'll enter the fray and start a vlog with my own picks.

Finding the good stuff is hard. but if you're lucky, you will find it. Finding this was wonderful.

Vlog on!!!

Randy Wicker www.RandyWickerReporting.blogspot.com

Reporting, interviewing, whatever you wish to call it, is storytelling. We the audience are interested, because there is a story to tell. It may be factual, not fiction, but it is still a story. And the reason we watch interviews, is because we're interested in the topic. By introducing them, you've done most of the set up, and if you're asking hard questions, then we get to see them struggle, which is in effect what the Rising Action is all about. So yeah, sounds like you're storytelling, to me. Glad you liked the video.

And the reason I have blue hair, is not interesting enough to tell. Maybe another day...

I really enjoyed that. I wish my teachers in school had a cool accent and had blue hair. Enjoyed the story you had to tell and the lessons learned. I want to thank Moments Showing for bringing me here to. I'll be looking foward to more of this. It would of been interesting to see the rest of those blog disected. Thanks once again.

Awesome. Nothing else to say...