How to Tell A Story In Video - Step by Step Script Breakdown

in this video i'm going to take you shot by shot and we're going to go through one of my videos where i use storytelling and i actually wrote out a whole script and i wanted to make this video because i want to show you how i go from script to the actual video now this video was when i went up to the eureka dunes in death valley and tried to capture the sound of the singing dunes and in this video i talk about the history i talk about this weird phenomenon that happens at these eureka

dunes and i try to paint the picture of the entire experience while also showing some of my adventure to get to the top of these dunes and so i wrote out an entire script to make this video and you'll see as we're going through this script i did use this script for a lot of the filming but then there was also these other moments that i added and things happened when i was actually out there filming and you'll see how something just goes from a simple script that i put together to an actual video that

is engaging and keeps viewers watching and when looking at the data for this video there's a good average view duration so that's how i know that people are watching towards the end now there's a couple things i want to talk about before we actually get into shot by shot first i just want to explain how i came up with the story for this video so i've heard about the eureka sand dunes in death valley and i heard that they sing but i didn't really understand what that meant so i did is i went into google

i typed in yurika dunes singing and i found some videos of people actually going and exploring this and some of the videos just weren't that good but it was an interesting story because of this weird phenomenon so what i did is i dug into the research a little bit more and started writing out my script so i use a few different sources government websites wikipedia i use atlas obscura which is a great one for these kind of oddities and then i just hunt through a bunch of different travel vloggers there are people who have been

there and written about this place and what i do is i look at all of these sources and then pull all that information into one document and then i start rearranging it and coming up with what the outline is so what story beats do i want to hit and what do i want to touch on and then i could start going through and actually crafting the script from beginning to end so to start any video you want to hook so i want a hook that explains what's going on and then also gives you an introduction

of what you're going to experience in this video so this is what i wrote there's a place in california that i've had on my bucket list for a long time this is the eureka dunes and i drove over eight hours today from the sunny beach in southern california to the northern section of death valley to stand on a giant pile of sand just to hear this strange phenomenon i'm gonna kick the sand and then i'm gonna tell you that is the sound of singing sand now when i was out filming i made sure to capture

this when i was at the top of the dunes because i want this to be the hook and i want to be from the location of where we're at i didn't want to do this hook sitting here in my office sitting at home or down by my jeep i wanted to actually be in there and show you what is coming that's a big thing when you're doing a hook is you want to preview what's coming in the video now i've had a place on my bucket list for a long time this is the eureka dunes

and i'm standing at the top where there's this strange phenomenon that happens when you kick sand off of the edge listen to this [Music] so the next section i want to get into is some of the backstory to kind of set up what the dunes are and where they're at and some information about them so i wrote the eureka dunes are some of the tallest dunes in north america they sit on top of what was the sea floor a long time ago it's crazy to think that this whole region was underwater especially because we're on

the eastern side of california in the middle of the hottest desert in the world temperatures in death valley have been recorded up to 134 degrees in summertime and we've come out here to the end of winter to catch a cool 80 degrees now when i wrote that section i'm sitting at home so i don't actually know what it's like out there i'm actually going to change some of this when i'm out filming but this gives you a sense of kind of the story beats i wanted to hit to set up what we're doing and so

when i was filming i didn't just go right into this i wanted to use some visual storytelling to show the process of getting to these dunes eureka dunes are the tallest dunes in north america and this whole region used to be underwater this was all once the sea floor which is crazy to think about because we're on the eastern side of california in the hottest desert in the world it's been recorded up to 134 degrees in death valley but i'm not out here in the middle of summer it's a cool 90 degrees and we're gonna

climb to the top of that dune so a lot of that footage that you saw from this intro we shot as we approached the dunes i didn't know where i was gonna use that footage but something that i do when i create these stories is i'm just trying to film the process so i'm constantly just grabbing shots as i'm getting to the location i don't do a ton but i make sure to spend a little bit of time and get some different angles and shot variety now when i'm doing these stand-ups i'm not using a

teleprompter i look at my phone i read a section i'll try to get it out a few takes and then after doing it a couple times i'll memorize all the beats that i want to hit and then it comes natural and this is just something that comes from experience the more that you talk on camera the easier it will be to just ad-lib different sections like this but if you are newer to making videos a teleprompter does make a big difference it's a lot easier to get through these sections especially when you're trying to hit

specific things all right so this is the next section in the script now scientists who study this region believe that these dunes are over 10 000 years old and were only recently added to the national park system in 1994. the entirety of death valley is 140 miles long and the park covers 5 270 square miles whereas the eureka dunes are only three square miles of that one mile across and three miles long it's a tiny section of sand in comparison to the massive valleys and towering mountains around [Music] now scientists who study this region believe

that these dunes are over 10 000 years old now death valley in its entirety is massive it covers over 5 000 square miles of land but these dunes that i'm climbing up which is pretty tough to climb up are only three square miles of the entire region you have one mile from the valley over there to the mountains behind me and then three miles from end to end that's it if you look in the surrounding region around these dunes there's no sand it's just this one patch of sand and that's it so for that section

i really changed up how i said the information but i still tried to hit the same beats that i was talking about and there was actually some stuff that i cut out from the script and talked more about my experience actually climbing up the dunes now the process of me shooting my a-roll was basically either i do it on a tripod where i'm standing there with a cool background or i'm doing the vlog style where i'm walking around hand holding the camera and a lot of times when i'm making these kind of videos i like

to switch it up between tripod handhold it just feels a lot more fluid when you have this kind of motion and you have these variety of shots and then all the b-roll that you're seeing we were just shooting throughout the experience whenever i would see a cool shot or something unique i would grab it and if there was something that was gonna help tell the story i would make sure to grab some extra shots of that and so for example we shot some footage of me dumping sand out of my shoes it just shows some

more of this experience as we were climbing the dunes okay the next section of script goes like this what makes this so special though is the unique characteristic of sound some call it singing some call it booming it's the sound that's created when you climb to the top and push sand off the side now don't get me wrong this is not an easy climb to the summit the tallest of these dunes around 700 feet and we're sitting at 3 000 feet of elevation on top of that you have soft shifting sands that feel like one

step forward and two steps backward and so for this section i actually broke it up into a few different shots but what makes the eureka dunes so special is not the fact that it's just these dunes in the middle of the desert but it's this unique characteristic of the sound when you climb these dunes and kick the sand off the side some call it singing some call it booming but it's essentially a weird phenomenon that happens when you push the sand off of these steep cliffs [Music] now the tallest of these dunes is around 700

feet and when doing my research i thought this was going to be a much easier climb but it feels like every one step forward is two steps back now this is where there's a big shift between my script and what i actually film so when we were out there filming we got hit by a big wind storm on top of the mountain and so we actually had to turn back at this point so this is all i got shot in the first day originally i had planned to shoot this all the way through till sunset

and then the final shots of the video were going to be at sunset on top of the peaks but we got up there and got hit by this windstorm and it became a mess all of our gear was covered in sand and we just wanted to get out of there so we ended up climbing the dunes again the next day and then i had to bring that into the story because it looks completely different we were shooting sunset looking footage it's golden hour it was looking really beautiful and then it's bright early morning completely different

look and so that's where i started incorporating some more just vlogging elements of what was going on and then i added some moments in to keep the story moving and show more of the experience now there is one section later in the script that talks about how difficult it is to hear the sound and it goes like this now this doesn't always work you have to have the perfect conditions the sand has to be dry there has to be low humidity to hear the singing but when you hear it the sound is out of this

world but what i did is i actually talked about our experience of trying to capture the sound and i put this information in a way that makes sense for what was actually going on while we were there now the reality is in that last shot i just superimposed the sound of the singing or booming over the footage because getting that sound is actually not as easy as just walking up and kicking sand off you have to have the proper conditions it needs to be super dry and it has to be low humidity to be able

to actually hear that sound and so day one yesterday i came up to the top with my buddy jesse who's helping me film this video and we got to the summit and got hit by a crazy windstorm and it was just awful only filmed about half the video and so last night we slept down there in the valley on top of my rooftop tent and day two we're climbing up again so that we can get that sound clean to be able to use in the video so you can see how this whole section was added

because of the situation that we are in when we're out there filming and this is part of when you're making videos things will change especially when you're doing this kind of content outdoor adventure it's not always going to go as planned and you need to be able to change the script or change the way that you approach the content because you're going to have these things that happen and going to change the way that you're filming so the next section goes like this why this occurs is not fully understood but the leading theory is that

the sound is caused when a sheet of sand avalanches down a slip face exciting the sand grains the friction between these grains creates acoustic airwaves that emits an audible sound and it may have something to do with the smooth texture of the grain sands and the friction of those grain sands sliding against each other it's like the base note of a pipe organ or the distant drone of an airplane so that really doesn't roll off the tongue well and this is something where i had to actually go through and change it and just make it

feel more natural and this is where i'm gonna bring some of my personal experience of actually going up the sand dunes and talking about this while trying to hit these points of what actually might cause the sound when you're on these dunes [Music] now the reason for this sound is not fully understood but the leading theory is that when there's an avalanche of sand sliding down these hillsides the air pocket that's created from the smooth sand particles emits this sound that you and me can hear and when i've been up here stepping on the edges

of these cliffs i just see a big cascading fall of sand and then you start feeling a vibration and then you start hearing the sound and it's eerie it's kind of like the drone of an airplane out in the distance or like the base note on a pipe organ it's so bizarre and you can feel it through your entire body now i wanted to have a payoff for this video which was actually getting to the top of the dunes kicking the sound off and hearing the booming or the eerie sound and i didn't write anything

for this but i knew this was something that i wanted to capture for the climax of this video i've driven over eight hours and climbed 700 feet of sand just to get up to this point and kick sand off the side to hear the sound now the last thing that i have written down in my script is a takeaway now this i figured i was going to write when i was out there because a big part of it is experience in actually going through this but this is what i wrote some people might think it's

crazy to spend all day driving through the desert just to climb a sand hill but so when you come up with a takeaway you want something that the audience can take with them and for me i was something that i was thinking about when i was actually doing this experience like why is this important or why i even come out here and do this and that's going to be my takeaway now when we were done filming we started running down the sand dunes so i decided to capture a little bit of this and i ended

up adding it into the video it's been a tough couple days climbing these dunes up and down but we finally got a clean recording to hear that rumble now comes the fun part [Music] some people might think it's crazy to drive all the way out here and hike up these sand dunes in this heat just to kick some sand off the side and hear this weird strange phenomenon but finding these cool unique things to go explore gives us a reason to go do something and gets you to see somewhere that you probably would have never

seen or go to a location that you probably would have never visited and so i follow the same story structure when i'm making all my videos that's the hook back story gets you into the story the experience have a climax some point that you're building to and then a takeaway that the audience can walk away with that framework is the simplest way to create a story that's engaging and keeps people from beginning to the end now if you want to see another video where i break down storytelling step by step through a vlog and through

one of these adventure films make sure you check out this video right here it goes through the entire aspect of filming shooting editing and everything it took to make this video