Keep them watching - Tips for better story telling!

[Music] let's talk about sequences which in my opinion is one of the most important foundational things that you need to understand for filmmaking video editing content creation really any type of visual storytelling at all and in my opinion this is where most internet videos and amateurish films fall apart a poorly built sequence is gonna either confuse your audience or they're just gonna get bored and click away okay so then what is a sequence well functionally it's just a few shots typically around three to five that are strung together in order to help move the story

along the assembly of filth and how it can be changed what's interesting is that depending on how you structure that sequence depending on how you move the story along it can drastically alter the tone of the video and your audience's understanding of your characters and their motivations etc etc let's assume he saw a woman holding a baby in her arms now we cut back to his reaction to what he sees and he smiles he's a kindly man he's sympathetic now we'll put in a piece of film of a girl in a bikini he looks girl

in a bikini he smiles what is he now the dirty old man he's no longer the benign gentleman who loves babies so the first thing that i want to talk about here in regards to sequencing is this idea of questions and answers and so what that means is that each shot should either be instilling a question into your viewer's mind somewhat subconsciously or it should be answering some of the questions that you stated previously in those other shots these are simple questions things like who is it what are they doing why are they doing it

very simple subconscious questions so for example at the start of this video we want to set the scene and here in hamilton we've got a lot of snow recently and it was coming down pretty good so we shot a nice long lens shot compressing a lot of that snow together to make it seem cold like a an environment that you would want to get out of that might give me just enough contrast and it's also the location that we're heading to so it's somewhat significant and also maybe helpful i'm gonna go this way i'll be

right back and from that snowy shot we cut right away to some winter gloves unlocking a lock now we don't know who's unlocking it we don't even know what the thing they're unlocking is the first time we shot this i actually had my hood down and i realized oh we see right away that's me so we decided let's reshoot it put the hood up and obscure the image of myself finally we have the last reveal which is you now see the tires of my van rolling in which then punches out once more to a nice

wide shot where we see this large warehouse and finally we have one last shot from the front of my van where you get to see it is i jesse driving into the location where you would eventually uh see me here delivering these lines to hello [Music] so [Music] one of the things that i like to pay a lot of attention to and it's just important for sequencing in general is that there is a strong resolution to your sequence now we know it was kristoff he was cutting a hole but not only was he cutting one

hole he was cutting several holes into several shipping containers resolution if you saw our last video then you'd know what this is all about which is that we were recently evicted from our studio and in a last-ditch effort to figure what to do next we decided to buy a bunch of used shipping containers and we are now in the process of building out our dream creative space and so obviously we're shooting a lot of sequences bringing in containers cutting insulating every step of the way is gonna have to get sequenced also this video is taking

so much longer to shoot than we had anticipated we are very quickly losing light and we ended up having to shoot this now with a 120d in the fresnel we've got a p60c up through the skylight we've got hi dave we've got another p60c over here um making videos takes a long time [Music] this video is brought to you by the very fine folks over at storyblocks thumbs up what storyblocks is the go-to resource for super high quality stock footage sound effects graphic elements after effects templates and more and more the list goes on storybox

currently has well over one million digital assets and they're continuously adding to this week after week after week and with their very affordable unlimited all-access subscription package you get access to all of that so that means there are millions of ways for you to improve your videos in fact when we started shooting the opening sequence of this video so we actually use some of storyblocks's digital snow assets and doing things like that just really helps tie your sequences together so if you're looking to learn more about storyblocks and their unlimited all-access plan click the link

down in the description or go to www.storyblocks.com jesse driftwood if you uh if you pay attention those lights actually take quite a long time to turn on so the sequence what it does is it shows the passage of time the first shot you start seeing a glowing ember you're not sure what it is and then suddenly lights are turning on you see a finger switching the breakers and that brings us back here where kristoff's in the background turning the lights on for me because we took too long to make this video one final tip i

wanted to throw in here isn't necessarily just about sequencing and it's kind of directed at all of you internet video creators the vloggers the tick tuckers which is this idea that's commonly referred to as show don't tell because filmmaking video making is a visual storytelling medium we don't always have to use visuals and dialogue in order to move the plot forward i can't tell you how many times i've watched someone's video where they're like oh i've got to go to the grocery store to pick up bananas and oats for this new banana oat recipe i'm

working on and then the next sequence is them at the grocery store and you're watching them buy bananas and you're watching them by oats and you're like yeah i know you already said this whereas i think it's a much more powerful way of telling that story to start at the grocery store and we're wondering who is this what are they shopping for oh why did they get that and then maybe when we get back to the house you can tell us like this is why i got these because this is what we're going to do

but you still want to leave space for intrigue you want to leave space for your audience to ask those questions because it feels good when they feel like they found the answers that they came to the conclusion on their own they're not constantly being spoon-fed thank you so much for watching this video i i really hope you did learn something you had some type of takeaway um if i had to boil it all down to something it's make sure your sequences not just your whole story but even your sequences have a beginning a middle and

uh and then and an end [Music] that's what film can do for you or you for it as it were