Here’s a Good Article on Writing… Sparingly.

Just bumped into this from a sight called Remarkable Communications. It’s worth a gander.

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At some point in your communications career, you will be faced with writing a video script. It comes with the territory. How you respond to this distraught pleasure will say a lot about you and your understanding of visual media.

What makes writing an av script hard is not knowing how easy it can be. By the very nature of the written word for a visual medium, the key to success is less, not more.

For one thing, you’re writing to be heard, not seen. For another, the medium is a visual one, which means it prefers the pictures to do the talking. Finally, a script for video needs a lot more than just words. It has to provide visual direction, audio direction, and the essential creative blueprint that leads to the success of the project.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say that your goal is to write a short script about a new software program that helps people track their spending. Let’s call it “Fast Money”.

It’s a simple, easy to use program which can help people budget, save, an ultimately have the money they need to fulfill their dreams.

The success of all video or audio-visual products is to engage the audience by appealing to their desires. You could talk about how “Fast Money” has been written by coders certified in C++, how it is delightful in its use of a user-friendly GUI, and how it automatically sends back error messages to “Fast Money” HQ so that the program can be constantly improved.

But you’d be talking to yourself, because the potential buyer doesn’t care about any of that. They care about money. Their money. Their life. Their future.

SO you need to create a hook. A way to start the script that talks right to them and their needs.

SO you begin writing:

ANNOUNCER: You want to make Money!    VISUAL: Picture of Dollar Bill. SOUND EFFECT: Ka-Ching. MUSIC: Money, by Pink Floyd.

Well, it’s a start, if you want to hit your audience with a sledgehammer.

But hitting audiences with sledgehammers doesn’t create intrigue. But this is often the approach an unseasoned writer will take– they’ll cover all the bases.

The good news is, luckily, you don’t need to know or present all those technical facts. What you need is a way to engage the audience on their terms.

Instead, try writing without using words– ie, skip the narrator for now and create a scene instead.

SCENE: Slow zoom in on man working at kitchen table, He has a yellow legal pad, a checkbook, and a calculator. He looks worried and is wiping imaginary sweat from his brow. A woman, his wife, walks in behind him and looks over his shoulder.

SHE: Well?

HE: It doesnt look good.

ANNOUNCER: Too familiar? It’s hard to save a buck these days.

VISUAL: Alternating closeups of Husband and Wife faces, cutaway to their checkbook showing small negative balance, cutaway to pile of bills.

Now, that was fun! Instead of a litany of facts and figures, suitable only for the engineer that developed the product, we’ve now created an emotional scenario almst anyone running a household can identify with. They’re ready to hear more.

And we didn’t use corny music, jangling cash registers, overblown prose, or dollars marching off a cliff.
Now you’re on your way to being a scriptwriter. Yes, you have to know the facts. But no, the audience doesn’t need all of them. They need reasons to care. And you’ve just given that to them.

Now, they’ll listen to more– even if there are a few facts thrown in.

For more information on this and other create techniques to make your video production life easier, see my book, “Tribute Videos for Fun and Profit”, elsewhere on this site.

There are two ways to approach writing a script for a video: before you shoot, and after you shoot.

Before you shoot is where the majority of corporate and event videos land; after you shoot usually indicates that you’re conducting interviews and won’t know what material you’ll have until after the interviews.

Let’s look at the first, and most traditional, method.

Scriptwriting is the art and craft of extrapolating a creative approach into a working creative plan. A script is more than just the words. It is the blueprint that indicates the structure or flow of your video, what kinds of shots are necessary, what kinds of graphics are appropriate, and what types of music might be used or created.

My first business partner couldn’t do wordplay worth a damn, but he actually was an excellent scriptwriter, because he knew how to pace a piece of communications. So whether you think you’re a writer or not, let’s look at the basics of how you can craft your creative blueprint.

The Creative Plan

Before you begin writing, you must know what your strategy is. Whether you’re selling widgets or telling the life story of Uncle Teddy, you must know your beginning, middle and end.

I believe all creative plans follow some essential rules of marketing, and often follow the same basic outline for the script.

Marketing Rules

These hardly ever vary. They are called many things, have sold a lot of books, and been rehashed over and over.

But they work. It’s all centered around the person you’re trying to sell. It’s called the USP, or unique selling proposition. Ya gotta have one!

From the USP comes the ability to do the following:

State a clear benefit.
Offer proof.
Have a unique angle.
Show the solution.
Eliminate objections.
Ask for the sale (or the demo).

In the video script world, this might look like:

Introduction or Premise
Who we are
What we do
Why we’re different
What’s in it for you
Ask for the sale

Really. That’s about it. Remember, this is not a brochure. People’s attention spans are short.

Now, let’s say you want to create buzz so that MyCO, your new computerized inventory management company (and its new product, “The Docufab 5000”), can look large enough to compete with the big dog in your field— we’ll call them BigCo.

BigCo owns the market, but they’re— big. Slow to innovate, slow to respond to customer requests. They haven’t revised their product offering in 5 years.

You want to eat their lunch (or, if you’re starting out, any lunch at all), and you have just the product to do it.

You have just enough money to make a video, which you figure you’ll show to customers on your laptop, in your trade show booth (a massive 8’x10’ with a table), and on your website.

Video Outline

Let’s look at the questions to ask yourself.

What outcome do I want from this video?
What unique thing does my company offer?
How does this product embody that unique feature (or philosophy)?
What’s in it for the customer?
What hang-ups does the customer have?
How do we move to the next step?

In this case, the next step is being put on the bid list, being asked to make a presentation to upper management, or being asked to make a proposal. This is also the outcome you want.

You are sensitive to the needs of the industry and are a house of ideas, moving fast, developing solutions, adapting your patented technologies to companies large and small.

Your product offers ImageFast, a revolutionary way to reduce scan time and speed document flow over traditional Cat5 wire.

This will offer the customer a direct impact in greater productivity, faster shipping turnaround, less time spent running around looking for manuals, and allow the company to sell and ship more of whatever it is they do. (The hidden bonus is the hero factor— the person that buys this product will introduce such productivity and profit to the company that he or she will get a raise and a corner office— of course, this is implied, not stated.)

Now think it through— you’ve got a better product than BigCo— is there anything that would make a potential customer NOT buy what you’re selling?

Yes, you’re young enough to look like you just came out of high school. Your track record is neither good nor bad— it’s empty. So you get an endorsement from your Uncle Don who’s a well known civil engineer (or a past customer, if you’re well established).  Maybe you grow a beard.

And you offer a guarantee.

The Final Structure

So now, let’s look at our final outline:

Document management is slow, and industry leaders are not keeping up with bandwidth demands.
You have a solution that’s unique to the industry.
You are MyCo, a company dedicated to R&D and solutions that provide productivity and profit. You never stop innovating.
The Docufab 5000 blows the competition away. You proceed to tell how. (features)
The Docufab 5000 will change your company for the better, is upgradable, etc. (benefits)
Let us demonstrate our system and give you a quote. If you’re not 100% satisfied, we’ll (fix it, refund your money, whatever…)— we believe in our product and good old-fashioned customer service.

Okay, now you have to add spice, or the hook— the unique angle. You’re dedicated to productivity, speed, and service. For a fraction of what BigCo might quote for a new system, you will revolutionize the customer’s business with profits, productivity, and volume.

All the customer has to do is— “Do the Math.”

That becomes your hook. It’s a good one, because it de-emphasizes being big, established, safe, etc. It says, “If I can offer you my unique solution to save you this much money— will you take a chance on me?”

We’re skimming the surface, but at least now you’ve thought through goal setting and creative planning for almost any video project, at least those that are written before the shooting begins.

Now, HOW to write the words is another story, and one we’ll tell soon.

Want to see the video this story was actually based on? Go to http://www.vimeo.com/806538.

Next time, more specifics on how to write a script.

This blog– VideoStory Secrets– is intended to be a free repository of tutorials, lessons, samples, explanations, and other information regarding the art of “Video Storytelling.”

We did have a few entries already uploaded, and propagating nicely, when someone I hit– the wrong button.

Well, you know what havoc that can wreak. But it gave us a chance to enhance a few things, and develop more free offerings, which you’ll see here soon.

In the meantime, I realigned some of the website hosting, moved this from there to here and there, and here we are.

And just in time. Today, we quietly launched the sale of our book, “Tribute Videos for Love & Money”, which is really a book about how to tell a video story, or more bluntly, how to make really good videos.

It uses as it’s main examples “Tribute videos”, videos produced to tell someone’s life story, either for a company or private (personal) function.

It is 120 pages or so, generously illustrated, and is accompanied by tutorials and samples, some ready now, some ready soon.

I hope you’ll consider looking at what the book has to offer and perhaps purchasing a copy for your family video-maker, your company video people, or yourself. There are a lot of good ideas in it, and a pretty good explanation of the philosophies and structures of videomaking we have been using for the past 35 years.Go here: http://www.videostoryschool.com.

Thanks

Brien Lee.