The video equation

Posted by briansingler on Jan 6, 2011 in Featured Articles, Storytelling, Thoughts, Video | 2 comments

I have talked before about the lack of emphasis I see on the storytelling aspect of online video, especially in the realm of journalism, where I have spent most of my career.

So I’ve come up with a little equation or ratio of video quality, and this may rankle some people.

Imagine with me that a great video gets a score of 100 percent. I believe that 75 percent of that quality rating comes from the quality of:

1) The story or content itself: whether it relevent and interesting to its audience, and

2) How well the story is told, through structure, narrative, etc.

As visual media producers, I don’t think we always produce for the audience. We often produce what’s the most visually appealing to us. For example, how often have you been forwarded or alerted to an online video because of it’s “great story,” the impact it had or the change it produced? If you’re like me, almost never. Instead it’s “look at those great graphics or amazing footage.”

I think those aspects are important. In fact, I like them too much myself.

My thought though, is that they comprise only 25 percent of the audience’s evaluation of how good a story is. I say this because the production value of television commercials, for example, is enormous and people largely tune them out. There’s also crappy video on YouTube that people watch by the millions.

Before you think I am railing against great visuals, let me add that I think visuals can have an inverse effect on the quality equation.

If you have great story (75 percent quality) and then bad visuals and audio, you can take 25 percent of that quality away. You’re left with a video of 50 percent quality, which is no better than a video with a mediocre story (25 percent) and great visuals (another 25 percent)

In reality, there are many shades of gray (or percentages if you follow my analogy).

However, I don’t think good visuals are really the problem with online video and video journalism. A lot of newspapers, for example, (which are winning the war for online video) have very talented photographers shooting a lot of video and many with fine equipment like DSLRs. However, the story selection process and the skill and emphasis put into telling the stories often pale to the amount of time that is spent worrying about the visuals. Another example is the video site Vimeo, which is absolutely loaded with beautiful images, but I wonder how many real people are going there.

The point here is that I believe the audience cares most about great stories, not great visuals  and that our emphasis as visual media producers needs to move closer to that. Almost everytime I watch a “regular” person consume media, they almost never mention a great shot or production value. They are 100 percent focused on the content itself.

The reason I think this post is needed is that, as visual producers, we naturally gravitate towards emphasizing the style over the substance, like a fish traveling downstream. But to really take our video quality up a notch, I think we (myself included) need to battle upstream and spend more time on the story itself.

I would like to be known for my great storytelling abilities more than my great visuals because I think great content is a scarcer commodity that will ultimately determine the impact of my work.

The visual component of our work is meant to bring to life the stories we tell, but often we have things the other way around.

Would be interested in your thoughts.