How to craft a compelling human-led story

Photo credit: Shira Pinson

This photo was taken in 2016 when Lucas went to film a story about Durga, a lovely 69 year old Nepalese man who walked 4 hours every day so he could go to school. At that point in Lucas' career, it was the best human-led story he ever told and he got the full-on experience; off to a remote part of Nepal, staying at Durga's home, flying a drone to witness the jaw-dropping landscape during Durga's walk to and from school, spending time with a lovely, humble man. It was a dream when this brief landed. But it's not always that easy finding great human stories, and not all stories are easy to tell.

We once presented over 20 talent stories to a client before one finally got approved. But I’d do it all over again tomorrow. I find people, their stories and their journeys fascinating.

But crafting a compelling story that clients will pay for, viewers will watch until the end and takes a good punt at the client’s brand positioning can feel like herding cats!

In our experience, we've found that this typical formula really works:

A hook: something that grabs viewers’ attention without telling the story. Sometimes it presents the problem or plight. It creates some mental friction, keeping the viewer engaged with the aim to watch until the end.  

Background: what shaped this person to what they are today, usually this includes where they grew up, any fond memories, their passions etc.   

Drama/Main part of the story (with a bit of brand integration), touching on the problem or plight again to reiterate the whole story.

Resolution/Ending: usually a peek into their thoughts of the future, hopes and dreams. Visually it works nicely with a hero shot.

Each part of the formula needs to segue nicely into each other, and collectively needs to hang tightly as a whole story.

The visual story

Locations play a big part to the visual story. When the talent is talking about something, we really need to be seeing it too. For example, lean into archival assets if the talent is talking about their past, film at their workplace if it’s about their work.

Basically the soundbites need to match the visuals. It sounds obvious but when you have something that looks awful on camera, you need a good Director and DP to find a way to make it look good.

We’ve had shoots where we could only film in one location. We were completely limited with no variety, no texture, nothing. So we filmed behind-the-scenes footage, got some shots of the crew interacting with the talent and filmed close-ups of little details. We made it playful so we weren’t just filming a talking head in the same location. We also used archival assets which did add some different texture and air gaps to the overall film.

The key to every story

Lastly, and arguably the most important part of the shoot, is the interview. If the soundbites are too long, lack substance, are poorly delivered or lack emotion then it’s not compelling. This really impacts poorly on your story. Then you’d be relying on the edit which is unfair and incredibly risky.

We spend up to 50% of our shoot time on the interview as it’s THAT important to the film. We would’ve done pre-interview calls with the talent in pre-production to craft a storyboard. It’s likely that we’d ask the same questions on shoot day, and we’d dig a lot deeper to peel back more layers of their story. I also spend a lot of time building a good relationship with the talent too so they’re comfortable on camera during the shoot; the relationships I build with the talents is definitely the nice part of my job!

Got a story you think it's worth producing? Message me on aimee@bigboatfilms.com