TurtleBlog

Nonprofit Video: How Rhythm Keeps Us Watching

2011-10-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

The following blog was published by NTEN on October 10, 2011:

Why do some online videos grab us, pull us in and capture our imagination for the few minutes that we watch them? What is it that separates the good videos from the truly great videos? We all know that length is important; online audiences demand brief messaging, and the importance of story telling cannot be emphasized enough, a good story is necessary. But, there is also another important element of a great video, something that drives the viewers attention and creates a deep connection: in a word, rhythm.

Human nature is drawn to rhythm. Our heart beats in rhythm and we struggle when we feel that things are out of sync. It's easy to get distracted when we are confronted with multiple rhythms at once. When watching a well-crafted scene in a movie, documentary, or even an online video, the world outside melts away and our internal energy and emotion are in sync with the energy of what we're viewing. We are experiencing life in the same rhythm. You can feel it, but it isn't easy to articulate.

In editor Karen Pearlman's book, Cutting Rhythms: Shaping the Film Edit, she states that most great editors claim to edit by "intuition". She also equates film editing with dance choreography:

The intuitive, choreographic shaping of movement and energy over time… creates the rise and fall of tension and release in a film. That is the purpose of rhythm in film: to shape understanding and emotions through cycles of tension and release. Rhythm signals the story's meaning and the character's intentions at an immediate, physically recognizable level. By creating the waves of tension and release, the editor creates the film's 'beat' or 'pulse'. By riding the waves of tension and release, the spectator's body rhythm is drawn into a kind of synchronization with the film's rhythm.

The visual rhythm of the action in each individual shot is one element that drives the pacing of edits. Feeling the beat of people's, movements, even the emotional pulse of a still image; this awareness of rhythm is key to creating engaging content.

Here is an example that creates incredible rhythm with the action in each shot. You are swept up as the tension and pacing mount.

Music can, of course, be a powerful tool for driving the rhythm of a video. The style can range from simple, intro and outro music to full on music video.

The "music video" style of this piece for Charity:Water is an almost perfect marriage of the tempo of the song and the emotion of the message contained in the lyrics and visuals.

The original Girl Effect video spawned a plethora of copy cats because it was unique and successful. Many of the copy cats incorporated the same motion graphics style, but few managed to achieve this level of emotional connection. Even if you've seen it a hundred times, watch it again with an awareness of its rhythm.

The tempo of the dialogue, which can be scripted, interview format, or even visual dialogue is another element that establishes the rhythm.

In this piece promoting the creation of a National Park, we worked with the client to create rhythmic dialogue, which was edited beat for beat over a musical score we designed to mirror the pacing.

As all these rhythmic elements come together, it's important to maintain a sense of the wider emotional arc of a piece. In feature animation, one of the first things that is often created during pre-production is something called the "emotional beat board". The story department actually creates a graph for what they want to be the viewer's emotional experience and each animated sequence is laid out along the graph. It may not be necessary to go to that level of detail for an online video, but it is important to make sure the pacing of the editing and the scoring or music match the wider, overall emotional arc of the audience experience.

We all know that online video can be a powerful way to reach an audience. By making ourselves aware of, and developing a sense of pacing and rhythm, we can produce captivating content that moves people to take action.

The Importance of Poetry in Video

2011-06-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

Maya Angelou was recently interviewed on CBC radio and I was struck by her thoughts about poetry in our everyday life.

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of rhythm in web videos. People have short attention spans when viewing web video, they need to be grabbed by their gut. I think it is often rhythm that keeps them watching.

We know that the length of the video is important, but rhythm is too. Rhythm and message. And, isn't that poetry?

Even in pre-production, when we're just working on proposals and coming up with ideas for videos, Cam will bring up the music. At first I thought this was because he lives to play with Garage Band and is a lover of music, but really it's a key part of designing a video. It also forces our clients to start really imagining the pacing of their story or message.

When Cam edits, he'll lay down the beat of the music or temp music first before even selecting shots. Its a wonderful way of keeping your pacing clear and refining your cuts.

Think about the famous Will I Am "Yes We Can" video that helped Obama so much . It's all about the rhythm and repetition of the message that keeps you watching and keeps you inspired.

Web video folks are often discribed as "Visual Storytellers" but we also need to think of ourselves as "Visual Poets". Leave your audience with poetry in their heads and they'll take your message to heart.

Thanks, Maya. You are a treasure.

Beyond Fundraising: Video For Education

2010-07-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a second that your perfectly healthy 3 year old child develops a bit of a weird rash on his knuckles and knees. A few months go by and the cortisone cream your doctor prescribes isn’t helping. You go back and are referred to a Dermatologist. Then, the dermatologist tells you it might be psoriasis and tries some other creams. The darn rash doesn’t get better. It’s annoying, but not a big deal. Kids get rashes.

Then, you start to notice that your child is falling a lot. He’s not the most athletic kid in the world, but you’re starting to worry. He seems tired all the time and then he develops this red rash around his eyes.

At your next appointment, the dermatologist takes one look at the rash around his eyes and asks about muscle weakness and fatigue. You hadn’t even thought to connect the rash to the weakness. She tells you the name of a disease and sends you for blood work. A DISEASE! In the second she said the dreaded word DERMATOMYOSITIS you change from a healthy, happy, blessed family to something else. You panic. Who wouldn’t? What do you do? You go to Google.

This is our story. And that’s when we found Cure JM, an organization dedicated to this frighteningly rare (3 in a MILLION) and potentially fatal disease. As we spent the next few years with hospital visits and drugs and more hospital visits and more drugs, we turned to Cure JM and their message boards for information and advice.

So, last year when we launched Turtlebox Productions, we called Cure JM to see if they needed video. We cut them a deal, a special “you-saved-our-lives” video rate.

When the chairman of Cure JM told us she had the idea of a video for “Newly Diagnosed Families”, we were thrilled. Though our child is in remission now, we remember what those first few days were like. We attended the Cure JM annual conference and interviewed the top doctors and other JM families and kids. The result is this 15 minute video:

Here’s the thing: the audience for this video is tiny- only 1000 kids are diagnosed in the US each year. We know this video is not going to be a YouTube sensation. But, it is going to help its audience in a profound way. And its audience is everywhere: there are people on the Cure JM message boards from across the globe.

Imagine your kid is diagnosed with anything- diabetes, arthritis, leukemia, epilepsy, autism. Wouldn’t you want to know the important facts right away? Or imagine that you're recovering from addiction or domestic abuse. Wouldn't you want to hear other people's stories and educate yourself?

So many non-profits are focused on using video for fundraising and PSAs, but it is also a powerful tool for educating your constituents. It gives them knowledge and power and it significantly increases the reach of your organization and your message.

Working With Your Spouse

2010-03-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to tell you a little secret- Cam and I aren't just business partners. We're married. And have been for 9 years. We live with our seven year old kid, our eight year old dog, a dwarf hamster, a small water turtle and 2 box turtles (hence the name- "box turtle"= turtlebox). We juggle the pressures of running a small home based business, raising a young boy, and keeping the house running (laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc. You know the drill).

So many people comment on how they could never do it- work all day with their spouse. My standard answer has become that, for us, it's actually easier to be business partners than life partners.

I think our main secret is that our roles and skills are complimentary and different. I get off on Excel templates and he gets off on After Effects. When it comes to a modern marriage, the roles are, THANK GOD, less defined. There's a lot of "I thought you were going to do the laundry today." and "Do you want stories and bath or dog walk and dishes?" We can sit down and easily debate an edit, but debating the fine details on how to discipline our child has a lot more weight to it.

We also really value the roles we both play. I do not have the patience of an editor. He doesn't have the organizational mind of a project manager. But, we both see the value in what the other does. Occasionally one of us doesn't appear to value the other's work enough and that results in some conflict, but we work it out with a lot of "I couldn't do what you do, honey".

The other conflict has been respecting the other person's space. We work in the same room and we risk interrupting each other all day. Headphones are good for that. When he's editing away, he'll have the headphones on and sometimes I'll put mine on without any sound coming through them. Just as a signal- "leave me alone- I'm doing the bookkeeping."

We really love bouncing around ideas. We shine at brainstorming projects together. Oftentimes one of us will come up with the base concept and the other one will push it to something better. This is part of the reason why we started Turtlebox to begin with; we're good at executing creative projects together. We love working with clients who respect and trust our creativity.

Now, if we were only as good at figuring out how to handle the seven year old's new defiant attitude. Hopefully, it's just a phase.

The final secret behind working with your spouse? Well, it makes tired bedtimes not such a big deal, because you can always sneak away at lunch time, if you catch my drift...

2009-12-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

What we learned from "Can't Go Home":

Back in May of this year, I sat down with the Vancouver chapter of Democrats Abroad Canada to talk about ways we could support US health care reform from Canada. I proposed putting together a documentary video called "Can't Go Home" about Americans like me who are stranded in Canada because they (or a family member) are not insurable in the US.

Democrats Abroad decided that funding the video was outside their mandate, but they put us in touch with another video subject, Maureen. One of the members put up a bit of cash so we could travel and film Maureen in Victoria. Meeting Maureen was a highlight of the experience- she is just a lovely, intelligent woman.

I came up with the "exile" concept on a walk around Killarney Lake with our pooch. Because this was virtually a freebie, we shot the footage in two days and edited it in 1/2 a day. We had a few paying gigs on the go, so we squeezed it into our busy schedule.

Because I knew the appetite for video about health care was high and because I'm passionate about the cause, I devoted a lot of time over the next couple of months marketing the video online. What I learned was that it takes a lot of effort to get a video with serious content to even 5000 hits. We should have added a potty-trained cat or dancing Hamster to make it go viral!

I spent, on average, two hours a day posting to the comments sections of newspaper stories, on facebook, blogger sites, tweeting, etc. I called my friend who blogs for the Huffington Post and he wrote this nice piece. Daily Kos picked it up- I'm not sure how they found it, but their post resulted in a lot of activity. I had another friend with a significant following post a blog on the subject. I sent an email to yet another friend at the CBC radio who passed it along to "The Current" and I appeared on the show. Within minutes of it broadcasting on national radio, CTV phoned and I appeared on Canada AM. Stumbleupon picked it up and that resulted in nearly as many hits as the Daily Kos.

What I learned is that you can't just put something out there and expect people to find it. Even with a good You Tube search string like "health care reform," it takes a lot of effort to make even a small splash. And, we were lucky to live in a community of people I could call upon to help. I also learned that having a catch phrase like "Medical Exile" proved very important. The CBC, CTV, and Daily Kos all latched onto the phrase as something they could talk and write about. In order to best leverage video, non-profits need to form tight connections with the media, both social-media and traditional media outlets.

I also learned a lot about the You Tube Insight tools and I learned to love them. I could track how the video was engaging its audience with this "Hot Spots" tool:

It compares our video to videos of a similar length by tracking where people are cutting out or rewinding. A very handy tool if we wanted to turn a longer video into a PSA, for example.

I could keep a close eye on where it was embedded or linked and whether the audience was American or Canadian with these tools. When we posted the video, Vimeo had better image quality (You Tube has since surpassed Vimeo for image quality) but it didn't offer this range of statistics:

I started to form connections with the people who embedded or linked the video so if we made another health care piece I would know where to turn to get it out there.

Although "Can't Go Home" did not help our bank balance, it did a lot to help our knowledge of You Tube and how to promote a video. This is something we can share with our clients so they can get the most out of our product. The video is currently sitting at around 6000 hits between You Tube and Vimeo, which isn't too shabby. I also get the satisfaction of feeling I've played a small role in helping to push a cause so dear to my heart.

Turtlebox Comes Out of Its Shell!

2009-11-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

To Blog or Not to Blog?

The issue is simple- time.

As a start-up business it's so easy to get caught up in social networking until it becomes all you do. Turtlebox now occasionally Tweets, has a Facebook fan page, its website (of course), promotional newsletters to compose and now this. Good idea? Bad idea?

We think good idea because we feel we have more to talk about than can be captured in 140 characters. We can link this to our website and to our Facebook page. We can link our Facebook updates to Twitter and then we only have a couple of places to go to keep things fresh for our clients and friends.

We want to blog about the sort of video that inspires us, why we started doing this and what we've learned so far. We also want potential clients to get a sense of who we are. We've been to so many websites for small organizations where you do not get a sense of who's at the wheel. And, as people who used to work for major corporations, we think knowing who's driving the bus is important (if you don't want to crash).

-Kat