Video storytelling is a whole different game

I’ve been working for a couple of years on my video technical skills. In the past few months, I’ve concentrated more on the storytelling part. I have a long way to go, as my Vimeo portfolio will attest.

Kai gives Granny a knitting lesson from Steve Krizman on Vimeo.

What I’ve learned so far:

• Video is not as forgiving as written storytelling. If you don’t get the beginning, middle and end captured in video, your story will stink. You either have to stage a reenactment, or you resort to a silly text card.
• Sound is the most important part of video. I’ve had decent visual, but lousy sound. Nothing you can do with that. Conversely, with good sound you can get by in editing.
• On the scene, you have to work harder on a video story than on a written story. You snooze, you lose the one piece of action that would make the whole story.

I uploaded several months’ worth of video capture to my Vimeo account today. Rather than use the feature-filled, but molasses-slow CyberLink software, I slapped segments together using FlipShare. I am satisfied with the FlipShare results — the editing quality matches the Flip capture quality. We’re not talking Cannes here.

The video I chose to embed in this post is my favorite from a video storytelling standpoint — a finger knitting session between my Mom and my 9-year-old daughter. No written word can match the close-up of my Mom’s gnarled fingers, or the quiet exasperation on Kai’s face, or the poignant moment between Mom and my wife Karen, or Kai’s feet-kicking thrill when Granny thanks her for the help. It doesn’t cover a lot of territory, but it is a hint at the special power of video storytelling.