how to tell a story without words

7/25/2019 How to Tell a Story Without Words.

1/7

brandmediastudio.com

How to tell a story without words.

Visual storytelling is about how to tell a story with no words. Not

possible! says the writer. Without words there is no story.

Technically, I suppose thats true on some level but every thought,

feeling and emotion we have can be told with visuals.

One of the best examples of visual storytelling is in the movie UP.

At the beginning of the movie the animators tell us the story of Carl

and Ellies marriage in four minutes and its a real tear-jerker. Four

minutes of cartoon thats as good as Terms of Endearment or Old

Yeller. It will leave you choked up and calling your wife to tell heryou love her.

Edward Hoppers Nighthawks

gives us an unvarnished view of

late night city life.

Edward Hoppers Nighthawks gives us an unvarnished view of late

night city life.

The old saying a picture is worth a thousand words is truer today

than ever before. My generation grew up on TV, todays kids have

How to tell a story without words. about:reader?url=https://brandmediastudio.com/how-to-tell-a

of 7 2/6/16, 4:54


2/7

streaming video in their hand at all times. Visuals are king! The only

movies that make money any more are special effect driven

extravaganzas that are light on plot but way over the top on

computer generated graphics. The last Transformer movie

employed over 500 people who created the effects that comprised

90 minutes of the 150-minute film.

Social media is fast becoming an entirely visual realm. Instagram

and Pinterest are growing faster than text-based channels. In 2013,

Facebook reported that users were uploading 350 million photos a

day!

So what makes for a great visual story? Like the marriage

sequence in UP, a great visual evokes an emotion. Capturing

emotion in a photo, a drawing, a painting, even a movie can be very

difficult. For one thing, the subject of the visual has to be emoting. It

has to be real or at least seem real in the case of good actors.

Weve all laughed when a bad actor tries to be emotional in movie

or TV show. William Shatner, whom I love, is a classic case of an

actor over emoting. But he has done it for so long and so

consistently, I love him for it.


of 7 2/6/16, 4:54


3/7

Jack Vettriano takes a lot of crap from art critics but there is no

denying his paintings tell stories so well we want to know whats

happening.

To capture emotion in a visual the artist has to know real emotion

when he sees it. Some degree of empathy for the subject or

situation is required. Years ago I was sent to Fort Campbell

Kentucky to film soldiers returning from the first Gulf War. We

waited with their families all day until finally a big 747 came out of

the clear blue sky and went roaring down the runway disappearing

behind some trees at the far end of the airbase. The families

cheered as the 747 taxied back to our position. A hatch on the roofof the plane above the cockpit was open and a soldier was waving

a giant American flag. The aircraft came to a stop and the soldiers

deplaned. My film crew and I waited in the hangar with the families

and tried to capture as many tearful reunions as we could in the

chaos. Now, not every situation is so loaded with raw emotion but

you have to be ready and open to the possibility of something

extraordinary happening at any time.

The second key ingredient to visual storytelling is there has to be

more to the story than is actually contained in the visual. The viewer


of 7 2/6/16, 4:54


4/7

has to know there is more to the story than meets the eye. The

visual actually creates a kind of knowledge gap. The visual is a

moment in time but the viewer understands there was something

happening just before or just after the visual was created.

On August 1. 1981, MTV launched and changed pop music forever.

Suddenly we were no longer happy just listening to music, we

wanted to watch music. The music video had been around for a

while but the volume of videos needed to fill 24 hours a day created

a new kind of visual storyteller, the music video director. Early

videos were mostly performance pieces, but as the network grew,talented directors started visualizing the concept of the song and

shooting what amounted to mini movies.

I asked my friend and one of the top music video directors, Wes

Edwards, to describe his process for creating a music video. Wes

has shot hundreds of videos for some of the biggest recording stars

in the world. Country superstars Dierks Bentley and Jason Aldean

turn to Wes to bring their music to life. In fact, Wes won the CMA

Music Video of the Year in 2014 with Dierks Bentley and Drunk On

A Plane.

My process when I begin to visualize a music video is very free

form. The music will evoke feelings and memories that often at

first seem to have no rational attachment to the song.

From there I hone in on a particular visual symbol or metaphor


of 7 2/6/16, 4:54


5/7

that will heighten the emotional impact of the music. I try to

consciously use symbols images and codes that connect with the

viewer on a subconscious level.

If a story is being told I try to find an unusual element or twist on

the lyrics to connect the audience to the meaning of the song in

an unexpected way.

Wes doesnt just film the lyrics, he brings his own visual language

to the project to make the music video experience richer and

deeper. He adds layers of meaning to what the songwriter andrecording artist are trying to say through their music. I can say he

does the same thing shooting commercials and videos for me. He

always brings something new and interesting to the project.

These two lovers seem to

oblivious to the Vancouver

Hockey riot happening all around

them. But theres actually way

more to story than meets the eye.

These two lovers seem to oblivious to the Vancouver Hockey riot

happening all around them. But theres actually way more to story

than meets the eye.

The third leg of visual storytelling is supporting an existing story

with a powerful visual. Most of the time marketers use visuals to

decorate the words. Every bad power point using Microsoft clip art

is the perfect example of this bad practice. You can tell its bad


of 7 2/6/16, 4:54


6/7

simply because if the visuals were missing none of the

communication would be lost.

I warn you relegate visuals to the backseat at your own peril. The

book Emotionomics points out that two-thirds of the stimuli reaching

the brain are visual. Over 50% of the brain is devoted to processing

visual images. As a result 80% of learning is visual-based.

Think of it this way, if your message is a nail, then the visual is the

hammer that drives it home. Expecting the rational power of words

to incite emotion instead of the inherently emotional power ofvisuals is miscalculation made everyday in marketing meetings.

Dont get me wrong, a good headline or tagline can work wonders.

But the image of a cowboy is far more effective and says more

about the brand and the audience than the phrase Come to

Marlboro Country.

After throwing an interception, an aging Y.A. Tittle fell to his knees in


of 7 2/6/16, 4:54


7/7

how to tell a story without words

Documents