Ngarrindjeri Elder Major Sumner on cherry picker during production of Moogy’s Yuki
Change Media Training Toolkit: 2 – Story Creation
Here are some basic steps to identify your story, and convert it into a film.
5-point story planner whiteboard for Ngarrindjeri Ruwe – Working on Country
Change Media Training Toolkit: 2. Story Creation: 5-Point Story Plan
This 5-Point Story Plan supports you identify and structure the key points of your film story.
Chris outlines the 5 points his team developed to create their film story; Ngarrindjeri Ruwe: Working on Country.
OVERVIEW:
The essential story building blocks:
1. Intro – who, what, where, when
2. Hook – why, what’s at stake?
3. Journey – what happens?
4. Transformation – what has changed?
5. Message – what will your audience say?
Printable PDF worksheets
Coming soon.
Watch video demos by clicking on the links below:
Chris discusses their 5-point story for Ngarrindjeri Ruwe – Working On Country – coming soon.
Watch video demos by clicking on the links below:
Johanis demonstrates basic storytelling conventions for film.
Tips
Most films, including documentaries, follow a dramatic arch: beginning, middle and end.
With your team, it often helps to discuss the structure of some of your favourite films and documentaries to identify typical story formats.
Ideally, watch films that have similar themes to the one you want to make – we all learn from each other, so copy from the best…
These are our essential story building blocks – by no means the one-and-all, bbut we have found them in most stories:
1. Set the scene in your introduction as fast and clearly as possible.
• Who is it about, introduce your main character, host.
• What is your theme, tell your audience what this is about.
• When – are we in present day, in a past event, or are we talking about future threats / possibilities.
• Where is your story set? the country, city – the environment is a key character in most films.
2. Hook – why should we come on the journey?
Can you explain what’s at stake? This is what compels the audience to continue watching or gets them trigger happy with their remote controls or keyboards…
Edie Carter presents to camera for Murrundi River Spirit documentary
Change Media Training Toolkit: 2. Story Creation – Pitch Your Idea
Pitching your film idea supports you to clearly explain your film idea, how you want it to look and how you will make it.
Edie outlines the 5 points she has developed to create a film story about Camp Coorong.
OVERVIEW:
Pitching a film idea is a powerful exercise.
It brings clarity and a reality check to your initial idea and is great for teamwork.
Can you explain what your films is about in under 60 seconds?
And make it come alive in your audience heads? If yes, you got a film to be made…
Printable PDF materials:
Coming soon.
Watch video demos by clicking on the links below:
Edie’s Pitch
Edie outlines the 5 points she has developed to create a film story about Camp Coorong
Hank’s Pitch
Hank outlines the 5 points he has developed to create a film story about his dad, Tom Trevorrow.
Jeremy’s Pitch
Jeremy outlines the 5 points he has developed to create a film story about the Ngarrindjeri creation stories.
Michael’s Pitch
Michael outlines the 5 points he has developed to create a film story about the Ngarrindjeri ANZAC”s and One Mile camp.
Rita’s Pitch
Rita outlines the 5 points she has developed to create a film story about the Ngarrindjeri ANZAC”s and One Mile camp.
Stella’s Pitch
Stella outlines the 5 points she has developed to create a film story about keeping her culture.
Training: Pitch Your Idea
We recommend for all our groups to film each other pitching, to build confidence, explore how it feels to be on both sides of the camera, and practice their presenting and camera skills. The pitch may also provide footage for their final film, it’s worth the effort.
When you pitch to an audience, a funding body, TV network… imagine you tell a friend or family member about the film you saw the other day on TV or at the movies. Make it emotional, make it come alive through your words – what was the one thing that captured your imagination, the point you had to tell your friends about the next day?
This can be a huge concern, a great achievement, a miserable failure, a very funny joke – main thing is, it needs be highly entertaining for your target audience – and dramatic enough for them to take you seriously.
Your passion has to shine through – why you? Why should they listen or watch your film or invest tons of time and money in it?
As a team exercise, develop a 1 minute pitch each.
Discuss the main points:
Who is it for? Your family and friends [wedding video, holiday clips], your local community [local announcements, promotional films] or is it relevant nationally or even world-wide?
The Ngarrindjeri team who collaborated with us on Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan first wanted to make it just for their local community – but once their Elders watched a rough cut on the 4th day of the workshop, they immediately decided to send it out all over, because the film’s issues where of concern for all Australian and even all humans. And because we all took the issue seriously, the film screened on several continents and won multiple awards.
Why would anyone watch my film?
Can you explain your film idea in a sentence? Are people entertained?
Does it make sense? Is it possible?
How can you do that helicopter shot on a budget?
Jen steps through storyboard with Jeremy at Camp Coorong
Change Media Training Toolkit 2: Story Creation – Storyboards
Creating a storyboard supports your team to ’see’ the shots in your film. We recommend you create a digital storyboard from photos. A quick and effective method is to take photos to represent each shot and create a digital storyboard in Comic Life.
Jeremy demonstrates how to create a storyboard in ComicLife. He creates a folder system to store his media, uploads stills from a digital camera to computer and arranges the images and text to create a storyboard to print and take on location.
OVERVIEW:
Jeremy demonstrates how to create a storyboard in ComicLife. He creates a folder system to store his media, uploads stills from a digital camera to computer and arranges the images and text to create a storyboard to print and take on location.
Printable PDF materials:
Coming soon.
Watch video demos by clicking on the links below:
Jeremy explains how to set up a digital photo storyboard – coming soon.
How to convert your story to film.
Johanis demonstrates the basics on how to convert your story into film language.
Johanis explains screen language essentials.
This tutorial covers lighting, camera angles, 3-D of space, depth of field, rule of thirds, breathing space and other screen-language basics.
Edit-in-camera screen language basics.
In this tutorial Johanis demonstrates a 7-point edit-in-camera exercise to learn screen-language basics, covering the basic shots you should consider for your film.
Training Tips: Storyboarding
Storyboarding helps to visualize the story and the running order of each scene of your film.
• Once you have your 5 point plan, make a shot list
• Shoot several stills for each of your story scenes with a digital photo camera
• Upload to computer and arrange photos in sequence
In Ngarrindjeri Ruwe – Working On Country the team used a very clear storyboard to build their nursery and greenhouse sequences.
Prepare your storyboard before you start shooting, it helps to decide the running order beforehand and how shots can fit best next to each other.
Drawing skills are not essential; you can draw stick figures to show if the scene is a wide shot, close up or mid shot.
This is also a great chance to try out how your location and characters come across on screen.
You may want to mock-up some of the scenes, it is often difficult to plan ahead in documentary, so try to take photos of possible scenarios.
Include as many interesting angles as possible.
It is very helpful for your camera team on the real shoot, when they can see a close up and wide shot of your character – with a note underneath the 2 photos, you can indicate a pull-out motion or a push in camera movement.
Shot sizes:
Wide shot
In a wide shot you see your subjects’ entire body.
Mid shot
In a mid shot you get closer with the camera and so you only see the top or bottom of the person in the shot.
Close up
Cutting to a close-up helps show the emotion of your subject.
Extreme close up
Extreme close ups show details.
Cut-away shot
Cut-aways are often used to cover up edit points of the same shot.
They add extra details and dramatic effect. Cut-Aways offer further details you don’t see in your main shot. In an interview for instance, they may show what the person is talking about.