Video Storytelling: How Drama and Comedy Can Enliven Your Productions
How Drama and Comedy Can Enlighten Your Productions
The groom and his best man stand together at the altar before a solemn-faced minister. They glance around nervously at the packed church. The best man checks his jacket pocket, reassuring himself that the ring is still there. The room tugs at his collar and takes a deep, calming breath.
Suddenly, the organist fills the church with a series of familjar chords and the entire assembly turns.
At the back of the church, arrayed in a dazzling white gown, the bride appears, holding tightly to her proud father's arm. The crowd sighs.
Okay, it's not a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, but for the participants, it is truly high drama. And it's just one place where the judicious use of dramatic elements-including tasteful applications of humor-can enhance your video productions. In this article, we will look at some of the ways you can utilize drama and humor to enhance your storytelling and create truly compelling videos.
Conflict
The essence of drama is conflict. Conflict creates the dramatic situation-the basis of your story. Without conflict, you have what amounts to a debate in which both sides agree. This is, in a word, boring.
To have conflict, first and foremost, you need a protagonist and an antagonist. In most Hollywood-type theatrical productions, this boils down to the hero vs. the villain, Good vs. Evil, the Black Hats vs. the White Hats, etc. But you don't need Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting Arab terrorists to have dramatic conflict. Your protagonist is simply the character whose story you are telling; your antagonist is the character who opposes the protagonist's goals. The conflict between protagonist and antagonist can be obvious (Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed in the first two Rocky movies) or subtle (jazzman Dexter Gordon vs. his own self-destructive impulses in 'Round Midnight).
While most independent videomakers aren't producing Hollywood movies, the most interesting productions at every level manage to work in at least a little conflict Even commercials utilize this dramatic element as a way of creating interest ("Less filling!""Tastes great!"). And who is the protagonist in those classic Miller Lite ads? Bob Uker!
Conflict in the Script
If your production is a theatrical piece, a commercial, a training film or a PR effort, you have the advantage of working with a script in which you can identify your protagonist and antagonist and their conflict.
I had this opportunity last year when I scripted an employee training film for a high-tech company in California's Silicon Valley. We wanted to turn a dull recitation of company safety procedures into a piece that would hold our audience's attention long enough to teach them something they really needed to know. What we needed was dramatic conflict.
I began by identifying my protagonist: Betty, the Good Employee. She was the one who did things right. I then juxtaposed her with an antagonist: Bob, the Bad Employee. He was the one who did things wrong. I even wrote a little character backgrounder in which I explored Bob's lifelong problems with authority and his possible affliction with attention deficit disorder.
Betty suffered her problems, too: though she had always been a team player, she was never going to break through that glass ceiling until she developed a truly executive taste for the jugular. This sounds goofy, I know, but to create real conflicts you have to create real characters. Writing a backgrounder is one of the best ways to nail down your characters. Include everything you know about your characters-from their favorite colors to their political affiliations.
Betty and Bob don't represent the most dramatic conflict ever conceived, especially since the characters don't really oppose each other; still, they gave us a place to begin building our show. Most every project will benefit from conflict, even those that appear to have no characters. In a recent PR image piece I worked on, no people appeared in the video. So we chose to think of the customers as the collective protagonist; the problems our company solved for them became the collective antagonist. Again, not a perfect solution, but one that gave us something to hang our dramatic hats on.
