 How does a shot make you feel? It's a shot that somehow tugs at your emotions, yet not a word was spoken. This is the power of visual storytelling. Surprisingly, I found films and videos to be more impactful when there are fewer spoken lines. To me, it's like how blocking one of your five senses make the other four stronger. To dive deeper into this, let's shoot a bite-sized film both with and without dialogue to compare their impact. And in the process, let's discover how you can convey an even more powerful narrative with visual storytelling. When your visuals are skillfully combined with other cinematic tools, such as music and sound effects, your story comes across even stronger. Now, I'll be using high-quality assets from Artlist to help me out with that today. So, where do we begin? Visual storytelling starts even before you press the record button. It begins with the script. In our mini film, we'll explore the story of a woman who loses a cherished bracelet given by her late partner. Here is where it gets a little bit tricky because it's so much easier to just say what's happening. Now, you may have noticed that directors often use back and forth over the shoulder shots to spoon-feed information through dialogue. But each time that I want to convey a piece of information to the audience, I have to ask myself, how do I show this and not tell it? When I have troubles forming visuals in my head, finding music right from the start is my creative hack when I need inspiration. It sets the mood for writing the script and how I want the viewers to feel when they watch my film. In the non-dialogue version, the story starts with a woman sitting on a bench looking at her empty wrist. Now, how can we show that she's melancholy without her just saying she's sad? Well, let's do a little experiment. How does this shot make you feel? What about this? Now, before you start feeling like I'm making you sit through an eye exam, I want you to tell me which one of the two shots make her seem more vulnerable and small. If you chose the high-angle shot, you got the instincts for visual storytelling. Where you put your camera and how far it is from your subject can change how your audience feels about the character's emotions. The shot you saw at the very beginning probably made you feel like she was deep in thought and a bit lonely with how far away she is because I went with a high-angle shot here, I saved the low-angle shots for the flashbacks with her partner showing a happier time when her heart was strong. But how do we visually convey a sense of happiness? Definitely not like this. That's more like it. Color has been a fundamental way to convey emotions across any art form. Whether it's through lighting, wardrobe, or color grading, you can set the tone of the scene by choosing your colors carefully. That's why I decided to go with a cooler tone in the woman's home when she discovers that her bracelet is missing. But the first thing I usually do when I lose something is panic. Other than asking your actor to act panicky, what if we couldn't make the camera reflect her state of mind? A shot like this conveys how important the moment is because it's like the world is revolving around them with literally the camera revolving around them. Whereas these shots screen chaos much better than a smooth orbiting shot. It's not about just capturing motion, it's about using motion to tell your story. While the key difference between a photo and a video is motion, they do share a common language. Just like color, the use of contrast in lighting will convey different emotions. Filming a gritty noir movie have the shadows darker for a more dramatic atmosphere. Want to film something a little more lighthearted? Fill in those shadows for a more gentle look. In this case, the only time we don't see much contrast is the only time that we see anyone happy. Now our focus has been on visual storytelling, but the age of silent films is long gone. So let's talk about an element that's strong enough to hold its own as an art form, music. Music is crucial in setting the tone of a scene. You can entirely change the context of your story just by using a different song. Here's another experiment. What do you think this character is about to do? What about now? That's why I carefully went through artless filtering options to find a song that reflects our character's contemplative mood. But it doesn't just stop at music when it comes to audio. How about revealing plot points with sound effects? Instead of telling you that she's lost someone, let's imply it creatively. With so many tools at your disposal, visual storytelling is one of the most creative ways to communicate your ideas to the audience. It treats your viewers with respect because you lay out all the dots for them to connect instead of spoon feeding them information. Let's put it to the test by first watching the little story that I wrote, but the version which includes dialogue and totally ignores visual storytelling. Hey, it's me. I lost the bracelet. You know the one that he gave me before the accident? I looked everywhere. I just, I don't know. I feel like I'm losing him all over again. But I guess I'm starting to see that he wasn't just in a bracelet. He was in every moment we shared together. So that was the version that totally disregards everything that we learned. Now let's contrast that with the version without dialogue, but incorporates everything from composition to music and sound effects from our list and let us know in the comments which one speaks to you more. Oh, and don't forget to subscribe if you wanna see more videos like this. Let's check it out.