 Welcome everyone to Storymakers One, pre-planning your digital story from Concepts to Storyboard. Thank you all for joining us today for this webinar. Before we get started with the content, I want to make sure everyone is comfortable using ReadyTalk, the platform that we are using for today's event. You can chat with us throughout the webinar in the box at the lower left side of your screen to let us know if you have questions for our presenters. Need any help or having technical difficulties with either the slides or the audio? Let us know and we will be here to help you in the back end. Most of you will be here in the audio play through your computer speakers today. So if you are hearing an echo, you may be logged in more than once and will need to close out any extra instances of ReadyTalk. You can close out all of them and rejoin if you have any issues like that. 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You can also reach out to ReadyTalk directly at their 800 number if you need additional support. We do record these events and make them available on TechSoup's website at techsoup.org slash community slash events dash webinars. That's also where you can find all of our upcoming webinars. So definitely look there if you're interested in participating in more of our events. You can also find our webinars archived at TechSoup video on our YouTube channel. Within a few days, you'll receive an email of this presentation that includes the full recording, and you can look at any links and any additional resources that we talk about. If you'd like to tweet us, you can tweet us at TechSoup or with the hashtag TS webinars. You can also tweet to hashtag StoryMakers 2016, which is the hashtag for our overall StoryMakers event this year. My name is Becky Wiegand, and I'm the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup, and I'm really glad to be your host for today's event. I've been with the organization for eight years, and prior to that, spent a decade at small nonprofits in Washington, D.C., and in Oakland, California, where I was the accidental techie, communications director, graphic designer, speech writer, whatever you had to do. I had to do it, and very often like many of you. So I'm really glad to be hosting these types of events where I can bring the experts who actually know what they're doing to come and talk to you about how you can better do those things yourself. And the first person we'll hear from today is Liz Norton, who is the Executive Director and Founder of StoneSoup Films, located in Washington, D.C. She was a freelance television producer for over 10 years with a focus on public policy issues, working on programs including several friendlies seminars for PDS. She also worked and produced for MTV News, educating teams on crime-related issues. During the Clinton administration, she was a research director in the White House Office of Communications where she served as a link between the president, the press, and the public, primarily on issues involving crime and drug policy. She is on the board of the D.C. Environmental Film Festival, and she founded StoneSoup Films in 2008 to help nonprofits better tell their stories. And she is one of the winners of the Best Overall Award from TechSoup Storymakers Contest in 2014 for their Hope House Camp Counselor Tyron video. So we're happy to have her on both as a past winner and as an expert in creating compelling video stories. Our second presenter today is Nife Adiimi who is the Digital Media Specialist in the City of Scottsdale, Arizona for the Scottsdale Public Library's Eureka Loft. And so she helps manage their digital media lab and teaches digital media classes at the Civic Center Libraries' Eureka Loft. Patrons have free access to utilize the media lab to shoot videos, take photos, record audio, design marketing materials, and create websites. And she supports them in doing that. Prior to this role, she was a Communication Arts Instructor at Benedictine University in Mesa, Arizona. And she's also taught filmmaking at a performing arts school in Los Angeles. So we're really happy to have her joining us to share her expertise on how she helps people day in and day out as patrons in the library to create their own digital media digital stories using those resources in the Eureka Loft. You'll also see on the back end assisting with chat Susan Hope Bard, my colleague here at TechSoup who helps me with webinars and educational curricula. And also Ali Bestikian who is our in-house video producer. And she's also somebody who's running a lot of the Storymakers campaign this year. So you can ask any questions about Storymakers in the chat and she can help you answer those. And looking at our objectives for today, we are going to have a quick couple of minutes to learn about the Storymakers Contest for those of you who are interested in participating. We're doing it today because this is the opening webinar of our series this year. So we want to make sure you've got that information in case you'd like to participate. Then Liz is going to help us understand the strategic and creative process for honing in on your concept. And this is something we talk about in the pre-production stage because before you ever pick up a camera, before you start shooting photos or videos, it's really imperative to have an idea of what you want to accomplish up front. Start with the end in mind, right? And she'll talk to us about how to do that. She'll show us a sample script and we'll see a couple of sample videos that were created. And then we'll get an overview of the workflow from start to finish looking at the pre-production, production, post-production steps. And then Nithi is going to take us through outlining those steps for the planning phase. So what do you need to think about when you're planning to create a video? And this doesn't have to be a big huge production video that costs many thousands of dollars. This can be any video, shot on your cell phone even, but you still should be considering these planning steps and what things you need to be mapping out before you start shooting. She'll take us through the who, what, where, how, and why resources. And these are actually really robust resources. So putting them under one bullet is mushing them all into one section, but there's a lot there. And if we don't get to all of it today, don't worry. You've got those slides. You will receive those slides again along with the recording. And we still have another three webinars in this same series and a lesson plan on our website where you can see the same kind of steps listed out for you to help you create your own video or digital photo story. And then we'll have time to answer questions. So before we start with the meat of the presentation, I want to just highlight a couple of things about TechSoup for those who may not be familiar. We are located here in our San Francisco headquarters. So feel free to chat in to let us know where you're at. Even though we're in San Francisco, we are also all around the world in every place that's blue on this map providing technology donations, educational resources, and more to nonprofits, libraries, and social sector around the world. And a lot of that is done through our donation programs with our donor partners like Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, and many, many others. If you're joining us from outside the U.S., we recommend that you go to TechSoup.global and you can select your country on that map and find a donation program that can help support you in the area that you're in. You can also maybe find a local meetup where there are storytelling meetups happening now and next month to help support our Storymakers campaign in cities face-to-face where people who have this kind of expertise are meeting up each month to try and help you create your own stories. You can see some of our impact on this little slide of circles. And I'm just going to highlight the one where we have so far delivered more than $5.2 billion in technology products and grants to the NGO and social goods sector. So I want to go ahead and show a little bit about Storymakers really quickly. And I'm going to start off with just sharing a video that encapsulates some of what's on this slide. And you'll hear from Allie, who's on the back end, and my other colleague, Lewis, who's not in the room with us, but you'll see his voice on the video. Let us know how it comes through and if you have any problems seeing it. Hello, Storytellers. Welcome to this TechSoup Storymakers webinar. This program is part of Storymakers digital storytelling campaign designed to help you create better stories for your fundraising and advocacy. Here at TechSoup, we believe that storytelling is the currency of community and we want to create a vibrant and rich community with your stories. If you're eligible to be a TechSoup member here or abroad, you're eligible to participate in this campaign. With programs like this webinar, our new production curriculum, helpful blog content, and exciting lineup of community events, we hope you'll be inspired to get out there, create some amazing photos or video stories for a chance to bring home some really great prizes. We have four prize categories with a total of $7,000. Thanks to our sponsors. The campaign launches on April 4th and will go to May 31st. That's two months of webinars, Twitter chats, and meetups happening online and possibly in a city near you. Check them out and sign up for those events. After the contest closes, we'll have a period of community voting from June 1st through the 15th, and then we'll award those prizes. We look forward to getting to know some of you through your stories. Reach out to us on Twitter. I'm at Luisha, L-E-W-I-S-H-A. And you can find me at Alibaz, A-L-E-B-E-Z. Happy Storytelling! Back to you, Becky. Okay, so now that you've heard from Ali and Louis, just highlighting a couple of those points here that from now through the end of May we'll have a series of events, a lesson plan, a curriculum where you can walk through those steps in creating your own digital story, and $7,000 in cash prizes plus equipment. So definitely these don't have to be created during our Storymakers Contest period. These can be videos that you already have on hand, or photos that you already have on hand. And you can use those to submit to the contest and hopefully win your organization some money and some great tools to help you tell better stories yourself. So you can learn more about this. You can also engage with our Taproot partnership where they're helping to provide organizations that need help with video storytelling with people who have that expertise. And if you are a video pro, they're asking you to register to help nonprofits do it. So we've got this bit.ly that we've got at the bottom of this slide, bit.ly.ly slash Taproot sign up where you can sign up to register to get support on creating your own videos if you need external support in doing that. So with that I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our first speaker, Liz Norton, who's going to talk to us about that honing in on the concept, how to get started, where you really need to begin to ensure that you get a great outcome from your videos. So welcome to the program, Liz. We're really glad to have your contribution. Thank you so much Becky. And thanks to all of you who are doing all your amazing work on behalf of nonprofits that you serve. I think this subject is very daunting. There's a lot of buzz about stories and storytelling and the pressure. There's an enormous amount of pressure for nonprofits and the organizations that we deal with which I'll tell you about in a second. And I really, my hat is off to you. You can do this. It's not hard. You just have to do it with a concerted effort. And I think going on this webinar is a great way to start. And I'm really excited to tell you a little bit about StoneSoup and how we do this every day on behalf of nonprofits in the community where we live. So I'm going to go to my first slide which is why are we here? So StoneSoup was started in 2008 really to fill that communications gap between nonprofits that were really doing amazing work, but it was kind of invisible and nobody knew what they were doing. And they didn't really have the communications budget to be able to hire outside crews to do that kind of storytelling. Well that basically was a lot of, that was a lot of, oh sorry, I'm off my slide now. That was a lot of people talking about this and realizing that this is not how this works. I mean this is no longer considered a luxury in the era of social media and trying to, what I like to say, cheat the content monster. And so there's a lot of pressure. So we have been responding to that need by producing, by partnering with nonprofits who apply to us like they would for a grant. And we have hundreds and hundreds of volunteers, over 500 volunteers in the industry who help us produce. And we donate the films to nonprofits that apply to us. So for those of you who are able to be able to do this, that's great. For those of you who are just starting out on this now, you can do this and this is how it works. And it's a very concerted effort to be able to make that happen. There's all kinds of challenges, technical, creative, financial challenges. I'm sure for those of you who are listening, you can say there's a technical challenge. I don't know how to make, I don't know how to use this. I know my camera, I know I can take pictures, and I know that I can do this. But I don't know how to work the camera or I don't know how that works. That's one challenge, but you don't even know how to get started. That's something else. And then there's a creative challenge which is I don't know what to show. How do I even know what's important? How do I even know what people need to see? And that can be very daunting. And then there's of course the financial challenge which is we could never be able to afford it. So all of that is very challenging for the nonprofits that we face. And in our world all of these are surmountable, and we are here and hopefully in this story at the end of this you'll be able to figure out how to do this for your own organization. And basically understand more dramatically who is the audience that you're trying to reach, which is of course the basic one-on-one of communication, and how do I get them to think or feel something that I need. So that's basically what we're talking about today, and that's what Stone Sioux Films is all about. By the end of this year we will have made over 100 films for nonprofits. So we've been doing this in all issue areas. And it's been a very interesting ride, and we're just getting better at it I would say. So right now the most important thing is to assess the current public perception of your organization. And really like be honest about this. What do people think of you? What is, for example, if you think that you are doing an amazing after-school program with kids, and you are helping them understand homework and understand what their challenges are facing at home, and then the public perception of your organization is you're a rec center, then you have a problem. So this is a way that media can help you understand and help you surmount at those obstacles where people just don't even understand, or they have a very cursory understanding of your issue. So I think somebody wrote in that they work for homeless women. Well, there's a lot of perception about homeless women, and they may or may not be true. So this medium is an extremely effective way to surmount those obstacles. And I like to talk about every time we meet with an organization we say, what is your biggest frustration? These are the things when you're trying to hone your story concept. A lot of times people are so close to what they do, they can't really summarize it. It's very difficult. These programs are very involved. So what you should really do is focus in on when you hone your story concept. You should really focus in on the things that are just wrong or really frustrating. We help an organization that feeds 10,000 people a month, which is amazing, and that's what everybody knew what that's what they did. But in fact, they also had a fully accredited day care system that was trying to break the cycle of poverty, and nobody knew about that. So of course, the inclination is to focus in on the day care center and say, guess what, here's what you might have known about our organization. We feed 10,000 people a month. They weren't doing this really well. But here's what you might not know. So the more specific that you are, and the more you can hone that is actually really, really important. And then of course, this is the classic, who is your audience? Who's attention are you trying to get? We did a piece recently on trying to get 9th and 10th graders in D.C. public schools to seek out a medical home on their own. Well, the audience for that is students. I mean, the idea is that they would go seek out this medical home and that it would be private, that it would be confidential that their parents wouldn't know necessarily that they were seeking out mental health or substance abuse or sexual health. But also that it has to be peer-to-peer. So if you know your audience, you know what your audience needs to hear. And I've got to tell you, as a parent of teenagers, they really don't want to hear an adult say, so we did that. We completely focused on the audience. We needed to focus on the 9th and 10th graders for the entire piece within the voice of 9th and 10th graders. So that's an extremely critical part of all of that. And then the other, this is sort of our axiom here, which is a temptation is to tell your whole story. And you can't really do that. Number one, people don't have the patience. I mean, just think about sort of common sense how people consume media now. We're getting media from a million different places. And really think about how you are at home if you're at night and you're looking through your emails and a video comes up and you put your cursor over it and it says like 840. You're like, I don't know, 840. But if it's like three minutes, you're like, I got three minutes. So you want to think about sort of how people are consuming media in that way. And then how can you catch their attention? So in order to do that, we call it going deep rather than wide. It's much more effective to tell one small story that's emblematic of what you're doing rather than trying to tell your whole story. We partnered with an organization that deals with homeless and runaway youth. They have 15 different programs. You could go in there for half an hour and they would tell you what you're doing and it would make your head spin. That's very, very difficult for somebody to ingest that information. So it's very important to take a hard look at your organization and say, okay, what is something that we do that is very unusual, that's very different, that is really powerful? Often these are the stories that filter home to you. I mean working in nonprofit is hard work. So what are the stories that stay with you that keep you in your face up in your work? And those are the ones you really need to hone in on. So for this homeless youth story, instead of talking about all the programs, we just told the story of one child whose life was completely altered. So really this is about transformation, right? So whose life is changed by what that was. And I think it's actually very interesting. You might have to do a deep dive and do a deep look at your organization to do that. And it's a very good exercise by the way in your communication staff in general to try to figure out and hone in on what that is. The other thing is finding your main characters, and sometimes organizations, we talked to nonprofits after the partnership is over and they were like, this is so amazing, but you talked about characters and it made them very anxious. But the truth is your main characters are the people who are the most emblematic of your success. And please do not put the people who are like your rock stars. That's just a mistake. Your donor audience and your audience are more sophisticated than that. So you can say it's much more interesting to see a child who maybe was on the brink of dropping out of school and is now in community college. That is a much more tangible, interesting, meaty story, and really sophisticated look at how transformative this organization is without showing the kids the mother with a crack addict and now they are Harvard. I mean, it's just much more effective to find your main characters, the people who best represent what you are trying to do, and also just show how hard what you are trying to do. So another thing I like to say is data, the importance of data. I have this little equation, data plus story equals love. Data is absolutely critical. You have to find the research and do the research to show the information that is best represented over your argument and then give the story that is emblematic of that data. So if you have, for example, we are doing a project right now with an organization that is doing 3D mammograms in a community that is totally underserved by breast cancer prevention. And the truth is the numbers are overwhelming. There is a huge swath of the people, of the women in that community who are never getting trained. And then this organization comes in and is offering a screening service. So once you do that, once you have the data, you show the numbers of people, you show the higher incidence of breast cancer in that region, and then you show the story of a woman who has gone and who never would have been tested in the first place. And then she goes in and she gets tested and they find a malignancy and they've saved her life, then data plus story equals love. So that's why I put that in there. This is in our belief the most effective way to translate the importance of your mission. And then I would love to ask a question. I normally do this very interactively. It's very strange to be just like talking to my laptop, but I would really like to know if anybody wants to put in the chat, what are some things you have found very challenging to document? And it would be very interesting as we go through the course of this conversation. Sometimes people say, oh, our organization isn't that visual. I challenge you. There's actually always something visual in what you're doing. Even if you're sitting around a table talking, there's something visual in there. And so I would love to know what that is as I go through this. I want to show you a piece right now because it's much more interesting than hearing me chat on and on of an organization. This was a Planned Parenthood video. Students made it in an afternoon. For those of you who don't have a big budget, this is so brilliant and it's very clever. You can see it's super low budget. They made it in an afternoon. It's very well thought out and it has a very significant objective. So I'm going to play that video for you right now. Keep your hands over. Keep your hands over. Keep your hands over. Keep your hands over. Keep your hands over. Do you hear what I say? You know what you don't belong to you. Do you know what I think has been? As you can see, you know, that's a very interesting, very effective way to show, you know, that from a peer to peer, as I said, that you know, it's very important to detect the status. They do the cookie. Some of them are wearing gloves. Some of them are not wearing gloves. It's very subtle. It's very PG. Like if you're a child that can't take that information, you probably don't know what you're saying, which is probably good. So by the time you're ready to know what that is, you probably can listen to that video. So it's actually very, very interesting and very, very effective. So somebody said... Liz, yeah, we had a bunch of people have had it in different scenarios. And a number of people have brought up working with minors in particular, working with young people, privacy with mental health issues, that may be the focus where they can't show clients on film because of privacy issues. So that's one that's come up a bunch of times. So if you want to speak to that, there are others I'll lead through if you have others you want to speak to. I'm happy to address that. We face this issue all the time. We do projects with domestic violence places of youth development. So there's a lot of ways to do this that are very creative. First of all, we don't recommend, we don't use, for example, if we never do, we never obscure people's faces, we never silhouette them. This is not like front line or 60 minutes. There are ways that you can show, like for example, in the project that I was talking about before with students seeking out a medical home, we actually just used their voices. It was really powerful. So we used general generic footage of school, and we used the voices of the students, which were actual voices of recording, asking them questions about why they would not seek out, why they would be nervous to go to a clinic, what would their anxieties about it. So you can use voiceover. Voiceover is also very powerful to obscure identity. Another way that you can do it, we did a series for women with HIV. We didn't want to show their faces. We showed hands and their voices. So hands are also a very interesting way. You can do sort of things that don't identify the identity of the person, but you still get a sense of who they are, which is very powerful. And those are just some of the tricks that you can do. We don't like to shoot like behind the head. You don't really want anything that's going to pull your viewer out and be like, who is that, and why are they cheering their face? We did a piece, the story makers piece that we won for is short that we made about a camp in a maximum security prison. That's part of a larger documentary that we made. And we didn't show the faces of the inmates because we were restricted by criminal laws to do that. So we literally just cut out their faces and then we explained in one quick slide why we couldn't show it, and everybody just – it was fine. So if you explained to your viewer why you're obscuring the identity and you actually show just a piece of them, that's actually a very effective way to do it. I recommend that. I hope that answers your questions. But again, you have to do it in a thoughtful way. It doesn't feel exploitative, but there is nothing. You can't be listening to the authentic voice of the person. So just really quickly I'm going to run through because I just am mindful of the time. This is a story workflow. You have to do your research. You have to figure out what you actually want to show. You have to do this before you shoot one minute. Save yourself a lot of time and energy. This sounds really daunting, but it isn't. It's really just anything. Before you do it, sit down and think about what is exactly that you want to show and how are you going to do that? The actual production – I think Nife is going to go over this too, but you want to just deal with the logistics of it. How many days do you want to devote to do this? There's a difference between somebody's voice and what you see. The B-roll is often just the contextual sort of visuals of it. Sometimes you can use the audio from the B-roll. And then the interviews often drive it. We don't use narration. If you can, we don't use it because it feels very newsy. And then post-production is really just putting it together, making sure you choose your music. Music is very powerful. By the way, music is very manipulative, so you have to be extremely careful to make sure that you're choosing music that serves your mission, but also doesn't try to elicit a lot of deep emotion where there isn't one. There's nothing worse than really trickly, weepy music, and there's really nothing that significant going on. That's just not fair to the viewer. And then also just avoid being super arty and doing funky angles and all of that. Nobody really wants to see that. It's confusing to the viewer. You just want to be very straightforward. If you look after this webinar, you can look on the Students with Films website. You'll see we have a lot of examples of films that they're very straightforward. They're very simple. And then you break down your concept just like any regular story has a beginning, middle, and end. Who are we? Why are we doing this? And whose lives are we changing? So that's a very, very, very quick overview of StoryWorkflow, but I think that you'll get the gist of how that works, and you'll be able to do this, and you'll get better at it. I want to show a quick video of a piece that we did for an organization that was having a lot of challenges. They're a diaper bank, and then they were getting a lot of questions. And actually, this is not the longer piece we did. We just made a pullout short on one of their problems. This is also something you can do, which is great for Twitter and Facebook and other kinds of like short form media content where you don't have to do the whole thing. You can just take one basic obstacle and then you can knock it out. So I'm going to play that now. We get the question, why not cloth quite often? And I think once we talk to people, they understand. One of my first questions was, well, like, why don't we just give out a bunch of cloth diapers? And I just started to realize how many barriers there are that I wasn't even thinking about. Cloth diapers are a fantastic option for a lot of families. They're not a fantastic option for most of the families that we work with. The reality is cloth diapers cannot be washed in public washing facilities. So you have to have a washer and dryer in your home. Most of our families don't have that. They also don't have the time to do multiple loads of laundry, which is what cloth diapers need. So it's not a good option for most of our families. Okay, so as you can see, that's a very specific thing. They were asked a lot at this paper bank, you know, why don't you use cloth papers? Why don't you use cloth papers? And they were so frustrated and exasperated. This is such an incredibly critical and wonderful tool to be able to send all the people. They never got asked that question again. I mean, you know, you have to have access to your own washer and dryer. It's just not fair. I mean, for all those people who are making develop concerns. So anyway, so we do these things strategically a lot to try to make sure that people with individual concerns are being taken care of for the organization. And then finally, you know, we have this sample script. You don't need to go too much into it. This is for an organization that serves six hot breakfasts a week. And you know, and the challenge is, you know, okay, fine. You know you're going to show sort of homeless people coming in and you know you're going to show them getting the breakfast. But you actually should, you know, have some idea of what you're going to see, which is everything on the left, sort of what you're going to see. And then everything on the right is what you're going to hear. So that's basic. When we're talking about scripting, that's really what it is. This is not some big involved thing. This is really just, we're going to see this. We're going to see him coming in. And then we're going to hear the person saying that we're dealing with the most vulnerable population. So for those of you who are intimidated by that, you can really just kind of like, you can take any kind of, you know, something, any kind of situation and be like, okay, what am I seeing here and what am I hearing? And then you'll get a sense of how this flows. Somebody asked what is B-roll in the chat. I just will say that it's really just like what you're seeing that's not necessarily what you're hearing. So while you can hear me talking, if I'm showing you like video of my office and I'm showing people in my office working and talking, that's the B-roll. It's not the primary roll. The A-roll, which nobody ever uses that term, but the A-roll would be the actual interview of the person talking, sort of in real time. So Nats are, it's so funny somebody else asked what Nats are. We have a volunteer producer who made this piece and he's very old school and Nats is just natural sound. So it's just the sound like, so we filmed the pancake breakfast at the Homer Shelter and the Nats are basically the people sound of the forks clinking on the plate and people eating and people laughing and talking. So that's what natural sound is. You don't need to be concerned with all of that. I should probably use this example that didn't have any acronyms in it. But it's actually a very important thing to sort of really map out sort of what you see and what you hear. So in the interest of time, that's sort of my Long Dog and Pony. You can learn more by going to our website and watch our films. I really recommend. We make all different kinds of films, longer sort of partner films, and we also do short blog type pieces like the cloth diaper piece that I showed you, which is also effective. Don't even think about these things in one whole chunk anymore. You can do this in short pieces. You can do a series of 30 seconds because the sky's the limit. And it's actually probably going to be fun if you really get into it. So Becky, that's my time window. Becky, thank you so much for that Liz. A lot of really great information about how to focus your story and hone in on what's most important. We did have some people asking questions after raising their challenges up in the chat window. We had some other folks who either tackle issues that are very technical or that are kind of long range where the results of their work may not be apparent for a long time, or maybe they're working on policy where they're not actually directly serving people in the community. So do you have recommendations for the folks who don't have such a clear, they don't have a smiley happy kid to put in the video? We had actually one example of somebody who said they work with children with cancer and they don't want to make videos too sad, but they also don't want to just show happy kids because then people don't know where they fit and where they can be supporting. So lots of other challenges right now. Okay, do you want me to address those now or address those at the end? Sure, you can address a couple now and then we'll move on to Nancy's question. I think this is a very common problem. For those of you who are playing the long game who have results that may not show up, you have to get into the heart of why you're doing what you're doing. For those of you who have the faith and to be able to listen to people and have people speak about why they're committed to doing this work and why they believe that there's a value in it. You may not have anything to show in the short term, but there is something really important about starting that journey and documenting that journey in the best way that you know how, even if it's just somebody sort of talking about what is their personal connection to the story or to the effort. That's actually there's a lot of value in that. You can do that in a very short way. For some organizations that we partner with, they're not doing direct service. For example, Stone Two Films, we don't make sandwiches. We help people communicate that they're making sandwiches. So we have this own battle with our own mission, but a lot of times we make sure that we focus on the end result. Why are we doing this? It's because we want more people to get fed. Sometimes you have to leapfrog the issue, which is a really good exercise in communications in general, but help your viewer, help your stakeholder and your funder make that connection, make the connection for them. And for the happy kids, as kids with cancer, this is something we deal with all the time. Do not sugarcoat. Show the struggle. A lot of times we show our single mom, this is not a kid with cancer, but she has to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning to make sure that everybody is ready out the door so that she can get to work on time. We have her kids brushing their teeth and her trying to make breakfast and get out the door. With kids who are dealing with cancer, there's all kinds of things with medicine and all that, but it's not sad. It's actually just correct. Well, this is how they're going on about their life. So you don't have to make it, you know, you don't have to make it all trickly, but there are really powerful ways to just show the human side of that battle that I think is really effective without being exploitative of your kids. Great answer. Thank you so much for that. We have a lot of other questions that we've gotten in the queue, but I'm going to go ahead and move us along into Nisi's section and we'll try to continue answering questions on the back end and we will have more time for your questions toward the end as well. I just want to make sure we have time to get through her content. So with that, I'd love to welcome you to the program. Nisi, take us through your steps on pre-production, kind of the who, what, why, when, where, and how to go about this process before you pick up a camera. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Becky. Thank you so much, Becky, and thank you to TechSoup for having me join. I'm really excited to be a part of this. And just a quick apology up front if you hear any echo. I'm actually at the library now in a room that has a little bit of echo to it, so hopefully you guys can hear me clearly. So yes, let's go ahead and get started on my portion. What I really want to talk about is the whole production process and what you need to be thinking about before you pick up your camera. A lot of people want to know how to shoot the camera, but before you even pick it up, there's a lot of things you want to go over. It really is two-thirds planning. So we're going to go through all of that and then you'll feel much more comfortable when you actually start to shoot. So let's talk about who to film. Liz definitely gave you some great insight on how she goes about picking it. So you definitely want to take into consideration a lot of the tips that she spoke about. We'll also look at what you need, where to film, how to film, and where to distribute your film once it's finished because you need to think about how you're going to distribute it even before you shoot because it can change the way and how you shoot it and what kind of format you're going to use. So we'll look a little bit more into that. Like Liz mentioned, you really want the person that's going to be in front of the camera to have an impactful meaning and to be able to share your story in a way that connects with your audience and can share a real-life story. Sometimes we tend to want to show owner of the company or somebody that has all the facts and figures which can be great for certain types of videos but for some of the types with the nonprofits trying to do some fundraising, trying to bring awareness, it's better to have somebody that has experienced it, can bring people to a point where they can understand where they're coming from and telling their story. We want to talk about the releases. Make sure you have permission to shoot anybody it is. Even if it's a friend, someone that's a volunteer to shoot, you always want to get a release in writing that you have permission to shoot them, to record their audio, to record any image of them for the perpetual future. So you want to always have that. They're giving you permission to use this content to whenever you need it and not just to you but your affiliates in the matters that you guys see fit. So I have a link here that gives you an example release form. It's just an example. There's going to be different things that you may need to put into your own release form. It's important to do that. Let's give some great examples of whether or not she shoots minors and how to go about doing that but minor releases are important. So if you are shooting a minor, you want to get the permission from a parent even if they may not be prominent in your film and location releases. So where are you actually going to shoot this? And when you think about your different shots, you may want to shoot in other more than just one location. So if you have a storefront, a brick and mortar for your company, you want to shoot there. Maybe you're going to go into the personal space of the person that you're shooting a story on. Maybe you need to have access to a company or storefront. It's much easier to get that access from someone that you can talk directly to the owner. If you think you're going to get access to like an Apple store for example, there's going to be a lot more red tape for them to give you permission to shoot there because they have their own vision of how they want to be marketed. But if you can speak to someone that owns a small store that will allow you to come in, then yeah, that's going to be a lot easier to get some permission for. And a lot of people don't know that wherever you are it could be owned by anyone. You could be on the street for example here in the city of Scottsdale. They own a lot of the different parking lots even that you would have to get permission from in order to shoot from there and written permission. And then I've shot at Lake Havasu for example which has a London Bridge. We did a story there and I talked to the city officials and they told us it's public property. You might want to play out a sign that says you're shooting so that if anybody is in the class here there will be a video that they know that they may well in fact appear. And then that brings another challenge when you do shoot out in public. Are you going to let people know, how many people do you need to tell everyone? You could be in a restaurant for example. I've had a situation where the owner made an announcement that we're about to shoot. Anyone that continues to eat here is basically saying that they are agreeing to be in the camera and maybe it's shot. So that's just an example. Some of you have forgot a release form. What I've done is actually courted the person saying that they do approve me recording them and then made sure I got it later. So if you can get it on camera and of course recording their audio that they are saying this to you then you can have a backup but then also make sure that you get that in writing afterwards. So what do you need to sell? So I work here at the library and this picture is actually one of the posters that we have in our digital media lab that gives an example of some of the equipment that we have here at the library. So not everyone is going to have access to all of these things. And nowadays shooting high quality, high definition video has become a lot more accessible so you don't have to go out and buy a $1,000 camera or more just to get a great quality video. So let's look at some of those things. So what do you have already? Do you already have a camera that you can shoot? What format is it? Is it high definition? And how are you going to output it? So you need to think about that because let's say you wanted to do a 30-second commercial spot for TV, some television stations only require standard definition videos still. So you shot in high definition but now you've got to export it and make sure you get them a standard definition. So thinking about your format and how you are going to distribute it upfront is going to help you think about how you are going to shoot. So a lot of us nowadays have smart devices that we can use. So do you have a phone that shoots in high definition? That you can actually record video and audio from. And some of the audio can sound pretty good. You can also sometimes put an external mic on there. So you may be able to use your smartphone to do some recording. So think about that when you are thinking about some of the equipment that you want to use. This is just a quick photo of some of the different formats that you can possibly shoot in. Whatever you have should give you some information about what format you are shooting in. And this is just an example. Most videos these days that are high definition are going to be either 720 progressive or 1080 interlaced. And that just means how many pixels you can see. We are not going to go too detailed because I want to make you I think you really have to know exactly what each of these means. But it is important to know what format and what is expected from, let's say you are going to upload your video into YouTube. They may require a certain type of video format. They may require you to export in a certain way. So doing a little bit of research and I know we will go over this in more seminars and webinars. So you will get more information on this. But this is just a quick graphic so you guys can get kind of an idea to be thinking about this. So is it important to use a tripod? It can be because you are going to be able to shoot more sturdy footage if you do. If you use your camera or even your smart phone and you are just holding it in your hand, you may get shaky video and so forth. So think about what it is that you would need when you are going to shoot your film and bring that with you. There are cheaper tripods. If you don't have a tripod, maybe you are going to put the camera on a table or you are going to just try to hold it as sturdy as possible. And there are some tripods that actually connect to smart devices as well. Lighting is important when you are filming so you want to think about what do you have and where are you going to shoot. If you are shooting outdoors, there could be obviously natural light. And some people may think, well, I will shoot in the sunniest time of the day. But actually if you have more of a slight overcast, it can actually give you better lighting in your video than if it is super bright. You are going to have a little bit more over exposure where everything looks really white. So you want to think about that. If you are shooting indoors, thinking about where you are placing the person that you are shooting, you don't want the light to actually be behind them. So if there is sun coming in, if the light is hitting them, if you weren't looking to get some pepper shadow, you actually want them facing the sun so you can get good quality light if you don't have. And there is more information on 3-point lighting where you have got the key lighting and backup lighting that is in the back and the side. So it is important if you are interested in that to do a little bit more research to see what kind of lighting do I need for what I am shooting for. But if you don't currently have lighting, the best bet is try to go for natural lighting. Try to go for lighting that is going to be in front of the person and not behind them. We have here a green screen for people that may want to shoot something and have the background replaced in post-production. So that is really up to once again the story. What story are you sharing? Or do you want to have a different color background when you are doing it? Some people want to have a black background for the aesthetics and the feel of the emotion of the story. So think about what the reasons would be. I have had people want to do some crazy sci-fi scene come in, but is it realistic? If you don't have the budget for it, it might look – you can tell that the budget wasn't there when you do something that is really, really crazy with the green screen. So you may or may not need it. So you want to think about that before you start shooting. So other things to think about is what kind of memory card does your camera need? And making sure you have the space in your memory card if you are going to use a camera. Making sure your batteries are charged up. You know, sometimes you go on set and you are shooting, but then your battery is about to die then you are going to lose that footage, or they are saying something really powerful and you lost that because your camera now just died. So having extra set of batteries with you if you need it, making sure your phone is completely charged up if you are using your phone. You may need lenses if you have them. We are obviously looking at you guys as people that are going to be working on a smaller budget, maybe $0 to a few, and trying to do these things yourself. So it's not go out and buy all these things if this is one of your first projects, but if you have access to some of these things, if you have a community center that can offer it like we do here, then you want to kind of take advantage of that. I always put an extension cord too because if you have things like lighting or if you have anything that you need to charge, having some type of extension cord and seeing where there are outlets before you go to shoot is important because then you are prepared to know that, hey, I got to charge this up. I sometimes will use a monitor or a laptop. I will bring it with me because I will shoot what I just shot. I will play it. Make sure it's the way I want it to, make sure it's sounding right, and I can move on from then. And microphones are really important. I mentioned possibly being a little echo-y right now, but I think one of the things that really separates the quality of your video is the audio sound. So you really want to make sure that your audio sounds good, that you don't hear a lot of background noise when you didn't want to hear it, that the voice is audible, that you can hear what the person is saying. So it's really important to take the time to make sure that you've set up and you have the right mics that you can work with. So where are you going to film? Based on the story, you are going to decide on that. And we talked a little bit about the location scouting and planning it out. But are you only going to shoot in one place or are you going to shoot in multiple places? I think it's a good idea to think about the different options and the different locations. And if you're going to have, you know, even from a 30-second video to a three-minute video, if you shoot all in one place, you know, is that really going to share the story? And if you might want to change out the background, you might want to get the same person doing something else that's part of the B-roll where you're having it. The more that you shoot, the more that you continue to have when you actually get down to putting it all together, you're not going to think, oh, I missed that, or I forgot that. So thinking about that in advance is great. And this is just a reminder of, you know, the overcast we were talking about that. If you're going to be outdoors in the natural light, you really do want to pick a time of day that you still have daylight, but it's not over. It's not too bright. It's not sun. It's not overexposed. So that's something to definitely think about. When you go in indoors, don't shoot somewhere I am where you can have an echo. But you want to shoot somewhere, test the sound, test, make sure that you have permission, like I mentioned before, make sure that you have releases. You do need location releases as well. And think of the different places that you want to shoot and write all of that down. So I'm going to go through a few of the different shots here so that you guys have an idea because before you shoot, you're going to think about what you're shooting first, what you're going to shoot next. What kind of shots do you need to get in your video to make sure that you have the most impactful shot? So let's say that you're going to have a part of your video is a conversation in a restaurant, for example. So maybe you're going to first shoot the outside of the restaurant so that people know that the next scene you're going to be going in is going to have that conversation and then you might be shooting next inside the restaurant. And it's going to be a wide shot where you are going to move closer into the conversation, or maybe you've started closer and now you've decided to show the shot that is more wide and far away. So before you shoot, you want to create a shot list that you are going to say, okay, I need to get a shot of this location. I need to get a shot of this position. If you're shooting somebody that you're interviewing, don't just take their face. If you have a second camera even, maybe you're going to shoot some of their hand expressions and that would help if you ever had to cut out part of the conversation to cut down the space to trim it a little bit. Then instead of having a jump cut where you see them saying one thing and then they jump to a complete another thought and you can tell within the video that it's been cut, or maybe next now in between that you can now shoot. You can go get some of the photos that you had shot of their hand or of B-roll that actually complements what they're talking about. So other parts of the production is thinking about everything else that comes into it. So what is your budget? Like you said, we know that a lot of nonprofits, a lot of people that are starting their businesses aren't working with a major budget to go out and hire a whole camera crew to shoot this for. So thinking about that, and if it's just yourself that's doing this, you may get the help of other people but you want to consider based on your budget what are you going to have access to and what are you going to be able to shoot. We've looked at the equipment already, your location, the daylight hours as far as what time, give yourself enough time, give yourself enough days. Like how many days do you think you're going to shoot? Think about that in advance and jot all of those things down. So who's going to be your team also? There's going to be people in front of the camera and behind the camera that may need help. Is it just going to be yourself or do you have other people that can help you hold a second camera, can help you be hair and makeup? That's important to know, what do you even look like in your wardrobe? What are you actually going to be wearing or is that person going to be wearing? It's important to think about that just because you don't want to have, for example, any type of logo you may be that would not reflect what you're talking about or give marketing to another company that maybe didn't want it or she can be on there. So thinking about what the person has on or what you have on is very important too. In bigger budget of production, there's always food and meals at an event on there. You're going to take care of the people that you're spending the time with that day shooting. So considering that, even for yourself, make sure you put in that time you might want to give yourself a meal. And as you mentioned, what kind of shots are you going to be taking? And so this is just an example of the shot list. I know we talked about storyboarding and that can seem a little daunting for people. So I put a picture of a shot list here that you're really just talking about. You're writing down what type of shot you're going to take, where you're going to take it, and putting it in some milk. And if you can get that written down before you actually go shoot, that's going to help you feel a lot more comfortable before you pick up your camera. So you're going to do extreme wide shot of the storefront or the person's house or your company store or wherever you are that you're going to shoot. The next thing may be you're now going to do a close-up of the people that you are interviewing. And the one thing to also mention if you're doing an interview, and when they first start talking, a lot of times it's more of a medium shot where you can see from waist up as the interview or the information they're talking about gets a little bit more personal, gets a little bit intense. You'll notice that there's usually more of a close-up to them. So now it's just their face. So sometimes it even goes all the way into their eyes because you can see their emotion. So thinking about that is important too. So if you have a handheld camera, you might be moving the camera in a little bit closer as you continue to interview that person because that's going to connect and bring out that story a little bit more. This is sorry to interrupt on you here. I'm sorry, we are almost at the top of the hour. And I hate to interrupt because there's such great content coming in but I know we have more slides to get through. So folks, we recommend definitely checking out the slides that are in the deck. I do need to wrap us up though just to be respectful of people's time. And I'm sorry that we can't get through all of it but Miphi has examples of all of those shots she just mentioned and audio types and recommendations of where to get audio. So definitely look through the rest of her slides because there's a treasure trove of information in them and reach out to her at her Gmail that's on the screen and definitely check out the work that she's doing at the Eureka Loft. We'll share those links in the archive that you'll get that email within the next couple of days. Before we close out, I would love it if you could go ahead and chat in one thing that you learned in today's webinar that you will try to implement. We are still trying to answer some questions on the back end and we'll do our best to get through some more. But we want to know what you found most useful today and that you will hopefully share this with your friends and colleagues who could use this information in their own work. We will include the links that we've chatted out in those resources as well. And I want to remind you to please complete that post-event survey that pops up once the webinar ends. I'm sorry we don't have time to go into more questions with Neatay right now. So sorry I had to interrupt but I want to make sure that we get off the line on time for people who have to rest to other meetings. I would like to also invite you to come to our upcoming webinars and events because this is just the beginning as I mentioned at the front end. This is the first webinar of a series of four and we also have a full lesson plan that outlines these steps and shares these resources, has templates and sample model releases, and different resources for you to use to create your own videos. So join us for our next Story Makers webinar. It's on the 19th of April producing a successful video story from Sound is Green. That's the next step. So today's was on pre-production. The next one will be on the day of nuts and bolts. They'll be talking about how to set up your lighting, how to get those shots. And our presenters, we have somebody who is actually a film expert and then we have Mark Horvath who works with Invisible People, who films homeless people out on the street telling their own stories and talking about their lives and how they are not invisible. So if that's an issue you are interested in, I would love for you to join us for that one. Then we'll have a topic that's focused on public libraries but anybody is welcome to join talking about how to use Instagram more effectively. So if you have a lot of photos or if you want to be sharing your photos more as a community building effort, Instagram is a great place to do it so you can join us to learn about that. Then we'll have a webinar on the 28th on polishing your digital story to make it shine where you'll be able to hear from Nithi again. She'll be joining us on that one as well. And that we'll be talking about specifically photo and video editing, primarily video editing. So once you've got your footage, what do you do to edit it? What kind of tools can you use? And then how do you get it out there to your community? What are you doing to put it up on YouTube and tagging it so that it gets seen? So we'll be talking about that on the 28th. And then the last in our series will be on May 5th on photos specifically. So if you are still shying away from the video or not sure you're ready to take the leap into video, you can join us to learn how to use photos to tell your organization's stories, how to take a selection of photos and create a narrative from those. So a lot of terrific events and I recommend checking out TechSoup.org slash Storymakers for more on those local meetups and our curriculum where you can find online. Thank you so much Liz. Thank you so much Nithi for sharing your expertise today. Sorry we didn't get to go through all of it but definitely check out those slides. They were attached to the reminder and confirmation emails but you will get them again from me within the next couple of days. Lastly I'd like to thank our webinar sponsor ReadyTalk for providing the use of this platform so that we can present these webinars to you on a regular basis. If you are looking to provide webinars for your community you can check them out at TechSoup.org slash ReadyTalk as they are one of our donor partners and donate the use of their program for us to use as well as to you. Please take a moment to complete that post-event survey so we can continue to improve our programming. Thank you so much everyone and have a terrific day. Bye-bye.