In this week’s episode of The Ministry Growth Show, we’re continuing a series where we are sharing our thoughts and insights on all things brand, marketing, and storytelling. Today, we’ll be discussing the first phase of our documentary storytelling process, Pre-Production. Pre-Production is a crucial piece to the documentary process, yet it’s often times the most overlooked stage. We need a clear plan of action when we set out to tell a strong and emotionally engaging documentary film. This is the process that we follow, and we hope it will help you tell your ministries next story well. [Link to the episode on our website] Relevant Resources: Documentary Storytelling (Pre-Production) – https://reliantcreative.org/courses/documentary-storytelling-pre-production/ #ministrymarketing #nonprofits #nonprofitmarketing #strategy #endstorypoverty #storiesmobilize
Transcription:
Welcome back to the ministry growth show. If you’re just joining us, we’ve taken a brake from our regularly scheduled interview based content and we’ve been going through a series where we’ve been sharing our thoughts on all things brand. The last three episodes were a series within a series where we explored all things related to story and storytelling. Today, we’re going to be talking about documentary storytelling or and the pre-production process.
To start things off today I’m going to start with a quote by Seth Godin. He says, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” I love this quote. For ministries, this quote might read, “Marketing is no longer about your services or statistics, by about the stories you tell.” God is at work in your ministry transforming lives. The opportunities to tell a beneficiary’s story, one that will engage with audiences are endless. Those are the stories that will engage with audiences and garner emotional engagement and response. We’ve talked at length in previous episodes about the need to tell these stories more often, about the state of story poverty that the Church finds herself in right no. You need to tell your beneficiaries story rather than the traditional ministry marketing videos or about us videos that talk about your ministries history, your ministries strategies or the statistics around your ministries cause. Give testimony to what God is doing through your organization. It will bring Him glory, and your ministry support.
Now, Documentary film production can be broken down into 3 phases or stages. Pre-production, production, and post production. In today’s episode, we’re going to cover pre-production. In the upcoming episodes we’ll explore production and post-production separately. If you want your story to engage with and relate to your audience, it’s important to follow all of these stages. Skip one of these stages and you’ll be hard pressed to come away with a successful film. This is actually one of the biggest mistakes we see with most films or video stories told within the ministry space. Ministries will often times skip out on the pre-production process, but without it, you’ll go into your film without any direction and it’ll be difficult to stay on track throughout the life of the project. We’ll walk through every stage and share the importance of each stage as we go.
Now, before we get started on pre-production, I want to quickly walk through a few of the documentary styles that you might want to use for your storytelling. There are a lot more documentary styles out there than the ones we’ll cover today, but these are the styles that will be most relevant in the ministry space. My goal for today is to simplify the process as much as possible so that you can actually start doing video production on your own, so keep that in mind as we work through this episode. It’s also important to note that the content found in this episode can also be found in our documentary storytelling courses, and those are accompanied by a list of downloadable resources you can use to learn and grow your skills. What we’ll talk about in this episode and the courses I just referenced is by no means exhaustive, but rather an attempt to simplify so you can use what you’ve learned to start actually make content. This content is a starting point, but it should be enough to get you moving in the right direction. Remember, the goal is to testify and share more stories more often.
Alright, documentary styles. The first is the docudrama. Now, to preface this style, this would probably be the most difficult and expensive style to use in the ministry space. Docudrama’s use scenes that are acted out to help tell the story. Think about any of the history channel documentary’s where a lot of the scenes are acted out. Docudramas can use interviews and talking heads, and b-roll like a traditional documentary, but they also add dramatized scenes to depict what’s being said in the interview. World Vision will be releasing a docudrama soon that I think is going to change film in the ministry space. The film is incredibly powerful and uses scenes that are acted out in conjunction with interviews and b-roll. Now, in most cases I’m not going to recommend national partners and missionaries who are still learning video take this documentary style approach. It can be a very time intensive, and expensive process, requiring significant planning and logistics. There are a lot of challenges that come with this style of documentary and this shouldn’t be the style of documentary you’re pursuing in almost all cases. Even when we travel and tell stories at a high production value, we are always very hesitant to tell stories with this style. There are often too many moving parts to tell this style of documentary in the short window of time we usually have when we travel. Don’t get me wrong, the results can be incredible, but be warned that this style comes with the most challenges.
The second style is the talking head documentary. The talking head style gets its name from the fact that you’ve got a talking head or interview that drives the story. B-roll is often used to break things up a bit so that the viewer isn’t just staring at someone talking on screen for the whole film. If you’re taking on documentary storytelling for the first time, focusing on beneficiaries testimonies, this is going to be the style we recommend in most cases. This style will get you in the habit of producing content and sharing stories with the fewest moving parts. It’s definitely the style we’ll recommend as you get started.
And then the last style I want to point out is expository documentary. This is where you’ve got a VoiceOver narration that addresses an issue. Since there isn’t an interview, this style is filled with b-roll. In fact, b-roll often fills the entire film. Although, dramatized scenes can be used as well if you want to push the creative envelope.
Now, these styles are not hard and fast rules. We’ve mixed talking head and VoiceOver narration in films in the past. Feel free to play with the different styles to creatively get your message and story across to your audience. But generally speaking, these definitions serve as a good guide for the options available as you begin thinking about what stories you want to tell, and the best or often times the most cost effective ways of telling those stories.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can walk through the pre-production process. Every video project we do at Reliant, and really every successful documentary, starts with pre-production. Pre-production is the process by which we plan out the entire project. Pre-production is everything that happens up to the point where content is actually being created. For us, pre-production takes place long before we ever step foot in any given country to make a film, and we would argue that pre-production is the single most important step, and like I said, often times within the ministry space, the most overlooked step. If you want to tell an effective story, pre-production is crucial. For the purposes of today’s episode, I’m going to assume we are telling a character driven beneficiary story. So as we walk through today’s episode, just keep that in mind. There are other stories you can tell, and everything we talk about in this episode will be relevant to those other stories, but beneficiary stories are arguably the most powerful, and the area we like to focus when we work with ministries, so I’ll be focusing this course on a beneficiaries story as we work through the material.
The first step in the pre-production process is planning and it’s broken down into a list of necessary items. First, we want to find and define the story and the character or characters. Who is the beneficiary and what is their story? Any background information on the character that needs to be found is done during this point in the process. Now, we won’t be able to collect everything, but we want to find out as much as possible at this stage. More will be revealed once we meet the beneficiary, and even more will be revealed once they’re interviewed, but we want to gather as much as possible in this early stage. For those of you national partners or missionaries who are already living in country, you’ll likely have access to the beneficiary whose story is being told, so you can ask the necessary questions to get the full story from the beginning.
Once the story and character is defined we are planning locations and scenes based on what we know about the story. If you’re telling a child’s story, you might want to plan for a visit to their childhood home, or the village they grew up in. If they talk about the things they remember doing as a kid, plan to film those activities. We want to paint a picture for the viewer, and the better picture we can paint, the more successfully we’ll be able to relate stories across cultural lines.
Next, we want to find the plot. Just like the outline of an essay, a plot and storyline need to be decided on and an end goal or thesis needs to be determined as we work through this process. You can find some common storylines or plots in some of our storytelling courses or in a resource we’ve got on our site, but storylines of rescue or overcoming can be easily found within the ministry space.
Furthermore, what is the moral of the story? What message are you trying to portray? What’s the theme of the story? Once you’ve got the plot, you need to determine the theme. These are questions we want to ask and plan for during this process. Again, this may change once we get into the interview depending on how the character or beneficiary answers our questions, but we want to have a good idea going into the interview and make our best guestimations in the planning process.
Now that we’ve got these elements of the story, it’s time to determine who the audience is for this film? Even if the video may end up being seen by a wide range of people, there needs to be a specific target audience in mind. The more you can narrow your focus for your audience, the better. This might not end up having any impact on the actual story itself, but it will definitely affect your call to action and drive the purpose of the film.
Now, please don’t hear me say that we should be trying to find different stories for different audiences. If you’ll remember back to some of our previous episodes, the Hero’s Journey is a story all humans relate to because it’s the story of all of our lives. A story of transformation coming from a beneficiary who lives in Sudan is going to relate to a western audience, because we all share similar stories of transformation. That’s why we encourage ministries to find and tell their beneficiaries stories, those are the stories that will engage and connect with audiences, rather than talking about your ministry tactics on video and calling it a story. The point is to understand your audience, and more specifically understand where their attention is. We need to know where that audiences attention is in order to share our stories in the right places. Where will this story end up or land or be placed so that it will get seen by our intended audience?
Who are we trying to reach with this story is more about where that audiences attention is. I’ve stated multiple times throughout the course of these branding and storytelling episodes, we are not trying to be all things to all people. Simon Sinek talks about the silliness of market research. He says, I wouldn’t go to my best friend and say, “how can I change so that you’ll like me more?” Henry Ford might’ve said it the best when he said, “if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” I believe market research has a place, but the point of market research is not to determine how our brands can change or tell stories so that our audiences like us more, the point is simply to determine where our perceived audience’s attention is focused. The question you want to ask is, “where and how does my audience interact with and consume content?”
Alright, let’s get back to the original question, who is my audience for this film? The question should really be, where does my audience focus their attention and then we’ll tell the story in that place under that context. We are not pandering in our storytelling to an audience. The goal is to say, this is who we are. This is our story. This is what God has done. And those who believe the same things will come alongside your brand. Your stories carry your beliefs to the world. They are the catalyst that brings your beliefs to world so you can attract an audience that shares the same beliefs. But, the context in which we share them should be determined by where the audience attention is focused. Your story shown on an Instagram story should look different then that same story shared on Facebook or at a live gala event. Facebook and Instagram have their own context. TikTok has a completely different context. Video consumed on YouTube is consumed differently than it is on TikTok.
The next question you’ll want to ask is what action do I want the viewer to take after viewing this video? Most of the time this will be pretty straight forward. Pray, volunteer, give. These are all of the calls to action we all are familiar with, so I won’t go into it in detail, but the question to that answer needs to be determined within the pre-production process. What is your call to action?
Now, I want to say something about the call to action. What would it look like to story-tell without a call to action every single time? In a day and age where everyone is asking for funds for something, where you can run a GoFundMe campaign for your cats medical bills, people are getting a little fatigued with always being asked. I’ve said this before, and you’ll continue to hear me repeat it, there is intrinsic value in sharing the story of a transformed life. It brings glory to God, and provides value to a potential donor when they are emotionally engaged with a story of God’s redemptive work. What if we told these stories of transformation on a more regular basis, without asking for funds every single time? If we can get national partners and missionaries telling stories for ministry headquarters more regularly, without a financial ask tied to the story, when you do ask for funds your donor will appreciate the value you’ve provided in the stories you’ve told that didn’t have an ask tied to it at the end. So, back to my last question, what action do I want the viewer to take? The question should really be, what value can I provide to my donor?
And the last step in the planning process, and this is tied to what we just talked about, but we need to determine the format for our story. How long should the video be? What’s the viewing attention span of my audience? If the video is presented in a live venue, the attention span will be much longer than if it’s seen as a Facebook ad. Likewise, if the target audience is existing donors, then their attention span will be much more lengthy than a viewer who has no familiarity with your brand. Someone unfamiliar with your brand might need shorter content that grabs attention faster than a piece of long form content that might fit better being shared with an audience who already follows you.
What should the aspect ratio be? Most video is 16×9, but 9×16 (or a vertical video) is more appropriate in some instances like TikTok or Reels on many of the most popular platforms. Will the story be viewed as an instagram story? As a Facebook video? As a twitter post? Based on this, what should the aspect ratio be? If instagram story, then vertical (portrait) video will be best. If it’s a Facebook ad, then horizontal (landscape) will be best. If unsure, always default to a horizontal aspect ratio for video. The format of your video is almost always determined by where it will be posted. Again, we’re going back to where the audience’s attention is. That will determine where the content lands, and therefore the format we use.
These are the types of questions we want to ask as we work through the pre-production stage. The questions aren’t complicated, and you can probably ask and answer them within a couple of minutes in most instances, but they need to be asked, and there should be an answer to all of these before you move into the production phase.
The next step in the pre-production process is script-writing, and like planning before it, we’ve got a list of items that are required in this stage. We know who our character is from our planning step, and we’ve probably got a pretty good idea of their story at this point, especially if you’re on the ground working with this individual. The script-writing stage is where we want to start putting our characters story down on paper and developing a rough structure. Here’s where The Hero’s Journey is going to come into play. If you’ll remember back to our storytelling episodes, I said that the reason we like to encourage ministries to follow a structure is because it allows them to plug and play and create content with greater regularity. If you have a structure that you can plug your stories into or filter your stories through, you’ll be able to push content out with greater regularity, and since The Hero’s Journey is a story arc that all humans live through and engage with across cultures, it’s the perfect structure to follow because you can be guaranteed it’ll emotionally engage an audience.
So, as we are script-writing, what are the pieces that we’ll need from our character or our beneficiaries story? As a side note, we will tackle script-writing in greater detail in an episode completely dedicated to scriptwriting. We also walk through this structure in pretty good detail in a few of our previous episodes. It’s all rooted in The Hero’s Journey, but we are following Dan Harmon’s Story Circle version as it’s a bit more simple to apply in the documentary setting, where we don’t have the timeframe of a feature length film to tell a super in depth story.
So, if you’ll remember from our last storytelling episode, we need to establish a character. We should already have that character from our planning process. That character has a desire or a want, or something that they need to accomplish. In the ministry setting that could be a desire to get out of the situation in which they live. Step 3 in the process is called Go, and this is where the character decides to start on a journey in order to pursue the thing that they need. Step 4 is called search, where the character is looking for the thing that they needed or wanted back in step 2. This step in the journey will be where they run into different challenges struggles. Moving on in the process we arrive at find. This is where the character literally gets what they were looking for. Joseph Campbell called this, “meeting with the goddess,” but simply put, the character finds what they were looking for.
We now move onto the most difficult part of the story. The character gets what they were looking for, but they pay a price for it. This usually takes place right after the climax of the story, but it’s the hardest part of the story for the character and it’s usually the lowest point of the story for the character. Moving on from Take we arrive at Return. The character is back where they started and they pass back into their ordinary world and finally we arrive at Change. The character arrives back in their ordinary world, having Changed. And they can now apply what they’ve learned in the special world to their ordinary world.
Again, I went into more detail in the previous episodes how this is relevant within the ministry setting, but in a future episode I’ll dive into greater detail and dedicate an entire episode to scriptwriting. I’ll walk through this structure in even greater detail showing an example of how we can fit a beneficiary’s story into this structure, and then I’ll show you how you can ask the right questions in your interviews to pull the necessary answers out of your beneficiaries so that your stories can fit into this structure.
Now, as I’ve walked you through this, remember that we are still in the pre-production phase. This first stage of the script is going to be a rough cut. It doesn’t have all of the details, as many of those will come out of the interview process, but we can build a general outline in this stage of the story and how it fits this structure.
The last step in the pre-production process is interview preparation. There are three primary things we need to focus on in this stage of the process. First, what questions are we going to ask? Second, what locations will you use for your interview? And third, what gear will you need for the interview?
First, the questions will be the single most important piece to your interview. They will serve as the guide for the conversation and they will help you pull the answers you need from your beneficiary in order to get the right information to fill the Hero’s Journey story structure. We’re not going to go into detail on the necessary questions in this episode, but we do have a few helpful PDF resources on our website that go into detail on the questions you should ask. There are different resources for the different types of stories and different lengths of stories you might tell, so be sure to check those free resources out. These resources will help you ask the right questions in order to get the desired answers. Here’s what I will say in regards to the questions. If you don’t know the character very well or if you’ve never met them before, try to spend some time getting to know them a little bit before the camera starts rolling. These kinds of questions can be difficult to answer with a camera in your face, for many people for the very first time. Furthermore, more often than not, beneficiaries are sharing stories that come with a lot of pain and sometimes trauma. You absolutely should get permission so we are not exploiting stories for our ministries benefit, that goes without saying, but it also will help to spend some time getting your beneficiary comfortable with the interview process.
The second thing we want to focus on in this stage is finding our interview location. If you’re in the pre-production stage while back home in the States, this obviously will be difficult. This stage might just be putting together a list of ideal locations to look for once you get in country. But, if you’re a national partner or missionary already in country, you should be able to plan out locations at this stage of the process. We want to look for locations that offer depth, good light, and often leading lines that point to or surround the subject in the frame of the camera. We’ve got a couple of photography courses on our site and we’ll have an upcoming podcast episode that all go into detail on depth and leading lines, but these elements will make for a more engaging interview. Don’t just put your subject up against a wall or cram them in a corner. We want to create depth, we want to lead the viewers eyes towards the subject, and we want to light our subject in a pleasing and dignified way. You’ll also want to try and find place that is relatively quiet, and if you’re going to conduct the interview in a room, make sure the room doesn’t come with an echo. That can wreak havoc for the editing team.
Lastly, we want to spend some time thinking about the gear we’ll need to execute on this interview well. If we have access to multiple cameras do we use all of them? What kind of audio equipment will we need to pull this interview off. Now, you may be limited in your gear so don’t let that be an excuse not to shoot. Use what you can and you can slowly work towards building up your gear list. We’ve put together a page on our website that can guide and help in the gear acquisition process. If you need help at all in figuring out what gear you need or walking through what to purchase, please don’t hesitate to ask and we can help guide in that process.
And that wraps up the pre-production process. We’ve got a great free resource on our website that highlights all of the different stages of the production process, so be sure to check that out. You can find all of our resources at reliantcreative.org/downloadable-resources/
Thanks so much for joining us today. We’ll see you in the next one.
