How to VLOG & Tell a Story (Vlogumentary).

In this video, I wanna go through story format and how you can use it when you're crafting your videos here on YouTube. So I'm gonna be digging into my video that's over on my second channel that's all about a climb I did in the North Cascades on a mountain called Mount Good. This was a pretty insane climb and I vlogged the entire experience, but it's not just your typical vlog where you turn on the camera and just shoot whatever's happening. I like to call these vlogumentaries, which have more of this documentary feel, but in a vlog format. And so in this video, we're gonna break down the story format that you typically see in like documentaries or feature films or just short little videos here on YouTube that do have more of a story. And I think using a story format when you're actually out filming is gonna really make your video stand out. You see all the biggest creators on this platform are now using story formats in their videos. They're not just turning on the camera and hitting record. And you also don't always have to have these crazy complex stories to have a format like this in your videos. Because I think one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to creators using story is they think they have to have this big, huge thing that they're gonna do and they build a story around it versus making videos every week and then including story in those videos. It's definitely something you can do. It's accessible to everyone and you just have to understand the components and the traditional story arc and then start fitting story into the videos that you are creating. Now this video does not have a sponsor. However, this channel is supported by viewers like you. And the cheapest and easiest way to help support this channel is just by hitting the subscribe button and hitting the like button. Especially if you wanna learn how to make better videos. But if you do want some more exclusive in-depth training then head over to the creatorfilmschool.com and that's where I have all my classes around making better videos and building a YouTube channel. And you can purchase each course individually or sign up for the membership which is less than the cost of a coffee per month. So let's go over the basic story format and once you see this format you'll see it again and again in videos that have a story. And so the basic story formula goes like this. You start with an introduction. It goes to what's called an inciting incident and then there's rising action to a climax and then there's a resolution. So these are the essential building blocks to making a story. And we're gonna go through each one and explain kind of the big overarching picture and then how I used it in this specific video so you could see how you could use this in your vlogs. So the first part is an introduction and this comprises of your hook and your backstory and any information that the audience needs to know before they get into the story and what you're doing for this one episode or this one video. So on YouTube you need to have a hook that's engaging. Something that's gonna grab your viewer's attention. This could be just a sample of what's to come in the video. I've seen a lot of creators do just quick snippets of kind of extreme things that are going on. Another method is just to tell your audience exactly what to expect from this video and this style works on YouTube because you are trying to grab someone's attention. You see Mr. Beast use this all the time where he tells you exactly what you're gonna see in the video and that's the whole idea of the hook is you wanna grab someone's attention and get them to think, well, what's gonna happen in this video? And so another way you could do this is just pulling a section out of the video. Maybe it's like 15 seconds towards the climax of the video or something that happened that's pretty extreme and you're just building up to this moment and then you cut off and then start the video back over. And so you're giving people a glimpse into what's to come but you're not actually giving them enough information so they wanna know what's going to happen. So for the introduction of my climbing video, what I did was just give a quick overview of the mountain that I'm trying to climb and my objective. Perched at the top of a treacherous peak deep in the mountains of Washington, no official trail to it, lies a tiny lookout that can fit a handful of people and this is where we wanna camp for the night. And so I set up a lot of different story beats in this first section and so it sets up, well, what's gonna happen on this climb? Now, looking back at this after I've already published this video, watched it a few times, I could've done this intro much better. It's a nice, quick intro that kinda tells you everything that you need to know but I kinda give away what happens versus setting up a bigger question right at the intro. So instead of showing us on the mountaintop sleeping up there, which is kinda the goal of the video, I should've had a moment where we might've been like hanging off the cliff and there's like some issue happening. So if we were hanging off the cliff and I found a moment where I said something like, can we get past this section or I don't know where we're going or something like that to just set up like, well, are they gonna make it? That would be a better hook. So storytelling takes practice and you're gonna be consistently evolving your storytelling and you're gonna look back at your videos and realize that, well, you could've done something a little better but with storytelling, it's all about just putting in the reps and just continually practicing the craft of actually telling stories. Now, also in the introduction, you wanna set up who the characters are and what's happening. So a lot of times, this is the exposition that somebody needs to be able to jump into your story. When you're creating videos here on YouTube, one of the assumptions is that you're making videos for your subscribers who know who you are. And yes, that is a portion of your audience but if you wanna grow a channel here on YouTube, every one of your videos wants to be engaging to the point where a random person can fall into that video and then know exactly what's going on and want to watch the video. You don't wanna just make videos for your subscribers. And so the introduction with this exposition of telling who you are is super important for those random people who stumble across your video. And so this is setting up who you are, what your channel's about, what the video's about, what someone needs to know to be able to jump into the story. And so if you are someone who is a vlogger, this is your moment to really just give someone backstory of whatever it is that you do on your channel. So if you're someone who has, say, a food channel and you're trying to find the most unique foods in every city that you go to, well, instead of just starting the video and jumping into the restaurant of this weird place that you're going, you would set up that this is what your mission is, is to go to these different cities and find the weirdest food because now somebody knows exactly what your channel's about without having to actually dig into your channel. Or, for example, if you're a vanlifer and you're going across the U.S. from one side to the other, well, you could set up right at the intro that you're living out of your van and you're trying to get yourself to this location and it's gonna take this amount of time and you can add all this information that's just gonna catch someone up to exactly what this moment is before the story of the specific video starts. And so for my climbing video here, it's more of a one-off video. It's not that I'm doing a series on this channel because my second channel has kind of a variety of content. But still, I needed to set up what this video was about and so I set up not only my history of climbing but the history of this mountain and all the information that you need to know about this mountain so that when we get to the moment where we actually start the journey, you're up to speed and you're ready to go. Now, this peak has been on my radar for a while, but I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Growing up, I always dreamed of climbing mountains and six years ago, I booked a six-day expedition to Mount Rainier in Washington. On that trip, I met a group of climbers and every year, we take on new challenges and new peaks. We summited the tallest mountain in Mexico. I got altitude sickness on a peak in Ecuador and we've explored all over the North Cascades, which brings us to our newest goal, Mount Good. This mountain is the highest peak in the North Cascades National Park, standing at 9,220 feet tall. And even though that might seem short for a mountaineering objective, this peak is not an easy trip. This mountain can't be seen by any road. It's deep in the national park and we have to hike a total of 36 miles in and out. And once we finally get on the mountain, we have to deal with waterfalls, glaciers, and the biggest challenge is a 3,000 foot rock wall to get to the summit. To put that into perspective, that's about the same size as El Capitan in Yosemite, which is higher than two Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. And one of the hardest aspects of this climb is that we have to carry all of our gear on our back because we go up one side of the mountain and come down the other. And that brings us to the next part, which is the inciting incident. And this is kind of that moment that you start on the journey or that thing that pushes you on the journey or the first time something happens in the story that pushes you down the path that this video's gonna be about. So the easy way to think about this is the hero's journey. Character is living in their normal life, kind of just average day-to-day life, and then something happens that pushes them on a journey. That thing that pushes them on the journey is that inciting incident. And sometimes these can be a big thing that's gonna push you on a journey of this video, and sometimes it's just what makes you go on this journey. It could also just be a moment where you set up what the goal is of this video. And this is typically what you're gonna see in a YouTube video. So for example, Ryan Trahan with his Penny series, this is that moment where he tells you what his idea for a money-making method of that video is, and then you start going on the journey. So it's kind of that moment that sets up, well, what's the rest of the video going to be about? If you're working on big feature films, documentaries, there's typically an inciting incident that changes your character's trajectory. But for a YouTube video, it might not be this huge, big moment that happens, and it might just be as simple as setting up exactly what this video is gonna be about and what your objectives are for this video. So for this climbing video that I was making, the inciting incident is setting up that we're trying to camp on the summit of this mountain. This basically gives us that objective, and it tells us where we're going in the video. So this first part of your video could be super short and super fast, or it could be a little bit longer with more backstory and bringing your audience up to speed with what's going on. But between the introduction and the inciting incident, this is everything you need to know before you start your journey. And so you could have an introduction that's super quick, like a Mr. Beast video, or you could have it a little bit longer that has more backstory to get your audience up to speed with what you're doing in the bigger picture. But either way, you wanna have all of the elements within the first part of your video. You wanna hook someone, you wanna give them enough information so that they know what's going on before you start on the journey, and you also wanna set up what the goal is, or the objective, or the big thing that pushed you on your journey for this video. And that brings us to our next section, which is the rising action. And so this is like the main part of your video. This is everything that happens. This is what most people turn on the camera, start recording, but don't set up what they're about to go do. And this is like all the stuff that actually happens. And so you wanna look for where you're going, and everything that stands in your way from you to make that objective. And so something to think about when you're creating this section of your video is what are the challenges that stand in your way of getting that main objective? So for my climbing video, it was the hike, it was the different rivers that we were crossing, it was the bugs and the places that we had to sleep, the waterfalls we had to climb, and then ultimately the big thing that stood in our way was this 3,000 foot rock wall. And so one of the things that you wanna keep in the back of your mind is, well, what's gonna happen next? And you wanna keep posing that question to your viewer. So you want things to come up in your video that stand in your way of being able to move forward towards your objective. But this is also the section where you take the viewer on the journey and explore whatever it is that you're exploring or go wherever you're going. But you always wanna have that carrot dangling in front of what is the goal and are you making progress or are there things that are pushing you away from actually achieving your goal? Now the next section of your video is gonna be your climax. And typically this is the most intense part of your video or the most exciting part of your video. This is where you are actually achieving that thing that you set out at the beginning of the video. And so you can think of it like the most intense part of the video. We're standing on the wall, we're confronting this huge 3,000 foot rock wall. Are we gonna make it, are we not? We get to the summit and then we actually achieve our goal of getting onto the summit. Halfway up the rock face, I realized just how insane this climb is. That's when the fear set in. Heights have never been an issue for me, but clinging to this rock with the only protection being the rope between me and Derek made my heart skip a beat. I had to take a minute and refocus my attention to the mountain because I'm four hours up a rock wall and there's no easy way off. This is the last few steps. You can do it. Woo-hoo! And so now that we've finished the story, we've achieved our goal of standing on this mountaintop, well, the video's kind of over and you don't wanna drag on too much after this moment because your audience was set up with this goal of getting to the summit of this mountain and then now that you're here, you don't want to just drag on another 10 minute video that has nothing to do with that goal that you set up at the beginning of the video. So the resolution is the moment when you wrap up the story in a nice, neat little bow. Now this would be that moment where you would say, in conclusion, da-da-da-da-da, but in a YouTube video, you really don't wanna have this big, long ending that drives your viewer away and then drops your average view duration. So a lot of times, what this moment is used for, especially here on YouTube, is just a moment to kind of wrap up everything, maybe give your biggest takeaway from this experience, something that transformed you if this was a big, life-changing experience or just something the audience can take away from what you've learned going through this journey. For me, the resolution, especially on a video like the mountain climb, is a moment to take what I've done, connect it to the viewer and something that they could take away in their lives. And the channel Yes Theory does this all the time. If you look at the ending section of any one of their videos, they kind of wrap up the story that they went through but then connect it to all of us on a global scale versus just something that happened in the story. So the resolution you can think about as answering questions or finding a takeaway or connecting it to everyone on a broader scale and making the journey or the story bigger than just the one video that you're in. Now, not every video that you create will have this huge, big resolution but something to think about when you're making your videos. And so this is the resolution that I used for this video. We climbed the mountain and made it to the summit but in reality, we're only halfway. After a short celebration, we boiled some water for dinner and slept on the summit. It's only enough room for the five of us and we had to hang our packs off the side. From here, it's two more days of down climbing, rappelling, bushwhacking and after that, another 16 mile hike to get out of the forest. So why climb? These types of challenges puts the rest of life in perspective. You'll never know your limits until you meet them head on and push past them. We all don't have to be climbers to experience this but we should all find something that will challenge us and push us to our limits. Now, this resolution for me was about the last minute of the video. I could have chopped this down to even 30 seconds. I don't think your resolution needs to be super long and drawn out. I think you wanna have it quick so you don't lose your audience and have them click off to another video. And that's kind of the game that we're playing here on YouTube is that we wanna have quick introductions that get people up to speed and get into the video and then quick resolutions and quick endings so that we're not just dragging things out. If you're making something like a documentary or a feature film or a longer piece that's not geared towards a YouTube audience, well, these moments will be more stretched out and there'll be more information on the introduction and there'll be longer outros on the resolution. And so now you can see the whole basic story structure which is introduction, something that happens or a goal that you set that sets you on the journey, the entire video, the rising action, all the conflicts, your climax, the final moment, the final thing that you're challenging you to get to your goal, and then the final resolution where you achieve the goal or the big thing happens in the video and then there's some takeaway for the audience or you answer the questions that you set up at the beginning of the video. Seems complicated at first, but when you start watching videos, start looking for this format and you'll start seeing how different creators use story structure and start finding those creators in your niche that create stories and start applying those techniques to the videos that you're creating to keep a more engaged audience. Now next, you should check out this video right here which goes through theme which is another important storytelling technique that you should be using in your videos. I'll see you over there.