Tellyjuice

The Art of Storytelling

We all love stories. Telling stories is an essential part of being human, and people everywhere, throughout history, have told and still tell stories. Whether it’s to recall history or to connect feelings. Telling stories helps us understand the world in which we live. We learn more about ourselves by experiencing the thoughts and actions of characters in a story brought to life through music, dance or dramatization. Storytelling is an art, a fantastic way to communicate, and in the right hands can be a powerful tool to educate, entertain and bring people together.

We at Tellyjuice pride ourselves on our storytelling. We understand the importance of a clear concise message in the work that we do for our clients. And it doesn’t matter if it is a thirty second trailer or a ten minute corporate video, our aim is to take the audience on an entertaining and insightful journey.

If we start from the point of a cinema movie trailer. You have just paid your 12, yes 12 pounds, to see the film that everyone is talking about. You get comfy and are confronted by 4 trailers tempting you to pay to see their respective offerings. Without giving the whole game away. The skill is to throw the best bits at you whilst promising to offer you more. This is this basic technique of creating promotional media trough concise story telling.

In most cases the skill of the television promo producer is to renew the content that is on offer. Try making a Frasier trailer from say; series 7 episode 8 of show that is 15 years old. What new angle will sell that? It is a challenge. The art of promo making is putting a spin on what everyone has already seen and quantified.

Another skill is selling a difficult message. TellyJuice were asked by Greenpeace to create a funny film that dealt with the negative effects of coal fired power stations. That’s a tricky brief. But we give thanks for the power of the pun, as the spin we took was to create an evil villain character called Coalfinger. Once we had created him the story was not so tricky. An evil baddie who’s life long mission was to pollute the world with coal power stations. So with a James Bond theme we created a funny animated film that took a serious story and delivered it in an entertaining way.

The high priestess of promotional media is television adverts. Compelling the viewer to emotionally buy into a product or service in a 30 second story is exceptionally tricky. Many products adverts have crashed and burned with the viewer being bored, annoyed or simply switching over. A lot of ads however have been a welcome addition to the viewing experience with notable ones placing themselves firmly in the realms of the ‘classic ad’. The Meerkat series of ads has sustained its originality and propelled the brand to dizzying heights, through great story telling and excellent production.

Like all good stories, promotional media stories need to be concise and focused. Left field approaches should always be considered if only to access the message in alternative light thus giving options to solutions.  Entertaining approaches to messages whilst always keeping in mind the key message; will engage audiences and hold attention. And finally less is indeed more! It is always great to leave the end viewer wanting more. Always leave a party early, everyone will wonder if you are going off to a better doo and want to come to.

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