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Welcome to "Producify Stories: Unveiling the Art of Storytelling," the podcast that delves deep into the world of storytelling across industries. Join us as we explore how the power of storytelling is harnessed by storytellers, business development professionals, diversity, equity, and inclusion managers, and all other creative minds in the business world.
In each episode, we sit down with inspiring guests from various backgrounds and professions, ranging from renowned storytellers to corporate leaders and content creators. Together, we uncover the fascinating ways storytelling intertwines with their work and industry, shedding light on the art of crafting narratives that captivate, engage, and drive results.
Discover the secrets behind effective storytelling strategies that leave a lasting impact on your audience. Whether you're an aspiring storyteller, a business professional seeking to elevate your communication skills, or simply someone who appreciates the magic of a well-told tale, "Producify Stories" is your go-to source for insightful conversations and valuable insights.
Join us on this journey as we unravel the art of storytelling, one captivating story at a time. Subscribe now and embark on a storytelling adventure that will transform the way you connect, engage, and inspire in your personal and professional life.
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So I'm super excited. We are going to talk about, we've been talking about storytelling and I have a super gifted storyteller on the show today. And we are going to talk with Mary Olive Smith and an incredible documentary filmmaker, as well as some, some incredible corporate storytelling videos. But, you've created documentaries for PBS, Discovery, National Geographic.
Nova, these things have been on, on, on Netflix and you've even, you've won an Emmy for, for the documentary, called, a walk, sorry, a walk to beautiful. So talk to me a little bit about just going in and crafting a story. I mean, some of these things that you've created with, with, for discovery and PBS, like, how does it start? How do you start with storytelling? Do you, do you craft it? Like, where do you begin?
I was fortunate enough to have a boss who was a professor at the film school at Columbia University School of Fine Arts. I was getting a master's in international affairs, but I took classes at the journalism school, which has one very particular way of doing, of telling stories. And they do use the word stories. You use that in the news media, but it has to be unbiased fact -based as much as that can exist. Well, this...
guy from the film school comes over and he brings in the art side of it, right? And we're in filmmaking is an art and there's no such thing as unbiased and bringing the camera into the room immediately creates a bias. And we started exploring all these interesting ideas. It was no longer quite just about getting the story, right? So he helped you understand that just by the fact that you're being there, you're altering reality, right? You're changing things.
And a really good journalist has to know that too. So depending on whether I'm storytelling as a journalist or an artist, an artist filmmaker, depends on who I'm talking to and what my subject is and what my outlet is, right? Because you might have different standards for yourself or in the industry, depending on where it's airing, right? But the beauty of having him as a professor and then a boss is that we went about making documentaries as if we were making narrative films, thinking about,
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three -act structures and more importantly, five -act structures. That's kind of a structure that I ended up embracing as a filmmaker early on. Or that's a structure of storytelling where you have a beginning, middle, and end in your typical book, fairy tale, or Hollywood fashion. Or you take it a little deeper into a five -act structure and think about
how you're leading up to your climax and how you're falling off the climax and what your resolution is. These are ideas that go back centuries. I mean, they exist in, if you study folklore, you can learn about this kind of storytelling. And oddly I had an apartment mate who was writing a book on folk tales. So it's interesting that when you really think about storytelling, it's across so many different genres.
And I love thinking about it like that. Even if it's a journalistic approach, I would still want to tell a good story, right? I still want it to be entertaining and interesting and have a good beginning, middle and end. And so all of our television shows, when you were, we had to break them into acts for commercials. So there was a point where there were four commercial breaks and then therefore you have your, there you have your five acts right there built into the hour, right?
And so it lent itself to that, believe it or not. And you would think about things like cliffhangers, because you're going to commercial break. And we're really back to that, right? I mean, in streaming, let's face it, commercials, you can pay a lot more to get rid of them. And I suppose creatively that can create some problems. Like do we put a cliffhanger here for their commercial break or do we keep it going because some people won't have that commercial break? Those are all things to think about.
How do you open? That has changed over the decades, right? That has been, it used to be we needed a tease and then we needed a long show intro and then people got impatient with that. And so we cut the chase, maybe started 10, 12 years ago and everyone started going with the cold open, right? Show comes up and you're right into the action. And then maybe you have a 10 second title or even less, right? So.
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All those things are interesting to consider and they're all impacted by where your outlet is. I say outlet meaning whether it's broadcast or streaming or a film festival, right? Or a webcast thing. I mean, what's its purpose? Is it going to social media? All those things you have to think about when you're storytelling, but in the end, you're still trying to tell a good story and hold an audience. And so it's fun to debate all the different ways that
you may or may not want to stick with that traditional five act structure or three act structure. Maybe do you give it all away at the beginning so you don't lose your audience? It can be fun to debate that academically, but in the end, you're really just hashing it out in the edit room, right? I think how you want to start and how I end it, but then you may surprise yourself by flipping everything on his head. And I think it's always good to know kind of the rules so that you can break them. Right, right. I love it. And it's funny that you, the way you mentioned it with
the cliffhangers and keeping people engaged. And when, when you were creating a story where you knew that the, you were going to cut to commercial at these sort of four spots. And, you know, from a corporate standpoint, people will always ask me, or like an ad standpoint, cause you create stories for ads as well. And people will ask, well, well, you know, how long should a video be? And, and, and this, that, and the other thing.
And it always comes down to like, for me, when I'm discussing with somebody about like, especially, if there's a, the purpose is, an ad or something like that, or for somebody to do something, it's usually, well, you should have your call to actions throughout your video, right? And you should have, you should be telling somebody what they should do or where they should go or, or whatever it is that you want them to take from that video. Every five seconds, every five seconds or so, or, or you, you should be driving, helping somebody navigate.
what it is that action is and seems similarity wise in just creating a documentary or creating a story. So it was interesting that you kind of brought that up. You're dealing with the tension spans, right? You don't have the captive listener where you're reading the book to them and telling them the scary story and you're gonna have their attention to the very end. You hopefully have that in a movie theater.
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And that's one thing about losing movie theaters is are we gonna lose that kind of experience and that kind of storytelling? I hope not. But yeah, there's a, you're right, you kind of want the exciting stuff in there all the way through. And also with surfing and on the web or on television or wherever you're watching, you don't want to lose them, right? And if they're only there for 10 seconds, do you want them to get your ad?
You want them to get your logo or whatever it is you're selling. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's, it's an incredible time as a storyteller where, you know, now somebody can have an iPhone and they can have, I mean, there used to be a limited amount of cameras I felt like, and all of them were crazy expensive. and you needed teams to run these things. and of course you still need teams where, you know, but, it,
with the outlets and distribution channels. There was only so many distribution channels and now with just social media or YouTube or TikTok, anybody can sort it. I don't want to say anybody. I hate when we say the word anybody, but everybody has the opportunity to create a story it feels like now, nowadays. Unless they're still out in the rural America without, talking about our country, without high bandwidth internet, trying to change. And then...
But even, you're right, even around the world, this is a lot of organizations who are trying to affect change and develop in countries around issues. There's nothing like a cell phone, you know, or even an iPhone. If they have internet, then they can tell their own stories right there in the remotest parts of the world that we used to not hear from, or we used to have to have the person from our country go and...
interview and be our hosts. Now we can hear directly from people around the world. That's pretty exciting. So I want to talk about crafting a story and I know, I mean, there's a lot I know that you can talk about, but there's like, I wanted to talk about getting people comfortable on camera. And, and I know that you've filmed various types of people from the document, from being
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in Ethiopia and being in Baltimore, in the inner city in Baltimore to corporate shoots that we've been on for tech companies and, you know, giant law firms. How do you get these people comfortable on camera? We always hear, this person's camera is shy. They're not going to open up. Can you kind of give a window into that experience and how that works?
Sure. And it's changed over the years as people had more exposure to cameras, but you'll still get plenty of people who are nervous, even if they've seen camera or been in front of cameras. But for me, I like to, I always think about my first boss that I had right out of college. For five years, I was working on a radio show and it was a hosted talk show and it was in Washington, DC at a think tank. So we were...
The host was discussing international affairs and culture and kind of an academic thing. It was based at the Smithsonian Institution. And I was the recording engineer at the time. That's how I got my sound experience and an associate producer. And he was so good. And everyone who came into his office, some of the most prominent people to people you've never heard of, always left just feeling so appreciated.
You know, and that was because he was so gracious and he read every book that he asked people about. He took time researching their background. And when people ask him, why, how are you so good as an interviewer? He said, because I'm sincerely interested or sincerely listening. And so I find that whether you have an interest,
in law, some corporate law thing, or in, I don't know, scuba diving, you know, or archeology, whatever. People do so many interesting things around the world. And I find when I get to go and learn about what they do and what gets them going and what excites them and what they hate and what's their favorite, what's their least favorite. I mean, it doesn't matter what they do. I find it's just, it's a, it's a...
honor for me to get to delve into their stories. And so I basically just try to really have that focused listening, which I have to say I'm not always good about as good at in Perk as a, in real life. I talk a lot, you know, I like the gab, we're sharing ideas, but it also feels good just to be quiet and to listen and to give people my sincere interest.
So that was a very, that was a way too long -winded answer for that question. The second thing is chatting them up while the crew's getting ready, if you can. And sometimes if I'm the crew, I'm chatting them up while I'm setting up the lights and I'll see, I'm just checking the sound or checking the light, I'm not recording and then get them going and get them more comfortable. And sometimes I'll even show them their image if they're really not that familiar with the camera. And after a while,
People, you'll see them just take a deep breath and just relax into it. There have been times that I've just turned on the camera and then told them afterwards because I thought they were doing so relaxed and going. Well, is there a way that you approach each subject to best capture that essence of that human spirit? I obviously do some background research on the topic.
so that I'm not coming in ignorant and people really appreciate that. You know, I think even if it's something for corporate purposes, you ought to know what's going on. But then just really give people a chance to share what they know and sometimes ask them in multiple ways, letting them know that for your purposes, you might ask it differently because you might use it different in the edit room, but what you're really doing is giving them another chance to say it better, more complete or...
So you'll have the pieces to add on. So what I'm doing in my head during that whole time is I'm listening to do I have the story? And that's also to answer your question. If I'm in charge of the whole piece, I'm going into this with an idea of the story that I want. It's documentary and that I'm hopefully being open to the story changing or to whatever's going to happen. But if you don't go unprepared and know kind of what you need,
You might do this interview and leave and say, no, I forgot to ask such and such or no, they never said that. And now I'm not using a narrator. So how am I going to tell that part of my story? So you don't, I don't script it, but I do write an outline. I write my questions based on what I want. And my script to be, and actually I do rough scripts sometimes where I say expert says such and such about this and I'll build the script.
knowing that I have to fill in at certain parts and then I'll write my interview questions based on what I'm going to show in there. Right? That's when you're really - Okay, so you got your list of questions that you're going to ask, and then you've already got some bullets of ideal answers that you would get from them? More like for, I have a small client right now that is a literacy advocacy group in New York City. Okay. And they are getting...
education for disadvantaged neighborhoods for kids with dyslexia. So I have learned their mission. I have read their grant proposals. I have talked to them and I know what kind of message they want to get across. So they want to send a message just like Coca -Cola does, right? You're basically doing a promo videos a lot like a commercial for their cause so that they can go fundraise. So basically for this, before I could really write my interview questions, I wrote,
rough script of what the promo video would be. That how I would open it, how I would close it. And I had to do that so that I would know what pieces I needed to film. What B -roll do I need? How am I going to get from here to here? How am I going to tell this story for them, right? They know their message, but they have no idea how to translate that into video. And how do you do that in a way that's going to be, you'll have a character that people care about and a storyline that people care about. So I actually wrote a script.
It's very rough, it's not in detail what people say, but it kind of gives the idea. And that way I give that to the client. They know if I've got their message right. And then if I do, then when I'm in the interview, I might work harder at getting a specific thing out of them, right? So yeah, I kind of know I need something like this. I don't say, I try not to ever say, can you say this? You try not to put words in people's mouths, but there may be a time if we have a motto at the end, I'll say, will you say the motto for me?
like my modern moving image that moves the world. And they'll say, sure, all right, say it formally, say it three times, three different ways. And you can do fun stuff with that, you know. But yes, well, I have a script, a structure, and an interview, questions after that. And I don't always write the script first, but I at least have it sort of mapped out of my head when I write the interview questions, you know what I mean? I know better how the story's supposed to go.
No, but you also said something that, that like I like because, I, I sort of do the same similar, similar thing with when I don't ask the question, when I'm asking a question and they don't give me whatever the ant, the response is, I know, I know that we can get something different or I know we can get maybe something that's a little bit more vulnerable. Cause I feel like for me to get great content, you've got to get somebody to get vulnerable. And it's the hardest thing to get somebody vulnerable most of the time when there's.
lights and cameras, and maybe there's like 10 people in that room. And they're in a suit and it is a corporation, you know? Right, right. So - I've got to be on message. And the PR person's next to you, right? Right. Talk about - And the PR person's next to you and maybe they're not even a high, like they're not, you know, the CEO or the president of the company. They're, you know, they have a boss and they're a little bit now self -conscious about what they're going to say, right? So getting vulnerable is -
really hard and one of the things I - Talking from the heart is hard. It's hard to talk from the heart when you're trying to throw the corporate line or get the mock message across. It is, it is. But even on the documentary side, there's still like the vulnerability is different now because you may be holding on to some pain that has really caused you pain or maybe even some of your family and loved ones don't even know the stuff that you've gone through.
And now here it is, like somebody's asking you these questions that maybe doesn't look like you and comes off like you. And you're like, who the heck are you to ask me that? You know? but what I, what I, just sort of break that, if they don't ask it, the answer it the right way is I just, I throw that in the back and I know that I'm going to ask that again in five to 10 minutes. And it seems like you kind of do the same thing or similar. Absolutely.
I'll put it a little, without looking down, I'll put a tick mark at it. Or same thing if we have a technical problem and I don't want to interrupt them, right? You know, you got to go back and get something again. So, absolutely. Or you want to go more in depth. Yeah. Like - They're too nervous. You know, sometimes in the beginning they'll be nervous and then they'll ease up.
And then I'll say, you know, you are just so on a roll now. Do you mind if we go back and ask those first couple of questions again, right? Yeah, that's great advice too, because I do that too. So somebody that's like, maybe they're in the same situation. They're trying to grab content. I won't correct somebody if I can tell they're nervous, especially if they're doing like the whole, where they say, you know a lot, or they start like maybe scratching their face or whatever it is. I let them cause.
go for it and I ask these questions that I know we're probably not going to use potentially, you know, waiting for that to break that ice. So then we can really get into it. And is that like, how do you go about it in your way? Absolutely. And I think I've mentioned to you in past conversations where the place I had the most difficulty breaking through that barrier was, it was in Baltimore.
And I've been to some pretty remote places. I've hiked into a hut four hours off any road in Ethiopia, deep down in the parts of the country where they have never been to a city, right? The capital city may as well be New York. They just have no concept of how far things are. And I am a person who's come in from their own city, maybe as much a foreigner as I am. And yet I could sit down with them,
you know, and have a cup of coffee and...
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I have to say, having grown up in the country, I find that being in rural areas, there's a certain comfort level and understanding that you have that does cross cultures. And I'm comfortable being out in fields and sitting on grounds. And obviously there are times when you're talking with women and it might be about childbirth or something that might be easier to break through. But basically my biggest challenge was in Baltimore where these guys.
were hired as violence interrupters and they were recruited as they got out of prison. So these are guys who are called OGs in the real sense of the world that they were former gangsters and they're in their 40s now and they're really kind of, maybe they're thinking about getting out, maybe they're not sure, but they need to make a living. And they're kind of identified before they get out as someone from, in the Baltimore's case, it's called Safe Streets, will approach them.
and talk to them about becoming a violence interrupter. And this means that your job will be canvassing the streets with the orange vest and helping diffuse arguments. You're not there to call the cops. You're not there to send people to jail. Quite the opposite. You're there to do what the police can't do and to do it before they can get here. The police usually don't come until there's already been a shooting, right? Only guys like these could go in and talk to people down.
and talk them out of shooting each other. And that's what they were doing. So I went down there, I was going once or twice a week and these are all men. There are women violence interrupters, but this group in Park Heights, Baltimore was all men and they were all black and they were as nice as they could be. Hugged me when I came in. They had been prepped by the city because they technically worked for the city of Baltimore.
And they knew what to say and they knew their stories that they would tell the media. Right. They kind of had created these canned stories of what their life was. Right. And they took me canvassing with them and I filmed them and I think they felt like after one or two days, they were rid of me. And then I'm like, wait, we just barely scratched the servers. What do you mean? That was all very polite and nice and thank you. But,
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I didn't have a story. I didn't have any violence interruption. I didn't really know what that was really like. And I wanted to experience it firsthand, which may have been ridiculous to think that I could, when of course that would maybe put my life at risk. But long story short, I ended up going for four months every week. And sometimes I would just sit there because nobody wanted me to go out with them. And I would just be up in the room while other guys are going out and...
I had to just build their trust really slowly. It took a very long time. The first day I got there, one of the violence interrupters son had just shot himself, committed suicide. So it was a really painful time to walk in, place to walk into. And you said the point about pain. I mean, their pain so deep, I'm not about to pry. I wouldn't even begin to try to push them to open up about things that were so painful to them.
Where I tried to push was understanding their care for the community and why it mattered, and why are you doing this? Why are you risking your life? And then that stuff comes out, right? The more meaningful personal stuff. So that was, I was anxious and nervous every time, but I tried to act cool like you, Joey, and just sit there. I would wear the appropriate clothes, you know, but neighborhood wasn't in a blouse in my era. You're just talking about building,
trust and establishing a rapport with what you're talking about. And how it was the hardest, having filmed literally in 25 countries. I've been to about 40, but I've filmed at least 25, some of them multiple times. I've been to Ethiopia 13 times, Ghana three times, many parts of Asia. And still this Baltimore was, I think the hardest place to feel like I really
sincerely captured that human spirit you're talking about in a way that was real, you know? So I'm very proud of that piece. It turned out well. We did some drone shots at night. It really gave it some beauty. That's another thing we could talk about. You may have your interview, but it's nothing like stunning visuals to help give you that release. You have this intense scene where two men are fighting and then you release to these beautiful
sunset in Baltimore or something. That's the story's own too, visually. Yeah. How do you work with that? With the, like the visuals and that, is that something that like, you know, incorporating visual elements to the story? Is there, is there a certain like, that you have or, you know? I have a shot list. I try to, once I know what my story is, I start thinking about what elements I need. I want to see.
signs in the window, stop the shooting. I want to see empty storefronts. I'd like to get tracking shots of this rough neighborhood. That was a very bad idea. We got screamed at. That's how I was going to get myself killed. I would never do that again. Later, I did it with the violence interrupters, letting everyone know ahead of time, them in the car. Then I got the tracking shot. But you don't want to just go through a tough neighborhood like that, filming. You'd be an idiot.
So I think of all the visual elements and I make a shot list and then I share that shot list with, well, for myself, I tick off the list. And a lot of times I'll go back an additional day. I had a day when I went back to Baltimore where I just went around getting what we call B -roll, right, the shots that I feel like I didn't have. When I did this feature -length film in Ethiopia, we had the film almost edited. It took 10 months.
And to finish it up, we felt like, you know what, we really need a night scene. We just need to see the sun go down and the lights on at the hospital. There was no talking. I got to fly back to Addis Ababa. I was the shooter for that segment. I just went to the hospital and I stood outside and I just filmed the hospital at night where the girls are all sleeping. They were getting cured of this horrible childbirth injury.
and the moon and the lights and the ambient sound. And that's what made the film. We had done that with a really amazing director of photography. When we initially went to Ethiopia, while I was going to the huts and the hospitals and talking to the women, he was out there getting these beautiful, stunning wide shots and time lapses and market shots. And that's all he did for a week. That was my plan as a director. I wanted the intimacy, but I...
did not want to, I had seen so many movies about devastating conditions in Africa in particular, where you just felt like you were so suffocated. And you picture a woman who's sort of trapped in this little hut and it sounds so suffocating. I thought, my God, we need something that allows people to breathe. And so there were many transitions in that film that are 20 seconds long, where it's nothing but a pan over.
the mountainside and the river and then the hospital going to sleep and the sheets waving at night, you know. And that, I felt like, was why that film, the film was good because of the intimacy we developed with the girls. And one girl in particular who was, had been beaten a lot, she would happen to be very pretty. She was 13 years old.
And it had a childbirth, Andrea, because she's too small to give birth, right? So having a protagonist like that, but then having that release and that escape and appreciating the beauty of that country. And why is a wife worth living? Look at this place is so beautiful. There's so much love and grandeur and the trees. And I just, I didn't want to just tell a story of squalor. You know what I mean?
Right. I do. So I was talking with somebody about, we were talking about sustainability and storytelling and sustainability and how, you know, a lot of times what you see is that sort of the sad story, right? It's just, especially environmental stuff. They just, it's always just.
It's overwhelming. It's even hard, like when you're watching it as a viewer, it's hard to breathe and, you know, especially if that's not something that you're, you're looking for. And from an environmental standpoint, sometimes they're putting out content for us to take action, right? For us to sign up and do something and make change. but it becomes these things about just, just devastating things.
instead of sometimes maybe the economic value of destroying our oceans and whatnot. And so it seems like you were able to sort of craft that in the story that you were talking about where it's easy to just show how terrible things were, but there's more to it in storytelling than that's the low -hanging fruit, kind of, right? Yeah. And then the beauty of something like a Walter Beautiful,
was that there's really a built -in beginning, middle, and end. These girls are isolated and suffering. We follow them to this very special hospital that offers a cure. They get cured, we hope. You have to watch it to see. Because not everyone gets cured. And there's a happy ending, right? It was sort of like a built -in arc. Man, the violence interruption, some of these stories, it's hard to do that. So violence interruption.
I think the hopeful ending was the guys themselves sitting around the table, hashing it out with the map, with the glasses. They all looked, you know, here they are being very professional and taking charge of their neighborhood and just there was a way that gives you hope and promise with this community, right? But I agree with you. You, you, I mean, there's all kinds of, when you talk about feature length films, you may, there may be some where you do leave just devastated, but I could say like back to our kind of short form, short docs.
whether it's corporate or advocacy, not advocacy. I have to say I don't make advocacy videos. That's a bad word because I think if you really want to advocate for a cause, you just need to tell a good story, right? Or have some really cool visuals or make some cool TikTok things so that they care about it, right? But preaching to people doesn't really work anymore. So I try, I always say, I will not make you an advocacy film, but I'll make you a short documentary.
about you, about what you're doing here, about, you know. Can you talk more about that? Cause that's an interesting one. Cause I will get, we want to do this advocacy stuff. And like, can we kind of get into that a little bit? Like, just what do you mean? Well, Walt to Beautiful, the idea for that film, I was asked to direct that film, which is about a horrific childbirth injury called obstetric fistula.
Women are in obstructed labor for too long until the baby dies and they end up damaged from that and incontinent. And the great thing about it is there's a cure. The sad thing is about it was there was one hospital of its kind in the entire world and it was in Ethiopia and most Ethiopians didn't even know it existed. Since the film and since a lot of other media coverage, that hospital's turned into five hospitals and their hospitals,
and almost every developing country in the world now. It has been part, it was part of a huge tipping point on that issue. But when we read about this issue in the New York Times, an anonymous donor brought a check for $50 ,000 to the company and said, to the production company and said, I want you to tell this story. And the guys I worked for, they didn't do that kind of thing. They like, we do science and archeology, but they knew that I really wanted to do more social impact stuff. So.
They came to me and said, would you like to direct this feature length film? I was like, yes, this is a dream come true. And the approach we took was, if we really want to make a difference and get, draw people's attention to this hospital to help them raise more money and build more hospitals, we can't do an advocacy video. We need to make a narrative film. So we basically made a documentary, but we thought about what you and I were discussing at the beginning of this.
a narrative feature length film that's dramatic, that has characters, that has main characters and antagonists and that has the five act structure. And we had a storyboard and that's how we built it. As if we were making a feature length film, except that none of it was scripted ahead of time. And none of it, we didn't put any words in people's mouths in this case. I was out there just to capture. But since you sort of knew...
where the journey was going that made it easier. So basically when I got back from that, I got the chance to do a lot more stories on maternal health and on, I was in Haiti during the earthquake, not to cover the earthquake, I was there and the earthquake struck the next day. I was actually there to do a happy story about maternal health, but I've gotten to go many parts of the world for nonprofit organizations continuing to do these kinds of stories.
And all the while in the industry that I had just left, they were abandoning documentary to go to reality TV. This was when reality TV first came in. It was huge, right? And I just didn't want to do it. So I was lucky enough that the film won an Emmy and a bunch of other awards. And at that point in time, I actually had my own kid and...
decide this time to leave. I'd seniored out, I'm going to go out on my own. I don't know what I'll do next, but I got a lot of calls, you know, come tell our story from nonprofits. We'll take you to Ghana. We want to do a story about midwives or I did a bunch of stories for the big pharma GSK. That's what used to be Glossus Ms. Klein and the Gay Foundation on neglected diseases. And these are things I didn't know anything about, but I got to travel and talk to people with all these rare diseases and
how the big farmers are donating medications to prevent them. It was a really good thing. Anyway, again, I digress. I just decided maybe I can't get a job in the reality TV world, because that's not what I do. And maybe documentaries out of fashion, but that's what I'm good at. And that's what I'm just going to do. And by golly, somebody's going to want the documentary thing. And so that's what I just stuck with. And then the same thing applies.
to these, what I do call promo videos that I don't like being called a videographer or a video producer. I feel like it degrades what I do and I can't compete with the 24 year olds with their iPhones anyway. I tried to stick to that real storytelling in a dramatic way, whether it is,
a 20 minute documentary or I have to say a 30 second. I did a 20 minute film for an organization up in Burlington that has a lot of services for people with mental disabilities, with mental health issues, substance abuse. And I had to do an overview of all their programs. It was a 20 minute film. And then he said, well, now we want our five minute one. So could you cut it down? Like, great. Then I cut it down to two.
Then they wanted a 60 second and a 30 second. And I've done a bunch of two minutes. In fact, that's what I've been doing for the last decade. Two minute videos. But to get it on something short enough for Instagram or, you know, 60 seconds for some of the formats, that was an interesting challenge, you know? So I've now done ones and thirties and...
I don't know, Joey, I'm not the expert on that kind of storytelling. It was exciting to try to do that. How do I say in 30 seconds what I just said in 60, 20 minutes? Obviously, you can't say it. You have to show it. And the key was smiles. This is about an organization helping a community. Then you want to see people thriving and smiling and have one great sound bite. But I am not the master of that kind of storytelling. There are people, probably even you,
who do a lot better job of that, you know, I'm fascinated and probably have a lot to learn about that. I think you're being kind of a modest here because I've worked with you on more than a few of these corporate ones and you know, it's incredible. I always find that, because I've done both, right? So we did a documentary about children with disabilities and art therapy and similar to what you were saying, kept it very...
you know, it is easy to talk about how sad it was for, for the kids or the parents or whatever, but our mission was to show like that these kids could live these great lives and that there was these awesome, it's still life, right? And there's these beautiful moments of life, mixed with these challenges. but going back, so telling that hour long or two hour long story and then how do you do it? You know,
cut it to 20 minutes or then cut it to two minutes or 30 seconds. I feel like you just, you just get into it very quickly and you don't have all of the things and going on that ride on a story. Like what you said with the visuals of the beautiful drone shot. And then you cut to like maybe that music bed and then, and then back to the person and you, you keep all those sort of uncomfortable silent moments too, to get, to really pull you in.
Those are what you sort of lose in that 20 seconds. Cause you're getting right into the words. Or maybe you do keep, you need to keep the 10 seconds of really awkwardness. And then it's just another 10 seconds of one, one line. And then whatever it is that you're looking for. And there, there's some, there's some, some brands that are doing a really great job with it. And, and there's so much out there that there's a lot that aren't doing a great job with it.
Yeah. When you talk about the life and the hope and the solution and it's, you know, you really, there is one theory that you need to show that right at the top, right? People want to know, right? At ground zero, there's a lot of hope. But then you also need to tell them, like you were saying, the bad part of what, you know, why we need to fix this issue, right? We've got to show that to you. So how do you do that in ...
30 seconds or one minute, that would be very hard. Well, you know, we worked together with the tech company. They did, they worked with, it was an accounting software for private schools. And you know, the private schools that we were working with, they were, their biggest challenge was billing. And they were going out of business. A lot of these like older schools that have been around a long time, they happen to be like faith -based and they couldn't,
keep up with certain other schools and they didn't have these sort of budgets. And, you know, when you work in a, in a family like that situation where, you know, it was a smaller school, they may have had their teaching all solid, but from a bill collection standpoint, they didn't always have that. And so you had the person that they saw every day, that worked at the school was also the person that, had to ask them, Hey, you're late on your payments or, or whatnot. And so that.
That wasn't, they were failing. And so they hired a company that was handling tuition management that we happened to be working with. And it was very quick, right to the point. Hey, we're a school, we have this many members, we have this many late payments, and unfortunately we don't collect at the end of the year this much money. And to be able to have another school wife then go, that's my pay point too. And we're just like that.
and we're losing on this and to be able to craft those sort of stories like that, I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. And you're making a difference. Now you're not making a difference like what you did with the Ethiopia women or what you did in Baltimore, but you are still making a difference. So let me go back. Let me go back. Cause you said so many different things, but going back to like, how do you craft a story? And it sounds like, okay, so you.
You saw something maybe in the New York Times, it was of interest and you've got this great concept. You want to do this. But now how do you craft a story with you've done some of the work, you've got the idea, you've got the concept and by the way, now how do you find the right people to interview? yeah. Research. Right. And the old day, I mean, before it used to be that you called more.
And now I'm realizing that that's a good thing to go back to, that you really just can't rely on surfing the internet, Googling it, right? You find it's important to do that and find out what's out there. But then in the end, you got to start making phone calls to really know what's going on. Whether it's climate or a story I'm working on now on atmospheric rivers, who's doing the cutting edge research? You really kind of have to...
call universities and find out who's out in the field, right? So that kind of thing. And then you pre -interview and then you're like listening for who's going to be pretty good on camera. Sometimes I'll also, I'll get my eye on somebody and I've chatted with them and I always say it's just information getting. And then I'll go, you look at a video of them on YouTube. And then there was one person in particular I was considering filming and I saw him on YouTube and I was like, nah, I don't think that's gonna work. Because let's face it, you also want them to be...
Charismatic and good on camera if you're really gonna, if you have a choice, I mean, if you're deciding who's in it, you want people who can, will be able to tell the story, to be charismatic, to camera friendly, whatever terms you wanna use, right? Articulate, I don't know. They don't have to be gorgeous, right? But if they're super shy, it probably won't work, ruins the story.
Producify (44:53.933)
Does that kind of get it? What you're saying? So yeah, of course, if they're super shy, but you know, I'm sure that you've had to work with some people where they might be like kind of going back to Baltimore, like their guard is up. They're shy, they're whatever it is, but it seems like you're able to sort of just, do you, do you pull the plug or do you go, wait a minute? I know there's something here and I'm going to keep going until I get it.
Well, in that case, I interviewed more people than I needed in the film. So I probably focused on five guys and three of them made the cut. And yeah, that was kind of necessary. I hate to do that. If someone's given you their time, you really want them to be in it. And there are times when someone has to be in, recently. And especially if you're working for a client, then.
This person who's representing the school has to be in it. Usually those people are pretty comfortable on camera anyway if they've been selected. So I don't know if I've ever just like completely pulled the plug on somebody. There was one guy who I thought really hit it off within the field we were traveling in Africa. He was from another African country, super smart guy from another pharmaceutical and I couldn't wait to interview him, right? Yeah.
and the camera came on and it was like he was having a heart attack. He was so panicked and I just, after a while I just said, let's just take a little break. I was just honest. I said, you know what? I think we can all stand to take a deep breath, right? And he's like, thank you so much. You know, we couldn't avoid Delph at my room. He was too nervous. So we got him to stand up, we breathed together and it did help.
He calmed down, you know, we got over that panic. We all joked and laughed and had fun together. Maybe 15 minutes later, we rolled again. He still wasn't great on camera. Yeah. Yeah. Even though he was in person. You know, hey, just as we're kind of like wrapping this up, any sort of advice that you have for, you know, inspiring like future storytellers in the documentary industry or even in corporate video, like something that, you know, somebody can kind of take with them.
Producify (47:16.525)
Sincerely listen, remember that the tool does not make the artist. The language of film, beautiful sound, storytelling, all that has not really changed in 100 years. We just changed the tools. So it doesn't take the place of really understanding those concepts. I think a lot of people learn technology and they think therefore they are a filmmaker.
And I would try to aspire to be a storyteller and then learn how to use the tools to do that. Right. And, and to keep up with those changing tools and then to sincerely listen to sincerely care, even if it's not something you would normally take an interest in, just give them, give that person a few minutes of your time. Yeah. That's amazing. Today. Thank you. Yeah. I really appreciate it. And, and like, we've got to do another one because this was a lot of fun and I really appreciate you.
It's a real, it's very self -indulgent to get to talk about stuff I've done, so I appreciate it.