Storytelling - Part 1

Storytelling has been a huge part of my life. One of my earliest memories is my grandmother telling me stories while preparing breakfast. We had this morning ritual of her doing stuff around the kitchen and me sitting in my special place and listening to her entertain me while waiting. It woke my imagination and inspired me to tell stories myself.

My fascination with stories continued after learning to read and discovering there was a room filled top to bottom with stories – the library. The next few years were spend filling my head with ideas. And after that came computer games, the Internet and finally films. So as one can see, my personal history has been largely defined by storytelling.

Today, I am a video director and I frequently claim my favourite part of video making is storytelling. However, lately I have noticed I am not very good at it. It is one thing to enjoy and understand a story, but a completely another to structure one by yourself. The thing is, I have never researched storytelling structures and methods. So I decided to look into it during my next project. In addition to theoretical research I will also shot a video based on the concepts learned.

At first I would try to define storytelling as any structured communication with a beginning, middle and end, designed to convey a desired message. However, isn't that the purpose of all communication? What is the difference? Is sending a data package through the Internet storytelling? It is communication, data is structured and it has a message. Well, thinking about it some more, I believe the difference is in the purpose - storytelling aims to inform, educate and entertain through a set of simplified ideas organized in a narrative structure.

Historically, one of the most important functions of storytelling was socialization – transferring knowledge and values through generations. That is why my grandmother told me fables during breakfast. It is also one of the reasons clerics of any religion preach parables based on lives of holy man. It is a way of education and conforming future generations to the way of living in a certain culture. Storytelling is essential to a culture and it can be observed in literally every society from the dawn of man.

But why do we tell stories and not simply the facts? Why do we feel the need to hide real life events in made up constructs? I believe this is a method of simplifying complex problems and concepts into short entertaining lectures. They lose some of its initial complexity, but are in turn easier to comprehend and have a wider area of application. Think of Aesop's Fables, which illustrate this very clearly. More complex problems require a longer treatment, as a novel or a TV series.

Stories help us abstract our problems and ponder them on another level. Just think of a kid demanding the same story every night – there must be something inside it that reflects his struggles in real life. And the same happens to adults re-reading or re-watching books and movies. During elementary school, where I was struggling to fit it, stories from the library were at the same time a getaway and tool to ruminate on my problems.

As we can see storytelling is an important tool in our society – from socializing and education to entertainment and problem solving. And I want to serve all these with my video work.

Film storytelling is a wide area. Basically any film tool can be used to tell, or at least enhance, a story. All choices made during making a movie matter and influence the story. To make sense of all filmmaking storytelling methods I prepared a diagram, which can be seen below.

Film storytelling methods

As you can see there are quite a lot of them and I presented only the most important. I would like to point out not all the terminology used in the diagram is appropriate for the storytelling function they describe. However, for the sake of understanding the complexity of film storytelling, it should suffice.

All concepts can branch deeper into other areas, since basically every title in the diagram is an independent area that requires specific knowledge and is usually done by more than one person. Except the director. He has to be familiar with all areas to adequately understand how they come together to tell a comprehensive story.

My future research into storytelling will be limited just to writing methods. It is my weakest field as can be seen from the empty section of the diagram – writing has no additional methods listed. I am especially interested in how to structure a story for a short film.

Just like creativity, storytelling is one of the basic human characteristics. Even more so, since it's vital to short term (solving problems) and long term (transferring knowledge and values) survival. From my personal point of view, it is also vital to me if I want to make meaningful films that entertain and educate.