Have you ever considered the impact of dialogue in your videos? It’s not just about talking on camera; it’s about recreating real-life experiences and using the actual words from those conversations to enhance your storytelling.
Discover why dialogue is essential in conveying character-driven stories authentically. By using dialogue, you can effortlessly reveal a character’s personality without the need for lengthy explanations. Let the words speak for themselves!
Transcript
Kerry Barrett 07:51:19
Today we’re gonna talk about one of the easiest ways to make yourself sound like an accomplished on camera speaker and storyteller. You do it every day in real life. Now, you just gotta do it on camera. What I’m talking about is dialogue, not just talking on camera, but recreating an experience that you had with someone else, and the actual words that were used in that conversation. So why is dialogue advanced? Well, I’m a little bit embarrassed to tell you that I actually didn’t know it was advanced, until I was doing a demonstration in a public speaking course. And I just automatically used dialogue, and the coach was like, that’s a very advanced technique, which I didn’t know at the time that that was an advanced technique. But what I realized now looking back is that as a storyteller in the news industry, I relayed dialogue all the time. And I recognized inherently its intrinsic value to telling the story. So when you think about why dialogue is important, when you think about what it would be like reading a book, that was a very character driven story, but never had any actual words, from conversation that the characters used, so much is revealed about a character in dialogue, it can actually make your content itself much more concise, because you don’t need to go into a big explanation about the type of person or the character somebody has, when it can, in fact, be revealed in dialogue. So I’ll give you a little example. Rather than describing somebody’s personality. Think about this. Let’s say you’re having a conversation about somebody asking a friend or spouse to make a sandwich, and it’s like, Get off your lazy butt, and make me a sandwich. Or oh my gosh, you make the most amazing BLT, can you please make me one of those I need so badly right now is the only thing that will make me happy. Think about how those different levels of dialogue influenced or affected the perception that you have of the person who’s saying that I don’t need to or you don’t need to go into a deep conversation about what kind of person they are, hey, Joe was a real jerk. Joe, often bosses people around you don’t need to say any of that. You can make the plot or the video much more concise, and much more intriguing and engaging by just using the dialogue to show what kind of person Joe actually is. So dialog allows the characters to reveal themselves, it also makes it a little more real. So if you are relaying a conversation, or a story or a lesson or a tactic that you learned, including dialogue is a great way to make that particular story or that particular scenario much more real. To the person who’s watching, for example, at the top of this video, I recreated some of the dialogue on landway. But I recreated some of the dialogue that I had with that public speaking coach, and what he said to me and how I responded back. So aside from allowing your content to be much more concise, and to be much more engaging, and to reveal a lot about the characters and make it real, there’s a couple of other things that dialogue does, it builds conflict. It builds intrigue, it builds suspense, it builds buy into the story, oh, my gosh, you want to know what’s happening next, it gives a little bit of background or tells you the backstory or what’s going on behind the scenes, and it definitely reinforces the mood. So how do you employ dialogue, when you are creating a video, think about the scenario or the situation about which you are talking. So if there is something that has influenced that perception you have about the topic, your subject matter, think about a conversation that you had about it, and think about it strategically. It’s not just a random conversation like hey, Carrie, are you creating a video today? Why yes, Joe? I am. It’s a conversation in which you can use dialogue that strategically reveals some sort of insight or background or creates a character which is a big part of dialogue as well. If you’re curious about how you can incorporate or you have questions or you want to share dialogue that you’ve created for a video go ahead and drop that in the comments. I’m happy to see what you’re doing and offer a little bit of advice, but if you’re looking to practice there’s a couple of scenarios that I find are particularly helpful. The first one is to think about if you are at a window seat rather than on an airplane and you really need to use the restroom. And there is let’s say a gentleman sitting next to you who is really grumpy, or there is a mom who has triplets and they’re all sitting next to her crying, right, the way that you approach that situation will be different. Think about the dialogue, what you would say, and what they would say back to you and write it down and take a look at it and practice it on camera. Next few scenarios are Imagine that you are in the woods with someone and you’re going camping and you have a tent set up, the sun is going down, it’s getting really cold and you’re having trouble starting a fire, create that dialogue. And then a third situation is imagine you’re in the grocery store and you are in a huge rush because you have to get home to do something urgent. And you also really need a bunch of ingredients for the dinner that you’re preparing that evening, just a few short hours away. And if you have a child in tow, which is much more interested or who is much more interested, I should say in being a hindrance rather than help create a dialogue around that and if you want to share your dialogue, go ahead and do so in the comments below. Feel free to ask any questions. I’d love to help you on this journey because after all, it is an advanced technique. I’ll see you in the next video.
