The Key To Good Video: Mess With Expectations

Many times, but not all, the difference between what is interesting and what is boring in any media is that the good stuff plays with your expectations.

You think things will go one way and you're surprised when it goes down a different road that is so ingenious that you just have to sit up and take notice.

You can help your storytelling by creating an expectation with genre and then tweaking it or turning it on its head. 

I've posted this video before that has a wonderful surprise in the middle but at the start it looks like a "This is another white text on black background" video.

Nearly ten million hits later it's easy to see why this alarmingly simple video has reached viral nirvana.
 

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The hardest thing we do as video producers is to create video pieces that are original.  Everything has been done with budgets far larger then what you have. 

But, there is usually a way to go that will make people hold their mouse in check and not click to something else. 

Recently, Wheelhouse (I am a Principal) was hired to promote a new book.

I asked the client what kind of storytelling did she like.  Not just from her company but any company.  She showed me this.

I like it too.  Why?  The story telling is simple and there's a surprise.  You don't expect the nice shot of Bermuda (or where ever it is) to be a landing pad for dripping blood.  The video plays with your expectations of a television ad for something incredibly relaxing.

With that in mind, we pitched and produced this piece for a new murder mystery.

How do you set expectations and then turn them upside down?

image credit: //www.flickr.com/photos/moirabot/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0