- Today we are going to be looking
at some Hollywood storytelling secrets
that you can use so that you can tell better stories
in your public speaking.
And to do that I've invited a guest today,
his name is Jeff Bartsch,
and he's going to be talking a little bit about how,
as an editor in Hollywood
he learned some things that we can apply.
Let me tell you a little bit about Jeff.
He's a coach and an entrepreneur.
He's been doing that for 20 years
and editing broadcast level content that you have seen,
and we'll talk more about that in a minute,
but he's he lived in Los Angeles for many years,
editing for NBC, ABC, Universal Disney, Apple, many others,
he's been featured in USA Today and Time Magazine.
He's the author of a book
called "Edit Better : Hollywood-Tested Strategies
"for Powerful Video Editing"
And he's the founder of Story Greenlight,
that's a community that empowers online creators
and a YouTube channel,
which I will put a link to in the description below.
How are you today, Jeff?
- Doing awesome.
Good to be here, man.
- Yeah, I'm so happy to have you here.
So I believe Jeff and I wanna talk to my viewers
right now that the best public speakers are storytellers.
Essentially, those high-level professional speakers
all are just great at telling stories.
That's what separates the average speaker from the pros.
But a lot of times as beginners we don't know
how to get started in storytelling
and we end up being long-winded,
we ramble and then our stories don't make a point.
And I wanted to talk to you today
because I think it can help us beginners
save a lot of trial and error, you know,
bumping into ourselves trying to tell these good stories
if we learn the recipe for good storytelling
from a guy like you who knows all about it.
So before we get to that though I'm wondering, Jeff,
if you could tell us a little bit about how you got started
in video and editing and where you are now.
- Yeah.
Well, I mean, it actually started when I was five years old
and I learned how to start playing piano.
And when I got into junior high,
as I got into music recording
and creating with on that musical side
and audio side of things,
and when I got into high school, it was this, you know,
this was literally before the internet existed.
And when you're shooting - Right.
- A video you had to walk around with a full-size camera
on your shoulders.
So I was the only one in my entire high school
who cared anything about that.
So I had to figure it out.
I had to be the one man band.
And what ended up happening was when I was done
with every project,
I took a stack of tapes
into the state funded education agency,
I was too young to drive,
my mom drove me an hour to the editing suite,
and I found out that all this stuff that I've been shooting
and all the music that I'd been arranging
and recording it all comes together in this editing part.
And I just fell in love with it.
And so I ended up going to film school.
I ended up in Los Angeles, going to film school,
ran out of money,
got into the entertainment industry as an assistant editor,
and I made the jump to full editor.
And that's what I've been doing freelance ever since.
So that's where things started.
And I have actually, you know, I've ended up...
When people ask, "What kind of stuff have you done?"
The answer is usually a lot of shows
that a lot of people haven't heard of.
But one of the main shows that people
seem to have heard of a lot is a show
called American Ninja Warrior on NBC.
- [Alex] Yeah. - And it's gearing up
for its 14th season as we speak right here,
and the cool part about that is,
the show itself is, it shows people going across a huge
obstacle course but it shows, but before they do that,
most of the time you see a story package saying,
"Who is this athlete and why should you care about them?"
- Right. - That's the stuff
that I got to do.
I've been doing that short form storytelling
for Ninja for years now.
And that's one of the favorite shows
I've ever worked on.
And-- - Yeah.
It's amazing.
And by the way, those stories are what grip the viewer.
Of course we want to see - Yeah.
- People doing amazing athletic things
but when we hear the story, now we care about them,
not just what they can do on the course.
So it's basically we are rooting for them
because we've gotten to know them through the stories
that you've told.
- And I will say there are some people
who look at the show and they say,
"Stop. stop with all the stories.
"This is dumb.
"We just wanna see people get on the course."
- Right.
- I'm telling you,
- It wouldn't work. - If you don't have the story
you don't care what the person does on the course.
- Yeah.
- The story is what makes people care.
- That's right.
And that's the lesson for public speaking,
the story is what makes us care.
If you've ever heard a good story in a speech
it is the thing that will draw you in to that message
and make you care.
So, based upon your experience,
telling stories through editing video,
what are the key talking points
or a structure that a good story should have?
- Sure.
There is a general framework that any story follows.
And as far as I know
this applies to the Western world,
this also applies to the Eastern world.
You know, there are different ways that people see the world
in Western thought versus Eastern thought.
As far as I know, this applies to everyone everywhere.
And so when you have a story
the master framework for telling any story goes like this,
you have a character who wants something,
who obstacles to get it
and experiences transformation as a result.
It's those three parts right there.
And that is the framework that can expand,
well, you can shrink it down just from those ideas,
you can shrink it down even further,
and it can be the foundation
of a five second snippet of video.
It can expand and get a whole bunch more moving parts,
and it can be a 20 episode series.
- Right. Right.
- So it's this massive accordion.
But it all comes down to these ideas of the character
who wants something, overcomes obstacles to get it,
and what the change is,
the transformation that happens at the end.
- That's fantastic.
- Before we get to...
I'm already hearing a lot of public speaking applications,
but before we get there let's talk about film,
a film that everybody - Sure.
- Would know where they can see this play out.
- Most people can fairly easily latch onto the idea
of "Star Wars",
- Yeah.
- Especially when you have the idea of Luke Skywalker.
He starts out as a kind of a whiny brat living on the farm
with his relatives.
- Right.
- And he goes off in this adventure,
he's going off looking for these droids
and he's all along
he's dreaming of being part of the resistance.
Part of being, he wants to be a Jedi Knight
and he wants to be part of this resistance.
He wants something more than his boring life on the farm.
- So there's the point number one,
at least what I'm hearing is a character
who wants something.
- He wants something more than what he has.
He wants his life to be more than what it is.
- Okay.
- And through these different episodes
he goes through all these adventures, all these roadblocks,
all these obstacles, all these dangers, all these monsters,
all these gangsters, all this stuff,
all the people along the way who help him.
- That's point number two,
he's overcoming obstacles to get there.
Okay, I'm following, I'm following.
(Jeff laughs)
- And as his story progresses he becomes,
you know, he ends up meeting with his mentor, Yoda,
who helps him overcome some,
even more obstacles in his mind.
And through that journey
he ends up becoming a mature Jedi Knight.
So the whiny farm boy goes through this journey
and he becomes a mature Jedi Knight.
- Yeah, that's fantastic.
And you know, we don't have to go into this
but each of those separate movies has the story arc as well.
So the three movies, three original movies hang together
and wasn't one big story,
but each piece also tells its own segment of that story.
So that's where you're talking about the structure
can be expanded to fit the length of the story
you wanna tell or it can be compressed.
So in public speaking situations
we might be telling a 62 second story
but we can still use - Right.
- Those same points.
That character who wants something overcomes obstacles
to get it, and then experiences transformation and growth
as a result.
Let's do one more.
We talked earlier about the Wizard of Oz.
Can you go through that one really quickly?
'Cause I'm sure a lot - Sure.
- Of people have seen that.
- Well, and the fact of the matter
is it's actually really similar.
Instead of Luke Skywalker,
being the whiny young man on the farm,
you have Dorothy, who is the...
She's living on a farm and she's not happy with her life.
She wishes that her life - Yeah.
- Was more interesting.
And all of a sudden this tornado comes through,
and she goes through this whole journey of what she wants.
She realizes she she's she's away from home
and she wants to get back home
But there are all these obstacles in her way,
there all these things,
and all these friends come along
and they want things for themselves.
They have things that they want
and they come to the end of their journey
and they realize they had these things
within them all along.
And when Dorothy wakes up in her bed
she realizes I am home.
There's no place like home.
- No place like home. - Yeah.
- One of the great and the line at the end of the story
means so much more than, you know,
if you've never seen it doesn't mean anything
but once you see it you go,
"Wow, that really lands." - Yeah.
- So that's the structure.
Let's turn now to everyday conversation, everyday life.
What's an example of this story structure
playing out in everyday life?
I think you might've mentioned to me before
just a little experience your wife
would go through or that you would go through in a day.
- Well, I cannot tell you how many times my wife
is getting ready for making dinner,
and she says, "Okay, let's how should we...
"I have some asparagus, I have some broccoli,
"how should I roast the broccoli?"
She says, "Okay, I'm gonna go on Pinterest and say,
"I want to learn how...
"I want a new idea for how I can roast broccoli."
- So she's a character who wants something.
- Something she wants to know
how can she get a new idea
for roasting broccoli? - Right.
- She goes on to Pinterest and up pops an article.
We'll show you how to roast broccoli.
Great.
She clicks on it and it starts out,
there are 13 pictures and 13 advertisements,
and then there's a whole bunch of copy.
There's a whole blog post saying this recipe
came from my grandfather.
My grandfather came from the old country.
He was an angry man with only three fingers on one hand.
- Yeah. - And my wife
was standing there for the love of all that's holy,
how can I roast the broccoli?
- Yeah. - You know.
And so, you know, so that's the obstacle.
- Right.
- Just show me the recipe for crying out loud.
- Right.
- She eventually gets there and she swears
that she's never gonna go on Pinterest again.
So I don't know if that ends
up being an actual transformation,
an actual change of mind for her or not.
- There's some change though.
There's something going on where she's different at the end.
Well, I love this - Yeah.
- Because you know,
once you know this framework,
you see it absolutely everywhere.
Yeah, you see it absolutely everywhere.
So I wanna change now and talk a little bit
about even more public speaking.
In terms of, you know,
where can we get these stories?
And one of the places I think we can get
them is through our personal experience.
- Right. - A hundred percent.
- If you're a public speaker
you're looking at your own life and you're saying,
"Okay, well, what kinds of messages
do I have in me that I can share?
So I think you can look at your own.
It's just like you just sit with your wife.
It's a simple little thing.
You could make a story out of going to the store.
You're going to get gas.
The framework can apply to almost anything.
But I think one of the places
that we look is we look in our own life, right?
What have we been going through?
- Absolutely.
- What are some illustrations?
Where we can read books and we can learn about other people.
I think the most powerful lessons though
come from our own life.
- Yeah.
And I would say that one of the most powerful elements
of any story comes from that third part of the framework.
We can, you know, you can condense those ideas down,
you start with a character who wants something,
overcomes conflict to get it and experience
this transformation as a result,
you can take that down to three individual words,
character, well, you can say
is desire, obstacles, and change.
And if you had to only think about one word
when it comes to telling stories that last word, change.
- Change.
- The idea of change is one of the most powerful ideas
- Yeah.
- That fascinates the human mind and the human spirit.
And so, as you're saying, - Yeah.
- If we talk about stories from our own personal experience,
and we talk about how things changed,
I used to think this now I think that or--
- Before and after.
It's that right there, you are good to go
for telling your stories.
- My dog is trying to jump on me.
- Sorry.
- All good. - It must be time to eat.
She's got her own little story.
She's trying to overcome this obstacle and get some food.
- So-- - Stop ignoring me.
You're being my obstacle.
- That's right.
So question, when you're editing,
you are going through a very similar process
that public speakers are going through.
You have to decide what to include and what's a cut.
And one of the biggest problems
for public speakers is they ramble.
They can't make decisions, I don't know what to say,
what to cut out, I wanna say,
and they end up rambling and it's long-winded
and then it doesn't feel like a story.
So what kind of guidelines - Yeah.
- Would you recommend
when we are making stories about what to cut
and what to keep when we are crafting our stories
for presentations?
- Sure.
The number one thing that you can do is keep things shorter
than you think they need to be.
I cannot tell you how many times I've cut a scene
that I think that I think is the right length
that it needs to be.
And for whatever reason I get notes from a producer
or from an executive and they say,
"Okay, well, we need to take this part out.
"And just let's reorder that."
And all of a sudden things go shoot,
and it just gets - Yeah.
- Even more tight and condensed.
And I'm sitting there scratching my heads,
thinking, man, it gets better almost every single time.
- Yeah. - Obviously there is...
You can take it too far.
You can cut things down too far
and you take out important elements.
So you do have to strike a balance.
But that will be the number one thing.
Is be willing to leave things out.
Not include every single detail.
- Yeah.
That's great advice.
That takes discipline
but I have found the same thing in my own presentations.
I just leave some things out and the story gets smoother.
It stays on point and then it has the impact
that I want it to have.
- Yeah.
- So before we all go I wanna speak directly to viewers.
Here is my recommendation in terms of next steps,
start telling stories.
A lot of people say,
"I wanna get better at telling stories."
And I say, "What are you doing for telling."
"Oh, I'm not telling any yet."
Start telling stories,
just get some practice time and get some reps in
and then shoot for one minute stories.
If you're doing a presentation
and it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes,
try to put a one minute story in there
and then on your next presentation
try to put two, one minute stories in there and so forth.
Stick to a one minute story
because at least that's a guidepost
that'll help you make some decisions about what to cut
and what to leave in.
And then the goal is to,
if you're doing a 10 or 15 minute presentation,
you want that handful of stories
and that 3, 4, 5, 6 stories that create
an overall message and tie together to the bigger message
that your presentation is driving toward.
- This is so incredibly important.
I just wanna reiterate - Yeah.
- On this.
Humanity is connected by storytelling,
and when we actually tell stories that talk
about here's how I'm feeling.
that is an incredibly powerful way
to connect human emotion to whatever you're talking about.
It's a psychological effect
where you are making people feel things,
and you are attaching those feelings
to the rest of their experience
that they're having with you in your talk,
that you're giving. - Yeah.
- So if you're ever wondering,
okay, well really what's the most important part of this?
- Yes, keep things short,
yes, follow that framework,
yes, talk about how things change
but also talk about how you or the people in the story feel
about the change.
- Absolutely.
I was just saying in a different video
that I was working on that when we experience
that emotional connection
our message will travel from listener's head to their heart.
- Yeah. And that's where we remember.
Jeff, Thanks so much for being here today.
It's been a pleasure talking to you as always.
Glad to be here, man.
Thanks for having me.
- See you all soon.