- If you're about to embark on an awesome adventure
or go through a unique experience
and you wanna film the whole journey,
well there are some things that you need to think about
to be able to tell a better story
and to be able to make a video
that your viewers are actually going to want to watch.
So in this video, I'm gonna go through the concept
of what a theme is for your video
and how it ties into story,
and how you can use that
before you actually go on the adventure
or go and do the experience
so that you can craft a better video when you come back.
Now recently I finished a video
where I climbed this mountain
up in the North Cascades of Washington
that had this insane 3000 foot rock wall.
And I knew that this was gonna be an experience
that I wanted to capture on camera
and be able to tell this story
because this climb was definitely out of my comfort zone
and I knew that there'd be a story
somewhere in the experience that I wanted to tell
and actually make a video around for my second channel.
And if we haven't met before, my name is Jeven Dovey,
and on this channel,
I teach you how to make better videos
and how to tell better stories.
Now my second channel, Project Discover Earth,
is all of the stories that I personally tell,
so I'll include a link to the video
that I'm talking about down below in the description
as well as a link to my second channel.
Now this video does not have a sponsor,
however, this channel is supported by viewers like you,
and the cheapest and easiest way
to help support this channel
is just by hitting the subscribe button
and hitting the like button,
especially if you wanna learn how to make better videos.
But if you do want some more exclusive in-depth training,
then head over to the creatorfilmschool.com,
and that's where I have all my classes
around making better videos and building a YouTube channel.
And you could purchase each course individually
or sign up for the membership
which is less than the cost of a coffee per month.
But let's talk about theme, story,
and some things that you need to think about
before you actually go out on the journey.
Now if you're a YouTuber
and you're trying to add more story into your videos,
this is one of the concepts
that's gonna help you take your videos from just a vlog
that kind of follows you along whatever you're doing,
to actually something that has more of a story
and has a deeper connection
with the audience on the other side of the camera.
Now if you just have some really cool experience
and you wanna make a video around it,
well this is gonna help you craft a better video
that's not just your typical family vacation highlight reel,
or like a recap video,
or like a cinematic B-roll video
where it's just a ton of footage
but there's really no story there besides the visuals.
Personally, my focus has been around story
and crafting better stories,
because especially if you're a creator here on YouTube,
well story's gonna help you stand out
and your videos are gonna have more of an impact
if you can tie story into everything that you're doing.
So the big question is theme,
what is theme, and how does it tie into story?
Well a theme is your overall message
that you want somebody to get out of the video
after they've watched it.
It becomes your guiding light
on what to shoot and what not to shoot.
Oftentimes the journey becomes the background element
and the theme is the more important aspect
because it connects you to the viewer
who's watching your video.
And for my video, I'm climbing this crazy mountain
with this 3000 foot rock wall,
and most people won't put themselves in that situation,
however, the guiding theme that I made for this video
is what's gonna connect the viewer to me
and it helps give them something
that they can take away from the video
and feel more connected
to the content that they're watching,
rather than just being a video that's a spectacle.
And don't get me wrong, you can make spectacle content
where people will just watch it
for the sheer craziness of whatever's going on,
but ultimately, we're striving to become better filmmakers,
so we wanna have story and theme
built in to the kind of videos that we're making
so that it could reach a broader audience
and not just be about the spectacle.
The spectacle is still a part
of everything that you're doing,
but there is a human side
to every video that you're creating,
especially here on YouTube,
because we're creators,
and a lot of times the content that we're creating
is around us,
so we are the main character
and we wanna have that connection
with the viewer on the other side of the camera.
And so a theme is just a universal concept
that somebody can pull out of the content
no matter what the content is.
So for example, if you watch the movie "Finding Nemo,"
well the reason that we enjoy watching that
and we feel like we have a connection with the story
isn't because we're watching this video
about a fish going on a journey,
the actual theme of that movie
is around trust and friendship,
and so it's concepts that we deal with on an everyday basis
and so we feel a connection to the characters in that movie.
Now I know some of you might be thinking,
"Well, that's a feature film,
and that's so much different
than this video that I'm making around climbing a mountain."
Well, yes and no.
So if you look at the bigger creators on this platform,
they are using these concepts
of storytelling and theme to make their videos.
Let's look at Ryan Trahan's Video,
100 Days in the Metaverse.
He did this video
where he was in the Metaverse for 100 days.
It's a spectacle piece,
it's kind of a crazy concept,
being in this world that is pretty foreign to a lot of us
and doing it for this extended period of time
makes us wanna watch that video.
But ultimately, the video is not just about
being in the metaverse for 100 days,
the overarching theme for me was that
this digital world disconnects us from reality
and we need to get ourselves away from these digital devices
and spend more time in the present moment
and make real connections with real human beings.
And you can see how the bigger theme will connect
to everyone who's watching this video,
whereas the spectacle
is kind of the piece that draws you in.
So if you're someone who's making like an adventure video,
yes, it's about going on this adventure
and climbing this mountain,
but you could attach a theme to it
that's gonna connect to everyone
who's actually watching the video,
no matter what situation that they're in.
Now in my videos where I have a story,
I play around with this theme in different ways.
So for example, I did a video where I went up to Alaska
and went out to this abandoned military base.
The video was about this adventure of me and my buddy Jake
trying to get to this military base
and see what it was like when we actually got there.
And I did it in an explainer format,
so it was more about the history of World War II
and the actual trip of going to this location
was background element,
it was the adventure,
but the actual story was World War II, the history,
and the theme was how much war has an impact on a region
even years after the fighting has stopped.
And I did another video on my second channel
where the journey was finding out
where my burger comes from,
so I went to a farm and figured out the entire process
of how the burger goes from the cow to my plate.
But the overarching theme
is more about how we've become disconnected from our food
and we need to think
about the things that we're actually putting in our bodies.
And then a third example here on this channel,
I did a vlog where I went up to Alaska to test the Mavic 3,
so the video was about the adventure of going to Alaska
and testing the Mavic 3 in these extreme environments,
but so many things went wrong in that video,
but the overarching theme became
that everything will go wrong at the worst time,
but you can't let that destroy the experience.
So ideally, when you're coming up with your theme,
you wanna be able to boil it down to one or two sentences,
and coming up with a theme before you go out and shoot
is gonna help tell you exactly what you should shoot
when you're out filming.
Because if you're going out
and shooting a video and it's this cool experience,
say you're traveling to Thailand for two weeks,
how are you gonna know what to shoot and what not to shoot?
And there are plenty of times
before I started understanding these stories of concepts
that I would go on at an adventure
and I'd spend all of my time shooting video
without any idea
of what I was actually gonna do with that footage,
and then when I would get home,
it would either sit on my hard drives
or I would cut together a highlight reel
which becomes very boring
for somebody who just stumbles upon that video.
Might be exciting for me and people that were with me,
but it's not really that exciting
from an outsider's perspective,
it's just a bunch of footage cut together of a pretty place.
So having a theme humanizes the content
that you're producing,
and also gives you kind of a guiding force
when you're out shooting.
Now the kind of content that I produce
is a mix between vlog and documentary,
I call them vlogumentaries
because they have more of the story element,
sometimes I'll dig deeper into the historical
or the science side of whatever's going on,
but I always have these vlog elements
that are showing the journey or the adventure.
I like this style,
and I think it's a style
that's being produced more and more on YouTube,
where creators are putting documentary elements into vlogs,
and so they're becoming more
than just your typical travel vlog or just daily vlog.
So if you're about to embark on an adventure
or this cool experience,
you need to take a step back first
and come up with what is the content
that you wanna produce from that.
I kind of see four things that you can make,
you could do a cinematic B-roll, just visual style video,
and that might just be a highlight reel.
You know, those can perform well
if you're making them for here on YouTube,
it could be like a cinematic travel film,
and if you're doing that,
then your focus is gonna be on
just getting really epic visuals.
Whereas another piece
of content that you could create would be just
a typical vlog,
and that's where there's
not a whole lot of story baked into it,
it's more about just filming everything that you're doing
and then cutting it together
so someone can come along on the journey.
To me, those aren't super exciting,
there's definitely a lot of content
like that here on YouTube,
but I think that YouTube's evolving,
and I think story is becoming more and more important.
And on the story side,
well, you can make a documentary
which would be about,
maybe someone that you're going to meet up with,
or the place that you're going,
or some bigger story
around the whole adventure that you're going on,
or you can make what I think is called a vlogumentary,
which makes you the center subject of the video
and you're taking someone on this journey with you,
so it's a vlog,
but then you have these deeper story elements baked into it.
And you definitely need to think about this first
so that you can go into the experience with expectations
of what you're trying to capture.
Now, theme is gonna be important
if you're creating a documentary or a vlogumentary,
and I don't think that you have to know your theme
before you go out and shoot,
I think you need to know where your direction is,
where your aim is,
and your theme can kind of start building
as you're out on the experience.
If you can come up with your theme beforehand,
it's definitely gonna make a stronger video,
however, depending on the type of content
that you're producing,
a lot of times things will happen
that actually push you down one path versus another.
So for example, the farm documentary that I did,
I didn't have a clear theme
when I went up and made that project.
I was actually pretty lost,
I knew what I was filming,
I had a goal of what I was trying to achieve
which was basically showing the process
of how the farm works and how it gets to my house,
however, once I was there,
I started to understand how the farm operated
and actually what regenerative farming was
because it was a newer concept to me at the time,
and that started shaping
what I was actually gonna do with this video,
which became a completely different video
versus just showing the process
of the supply chain of cow to plate.
And so I don't think you need to beat yourself up
if you don't have your theme right out of the gate,
but have it in the back of your mind,
so as you start going on the trip,
if you start seeing a theme popping up,
maybe it's about the people you're with
and it's the friendships and the connections
that you're making,
or maybe it's about something internally,
so maybe you've been struggling with something
and going on this trip is bringing that to the surface,
and this trip is actually changing you
in some way to make you a better person.
So sometimes you'll know right out of the gate
what your theme's gonna be when you're going into a project,
and sometimes you'll figure it out on the journey.
So when I'm doing something like the Alaska Project
where I was telling the history of the World War II base,
I could come up with my theme
before I actually shot the video,
because all of the pieces are in front of me.
I had the whole history and I was crafting the story
of how I was gonna tell that history.
Whereas this video
where I'm climbing Mount Goode up in Washington,
I didn't know what was gonna happen,
and so the theme for me came out later
because I had no idea where the story was gonna go
when I was actually filming,
and so in that situation where you don't know your theme
before you start filming,
what I suggest you do is come up with your story,
and by story, I mean what is your goal?
So what is the point of this video
that you're trying to produce?
For this mountain climb,
my goal is to get to the top of this mountain,
and it became sleeping on top of the mountain
because it's this crazy lookout point,
and we were gonna sleep on the summit,
and there was a lot of challenges
between us leaving the parking lot
and actually getting to the top of that mountain,
so that's what I was going off of
when I was shooting this video.
I knew where the story's trajectory was going,
I knew what my goal was,
and I knew what some of my challenges were to get there,
and by going through the process,
I came up with my theme,
which is, we need to challenge ourselves
to be able to put the rest of life in perspective.
And I discovered this on this trip
because this was a journey
that really tested me in a lot of ways
and was one of the most memorable climbs that I've been on,
just because everything around the climb became so intense
and it became such an extreme adventure,
at least for me.
I know there's some people
that would've climbed that mountain and they'd be like,
"Oh yeah, no problem."
Whereas other people are like, "I would never go there."
And so the actual climb itself becomes a background element
because that's more the spectacle,
that's the piece that grabs you
and makes you wanna watch the video,
but the thing that connects us
is that we all have our limits,
and being able to push past those limits
and actually challenge ourselves
helps us grow and become better people.
And so if you're getting ready to make your video,
a couple things I suggest,
set up a goal,
have some challenges that are gonna get to that goal,
that's the basic elements of story,
and also think about change or transformation
because stories typically have this element
of change or discovery at the end of the video,
and so if you could have this structure,
it's gonna help you start crafting your story,
and then you're gonna be able
to start thinking about your theme,
whether it's before you go out on the adventure
or the experience,
or it's while you're actually filming it.
And when you're out filming,
just make sure that you're not shooting everything,
you wanna shoot things that fit
that story structure that you're building,
and also the theme that you're trying to show
through this video.
Now I know my stories aren't perfect
and my themes aren't perfect in my stories,
however, it's like a muscle,
you have to continually practice,
and so if you're wanting to tell stories,
well just get started.
Come up with themes, come up with stories,
and just practice.
And the more videos that you make,
the easier it will become to come up with these themes
and come up with these stories
and be able to put all the pieces together
to make engaging videos
that your viewers are gonna wanna watch.
Now if you like this video
and you wanna learn more about telling stories
and crafting better videos,
make sure you hit that subscribe button,
but next, you should check out this video right here
which goes through my entire process
of how I approach making a vlogumentary.
I'll see you over there.