Because video production is a complex technical craft it's sometimes assumed that technology can be substituted for good storytelling. Our experience tells us that's a bad assumption.
However long they may be, whatever tools are used to create them, whatever their purpose may be, successful motion pictures are successful because they tell good stories.
In the shows we produce or commission, we look for compelling stories; stories which in the telling can illuminate the human condition, reveal larger truths, explain conflicts, or allow the audience to experience other cultures and their ideas.
Arbour's client-initiated production projects begin with a story meeting in which we try to learn as much as we can about the purpose of the client’s project, their organization or company or product, the message they want to convey, and the audiences they want to communicate with. Then we stop and think carefully about what we've learned.
We have to stop and think because we don't take a one-style-, one-format-fits-all approach. Our goal is to create a video project that will tell a client’s story in an unique and compelling way.
If we don't think a client’s initial idea will work on video, we'll tell them, but we'll also suggest alternate ideas we think will work to accomplish their purpose. We spend the time we need to to make sure we've got a good story before we shoot one frame of video.
Once upon a time video production was a quite complex, time and resource intensive, very expensive activity to engage in and was dominated by a few production companies.
The creation of video programming was focused on attracting mass audiences to attract mass advertisers capable of funding video production Video program distribution was dominated by a handful of broadcast, and, later, cable networks.
The relationships of production companies, mass advertisers and large distributors defined the status quo of the video production industry.
That status quo has been broken because today video production can be done by anyone with a digital camcorder and computer and they put their work in front of audiences ranging in size from a single person to global in a matter of hours if not minutes.
The rise of online video makes it possible for producers, directors, organizations or businesses to reach the audiences most interested in their work or message in a direct and powerful way. Owing to the way the internet has changed the business of distribution, the opportunity to tell compelling stories has never been greater.
Just because anyone with a digital camera can produce video does not mean they can do it well. Over the 110-odd year history of motion pictures there developed a visual language — a system of cinematic grammar, convention, and genre — that audiences associate with quality and creativity.
While it’s true that audiences will tolerate lower technical quality to see compelling one-of-a-kind or as-it’s-happening content, poor story telling doesn't’t hold an audience’s attention. Good visual story telling is still mostly a product of a creative vision, good writing, careful planning, and experienced craftsmanship.
This perhaps one of the reasons why You Tube has purchased a leading content creator, Next New Networks.
The only real reality TV is closed-circuit TV footage. The moment a editor has to cut footage to make a story interesting is the moment of truth. Much depends on the integrity of his or her editorial judgment and, indeed, the judgment an entire production team.
We do our best to follow Shakespeare’s advice as he put it in mouth Prince Hamlet “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance: that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the fist and now, was and is to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
In the shows we produce or commission, we try not to make up reality because truth makes the best stories.
