Andrew Stanton, the writer and director of films like Finding Nemo, gives a true and insightful lesson into his understanding of storytelling at this TED talk. Here are just some of his quotes:

“Storytelling is joke telling. It’s knowing that everything you’re saying from the first sentence to the last is leading to a singular goal. And ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understanding of who we are as human beings.”

“Make the audience put things together. Don’t give them four, but give them 2+2.”

“Change is fundamental in story. When things are static, the story dies, because life is never story.”

“Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.”

So without further do, take twenty minutes and listen to his talk. It’s pure gold in my opinion.

Jonathan Harris is taking storytelling on new pathes one project at a time with his unique approach to meld web technology and storytelling. I wrote about him before as I think that he brings ideas together that allow us to look at storytelling in a non-linear way and explores the possibilities with the new technologies that are available today. Not all of his projects are perfect in the way that some make it quite easy to get lost by the sheer content they provide and through that become a bit more a playing with the story than storytelling. But today I want to point you to his latest published project: “Balloons of Bhutan”, a project that apparently was already recorded in 2007 and where he also talks about in this TED talk. I really like it for it’s simplicity. It explores the topic of happiness in Bhutan, a country that uses instead of “Gross National Product” another index to measure the socio-economic state of the country – the “Gross National Happiness”.

The approach is simple and reminds me to a big extend of what we did with HUMANS, just filtered down to this one topic. The website is quite simple now with easy to explore photo-audioslides about the 117 people that he met there. Have a look by clicking on the picture below, it’s for sure interesting and uplifting in many ways.

While storytelling is somehow a buzz word right now, the art of telling a good story is still not easy. And while I learn more about it everyday, I want to share with you five tips that helped me becoming better and more focused in my storytelling.

1. Know your story

The first and maybe most important part of every storytelling. Know the story, know the details, know the people involved. That is the only way to tell a good story. Fullstop. Research as much as you can before, be open as much as possible while you work on the story and try to keep as much flexibility when things develop in a different direction.

2. Keep it simple

The first tendency might be to try to fit in everything. Forget about that. To tell “everything” is impossible. Focus on some keyaspects and make sure to tell them right and powerful. How much you want to tell of course also depends of teh format you want to use afterwards. When it should be a photoessay of ten pictures, you will have a hard time to tell “everything”. When you want to create an interactive webdocumentary, there are way more possibilities to tell at least more aspects of the story with more depth.

3. Be clear about what you want to tell

The more you know what is important to your story, the more you can focus on this aspects in your visual storytelling. It gives you the flexibility to spot those moments that are mandatory for the story and bring things into correlation in your pictures. When you know what you need to communicate it’s much easier than when you have to figure it out solely on location. Developing a story on location or out of a pile of random material is tough business.

4. Story first, aesthetics second

You want to tell a story, not make an aesthetic picture. When it comes together and you tell the story with an aesthetic picture, even better. Aesthetics can help you reach people and communicate your story in a powerful way. Just don’t let aesthetics drive you storytelling. It’s the story that matters most.

5. Be close

And with close I’m not talking of physical closeness. This might come along with it, but most important is the connection you have with the people in your story, the trust and the relation. It’s easy: the more you can gain trust, the more access you will get and the more access you have, the more chances you have to tell the story in a decent way. Otherwise you story will always be in danger of being superficial and with the danger to work more with imagination and stereotypes than really telling something.

What are your tips for better visual storytelling? Let us know…

Some might have heardt of the TED prize wish that streetartist JR had last year. He wanted to have a global project, taking his idea to have big supersize prints of portraits printed in the streets back to the people. So they created the Inside Out project and a website. Everyone could upload portraits and JR printed it, send it back and the person could paste it somewhere. This led to a series of great projects all over the world. One also in Greece where my old friend Stavros Makris delivered part of the photography for.

Now, while projects with JR’s idea are still happening all over the globe, it seems that JR is slowly collecting what happend with his Inside Out project. Below you find the first episode of shortfilms, this one telling stories from Tunesia and Japan. Enjoy!

Today I would like to share with you a very interesting series by Vice magazine. It’s called Picture Perfect and it follows different photographers on their projects, documenting their work, their ideas and intentions behind it. I picked out three to share with you here. See all episodes here.

Picture Perfect: Donald Weber

“I love photography, but I’m not really interested in pictures. There are pictures of something and about something. I want to do pictures about something.” Picture Perfect joins photojournalist Donald Weber while he is documenting the aftermath of the Japan earthquake in 2011. “If I do not go and do this, I should leave photography now.” he says. Very moving and powerful!

Picture Perfect: James Mollison

James Mollison travels to the refugee camp Dadaab in the middle of the famine catastrophy last year. He mainly takes portraits of the people in front of white seamless. His intention is to seperate them from their surrounding. One could argue that this is the last thing people at that time need. But on the other hand I thought that it is a nice way to democatize. Everyone is portrait in the same way and while the surrounding might be something far away for many people, one might be able to connect with the person. What do you think?

Picture Perfect: Ziyah Gafic

Ziyah Gafic from Sarajevo is joined in this episode on an assignment to Saudi-Arabia for a multimedia assignment about women. “It’s good to challange the stereotype.” he explains. His work tries to show the other side of a muslim country like Saudi Arabia, showing successful business women, a difficult task due to the high amount of privacy and the traditional values.

Before reading the article, if you haven’t seen it so far, you might be interested watching the video first:

If you haven’t heardt of it by now, you might have been away from the internet for some days. Some point last week the online viral campaign “KONY 2012″ hit the net and spreaded around in lightspeed. In a few days millions of people have seen it. Interestingly enough youtube stats tell that it’s main audience is girls between 13 and 17 and guys between 18-24, what tell a lot about the key audience that Invisible Children, the organisation behind the campaign, is reaching first. An audience one might say is also perfect for creating a (not too critical) movement, where the feeling of standing up together is an important part, not too much dependend on the cause itself.

The cause itself is important to say the least. Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA for a long time and responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity from child soldiers (where he is particularly famous for) to rape and murder. The campaigns goal: To stop Kony.

The days after the video spreaded all over, the critique on the campaign and the organisation started floating around as well. Some focus on the “shady” status of the organisation or the fact that only one third of the money is spend on actual projects in Uganda. Others argue that Kony is not in Uganda since quite some years now, but operates his 200-250 people army between CAR, DRC and Southern Sudan, so the focus on supporting the Ugandan army is wrong, also because they are to some extend accused for the same crimes as Kony’s army. The fact that the solution for the problem in the eyes of Invisible Children is a military intervention with US troops is more than questionable. So you see, the list can go on and on why we should not support “KONY 2012″.

In my opinion the campaign has it’s positive and negative sides. For me the big problem with the campaign is not the fact that money donated might not reach the people in Uganda with programs. At the end the organisation has the purpose to do huge lobbying for their cause. What I find difficult is the way how the story is told. There is a huge simplification of the problem together with a very simplified solution, made in a very black and white emotional way that leaves not too much to say against, when you trust what is being said and don’t critically learn about the problem. The solution in itself might be compelling to many that never had a direct contact with that. It leaves us with the classic stereotypes of Africa, Africans and so on. Getting Kony will solve the problem, that is the message. For that we (as Americans or Western citizens) have to get there and do it. Why are no locals involved in the solution, is none of the policy makers from there, why don’t we hear voices from people in Uganda that speak up? It comes back to an idea of development work that most serious organisations try to work against nowadays: We come to save you, because you can’t save yourself. The campaign triggers more the feeling of: “I can do something, change the world!” The effect, even when Kony gets arrested, for the region might still be small. The problems are more complex and as one of the articles stated: Kony is just a Con. This might sound cynical in the first moment, but I believe that more is helped when actual projects that work with the situation of the people are being supported. The idea to fight fire with fire never really worked.

The good effect of the campaign is not that it will solve the problem, but that many people now talk about it. The fact that I’m writing about it and you read it, shows only how much potential there still is for a topic like that to move people. And when at the end more people read about the crimes of the LRA, but try to understand a bit more of the complexity of the problem and think about ways to do it justice, like supporting organisations that do important work on the ground, KONY 2012 was a success. Plastering thousands of posters and calling for military intervention might be the wrong way to “solve” the issue, but raising awarness is very important and that is what it does right now in a way like never before.

.

If you are interested in more information and the criticism, here are some articles worth reading on the topic:

African Voices respond on Kony 2012 

Popbitch on Kony 2012 

The Daily What on Kony 2012 

We got trouble 

Invisible Childrens respond to the criticism

.

And if your are interested in hearing some actual people from there talk about the situation, watch this video by Marcus Bleasdale, who worked in the region for ages together with organizations like Human Rights Watch:

Interviews of the children abducted by the Lords Resistance Army shot over a period of several months in 2010 in Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Uganda for Human Rights Watch and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.

This has been around for a long time, but it is worth to think about it from time to time. Ira Glass is a master storyteller for “This American Life” who here shares some of his thoughts not only on storytelling, but mainly about the creative process, nicely animated by David Shiyang Liu. I just wonder if what he says ever stops in the creative process or if it is something that will be part of our work for the rest of our lifes (something what I hope to some extend…).

    Top tip: “Do a lot of work! Do a huge volume of work! Put yourself deadlines! Make one story a week!”

This piece is just a small part of a four part series about storytelling one could find on youtube here, here, here and here. Make sure to check that out if you ever intend to write a story, make a film or in any other way try to tell a story. Very valuable information!