All courses / Shooting, story and sound
Nobody owes you the first three seconds
A good story never goes out of fashion, but the patience your audience arrives with has collapsed. Something that would have worked as a two-minute film now has to catch the viewer immediately — and then hold on.
We watch a lot of pieces over the two days — good ones and bad ones, yours and other people's — and take them apart together. What message does it need to convey, does it work, and why? That is what lets you do the same thing to your own material afterwards.
- Length2 days
- FormatOn site only
- LanguageNorwegian or English
- CategoryShooting, story and sound
After the course you can
Storytelling for social video and short formats
- Open in a way that earns the next ten seconds, and know which of the five hook types to use
- Build a piece that holds, without people scrolling past
- Show a talking point instead of explaining it
- Cut the story considerably faster
- Create room for creativity instead of building everything from the same template
- Watch a piece and understand why it works, or why it does not
What we cover
The program
Briefly on planning
- Genre: you have to know what you are making
- Who the audience is, where you publish, and what the piece is for
- Planning coverage so the story you want can be cut
- The equipment you need — and the equipment you do not
Catching attention
- The five hook types
- A hook that promises the viewer a reward — and a piece that delivers it
- Open with the best material, close with the second best
- Openings that work with the sound off
- Why most corporate video loses its audience before the logo has faded
Holding on to it
- Dramaturgy: the APUS model and bang-puff-puff-pang on short pieces
- What characterizes a good video story
- How long does your story deserve to be
- Endings, and the call to action
Screening session — we watch a lot of pieces
- What is the piece trying to say? Does it work? Why?
- Good and bad examples from every genre
- Your own pieces, taken apart together
- Group critique — finding out what other people actually think of your piece
Visual communication
- Show — don't tell
- Situations are building blocks: easier to shoot, easier to cut, clearer for the viewer
- Visualizing an abstract point instead of stating it
- Anchoring the words to the picture, and why you have to do it again
Creativity
- Thinking outside the box — and how you make room for that to happen
- The idea matters most
- Do not build every piece from the same template
- Constraints breed creativity, so set your own
- If you can't fix it, feature it
- Creative solutions on small budgets, with examples
Efficient editing
- Text-based editing of speech
- Never mind chronology — the story matters more
- Varying angles and shot sizes to compress time
- Sound matters more than picture
- Graphics templates for a consistent look
- Automatic captions
Briefly on interviews and voice-over
- Questions that produce answers you can cut
- Voice-over: from the concrete to the abstract, never the other way round
- Touch and go, and writing less than you think
- If you want to go deeper into interview technique, that is a two-day course of its own
The honest bit
We watch a lot of short pieces, and that is the whole point — but it is not a film club. Every one of them stops on the same three questions: what is the piece trying to say, does it work, why. That habit is what you take home, not the examples.
Who it is for
Content producers, communication staff, journalists and photographers making video for social platforms and other short formats.
Prerequisites
None. It helps if you shoot or edit, but the course is about the story rather than the equipment or the software.
Bring
Some of your own published pieces, including at least one you were not happy with. They get taken apart in front of the group, which is uncomfortable and by far the most useful part.
Open courses
Prefer a fixed date for one person?
Also runs as an open course at Qross Kurssenter — classroom in Oslo and live online on the same dates.
Questions
About this course
How much of this overlaps with the interview course?
A little, but not much, and deliberately so. The interview course is two days on the craft itself: planning, putting people at ease, sound, lighting, anonymization, and which questions you ask. Teams that do a lot of interviews tend to book both.
Do we only watch examples, or do we make something?
We do not produce anything, but we work through solutions to real problems you have run into. We watch a lot of pieces because it is the fastest way to learn to see — and the group critique of your own work is the part people enjoy most.
Is this about TikTok specifically?
It is about short formats generally, because the platform will change and the principles will not. The examples come from a range of platforms.
Why is this on-site only?
Because it depends on the room: the discussion, the group critique, people reacting to each other's work, and the slightly uncomfortable honesty that comes from being in the same place. This is the course where a video call genuinely changes what happens.
Related courses
Related courses
1–2 daysCamera and shooting technique
The edit is where the trouble shows up.
1–2 daysLighting for video
A new camera costs a month's budget and improves your pictures slightly.
1–3 daysVideo on a smartphone
Modern phones shoot material that holds up on any platform you are likely to publish on.
Want this for your team?
Tell me what goes wrong today and you get a written plan and a price back. Two sentences is enough.