Exposition

Aristotle in his lectures on dramatic form, The Poetics tells us that Plot (the most essential component of theatre (he calls it Poetry) is “the imitation of the action—for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents… [it is] and imitation, not of men, but of action and of life, and life consists of action.”

So the first thing we need to talk about is the arrangement of the action in your story. What happens in most human videos that I have seen is that there is a deficiency in one of these areas: exposition, conflict, climax, or resolution. Each of these is specifically ordered because that is what will garner the greatest effect on your audience.

This is not to say that you cannot structure your Human Videos in another way. By all means, experiment, test out your theories, but I will guarantee you that eventually you will end up back at this structure because it is time-tested and proved. It just works.

Exposition is the part of the story that sets up the action. One problem that a lot of Human videos have is the lack of set up. The audience is flung too quickly into the action of the story with little in the way of explanation. This can lead to the audience giving up on the story before it has even really begun. Use the instrumental time in your song not just for “cool moves” but for clarification. If you have ever taken a journalism class, they will tell you that the first paragraph should convey to you the answers to the “5 W’s”: Who, what, when, where, why. Some would ass the one “H”: How. I would not include this in your exposition, however, It is what the rest of the plot is for. By the time you reach your Conflict, you should already know who the players in this game are. One good example from an old human video is “The Champion.” In the action you must clearly lay out who is God and who is the Devil. That particular song does it in the lyrics, but that isn’t necessary for good exposition. You can convey as much from one action, look or gesture as you can with lines of dialogue. Use that, and do not rely on the words to do all the work for you.