How to Turn Your Story Into A Film That Inspires

Everyone has that one story.?

The story that sounds like a movie.?

The story that restores our faith in humanity or makes us lose our faith in the world.?

The story that changes us forever.?

But when your organization has a mission so rich and impactful, it takes immense skill, intention, and creativity to translate it to the big screen.

How do we turn stories into films that captivate an audience? What does it mean to tell the stories of organizations, brands, and change makers on screen?

Well, it takes one hell of a team and years of experience, but here at Digifé, we believe everyone can turn an organization or brand’s story into an impactful piece of art. Here’s how you can do the same with our creative roadmap:

Research & Development

A great story starts with a thorough research process and plan for the project. By diving deep into a client’s mission and intention for telling the story, we are able to understand how to map out the vision for the film. The most important part of the research process is speaking to any and everyone who touches the work of our clients so we can really take a 360 degree look at the impact they’re making in the world. Understanding and reflecting the story means approaching the research with a little bit of rookie’s mindset and curiosity. We find that it is often the simplest questions and observations that provide the best nuggets of insight to the story we’re telling on screen. We are especially committed to learning about cultural nuances and details to the story, highlighting them throughout the film.?

Planning

We love to plan for every detail before we ever record a minute of footage. Planning allows us to thoughtfully design our game plan for translating a client’s mission on the big screen. Through designing a video concept, look and feel, style, script writing, location, and set design, our creative team can imagine how the actual video will look, sound, and perform. As we create our plan, we check-in with our clients to request feedback and to get? ahead of any changes on paper before we start filming.

Filming

We're rolling! Now that we have the roadmap developed in the pre-production stage, it’s time to put it all together in front of the cameras. After spending time planning and co-creating with our clients, this is where our professional crew of producers, directors, cinematographers,? sound engineers, and lighting techs do what they do best - film a great video. Our goal is to create a comfortable environment for our subjects, so they can tell their story without feeling like they need to act or put on a show.?

Founder and Director at Digifé, Eric Seals, advises “You never want to be the person in the corner where people are looking, pointing, and saying ‘why are they filming ?’-- it’s important to let everyone on the set know what we’re doing.”

Constructing the Story

This is where the creative development meets the editing process to weave the story together. To start the editing process, we recommend reviewing each and every minute of footage with fresh eyes. When you’re working on a long term project with a lot of footage, it can be really time consuming to have to go back to find something, so we have a meticulous process of categorizing our footage by time stamps in our first run through.?

The post-production process can make or break the vision for the story you’ve captured, so it’s important to plan for this early on in the project, even before capturing any footage. By the time the footage has been captured and organized, our editorial post-production team is ready to bring the details together with color-correction, voice overs, audio editing, music, graphics, and any other details to execute the pre-production vision. It's at this stage that we prepare and review the first cut with the client.

“When I get footage on a timeline, it reminds me of composers standing in front of an orchestra. They’re using those instruments to make great music. When I’m editing video, music is the heartbeat of everything that we do,” says Senior Editor, Donnie Seals, Jr.

Embrace Contradictions & Complexity?

Not everyone’s version of the story will perfectly line up. Details will be missing. Mysteries will leave things undiscovered. Life is messy and for some reason, we forget that stories will never end in a perfectly neat bow. In the editing process, be careful not to edit out these moments. A story can easily go from real and authentic to made-for-TV when we try to edit out the conflicts that make the stories human.?

Many of our favorite films spark the most heated debates and believe in maintaining that edge when translating stories to film. We don’t tell stories to sugarcoat them, we tell them to honor the experiences with honesty and integrity. Diverse stories get to be as complex as they are in real life.

As storytelling continues to be more accessible to all of us, audiences are becoming more sophisticated in their taste. This is the era to tell transformative stories through film and share the impact of organizations that will change a generation.?

How will you tell your story?

About Digifé

Founded in 2012, Digifé is a Black-owned, award-winning full-service video production company based in Chicago. We specialize in a variety of content among the following: documentaries, social impact stories, and informational series content. The majority of our work is centered around various community organizations in the city of Chicago, which gives us the honor of authentically amplifying the stories and voices where we live. We are a team of creative storytellers with varied media experiences across network television, news, photojournalism, and social sciences. When you hire Digifé, we become part of your team. Our capabilities within production span from development to delivery including Concept Design, Storyboarding, Story Development, Original Filming/Cinematography, Directing, and Editing. Our work has contributed to shaping the stories of many organizations and partners such as ESPN, The History Channel, Northwestern University, Chicago Public Schools, Leo Burnett, and ComED.