Ditch the Script, embrace The Drop

We have a strong dislike of scripts.

At many creative video agencies, they’re treated like the gospel: crafted in pre-production, crassly imposed upon contributors during the shoot, and clung-to in the edit.

They make sense when you’re producing complicated, high-end fiction. They don't make sense if you're producing trust-building, human-centred content for highly-regulated firms.

Scripts box you in. They stop video flourishing fully, and they restrict the returns you can get on your investment. At Bear Video, we don’t do scripts.

The Drop

To explain why, let's first discuss The Drop. The Drop is the most powerful and precious moment in the entire production process, and arguably your marketing efforts as a highly-regulated firm.

To set the scene, imagine we're filming somebody on-location. For the purpose of our example, imagine our client is a health-tech app, and we're talking to an end user who uses the client's product.

Gently guided and prompted by us, the end user is in full-flow talking about their experience of using the app.

The relaxed nature of our approach means they've forgotten that a representative from the app is sitting quietly in the back of the room — they just seem like a member of the production team.

Suddenly, it happens. Out of nowhere, a sentence emerges, raw and unrehearsed, articulating a point so well that hours and hours of scripting wouldn't have put it any better.

It’s beautiful. It’s real. Everyone behind the camera knows it’s going to make the edit, and it's going to be great social proof.

At the back of the room, our client surreptitiously beams from ear-to-ear, recognising immediately the value in what’s just been offered up organically and authentically.

You can feel it, even if no one says it — we’ve struck gold.

Often, considering their sentence upon completion, the contributor remarks “Wow, that sounded quite good, didn’t it?”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is The Drop.

A required leap of faith

Sadly, The Drop simply doesn’t occur by accident. If you arrive at a shoot with heavily pre-conceived ideas of what people should say then it simply won't happen.

Why? Because the phenomenon comes from letting go, and giving real human beings the space to speak in their own wards, rather than yours.

Experiencing The Drop requires taking a leap of faith. Scripted videos are safe: they aim to control the narrative and the scripts themselves are a tool for managing or mitigating risk.

If you're going to unleash the power of authentic, human-led video, but then insist on putting words in their mouths, then it's a waste of your money.

More listening, less talking

In highly-regulated industries like healthcare, education, and cutting-edge tech, where personal stakes are high and oversight is rigorous, creating meaningful video content that provides a return on investment requires more listening and less talking.

David C. Baker, bestselling author, wrote on the need for more 'sonder' in modern marketing here. He said everyone is “immersed in an existence just as unique as your own, and it’s worth exploring and understanding. I’d say we need a little bit less 'pressing of the boundaries' and a little bit more 'real human stories.'"

Yes, there is the complication of running into compliance issues in highly-regulated industries, but with the right processes — like starting with what you can't say — it's possible.

Scripts encourage us to impose prescriptive lines on people, when what you should really be looking for is opportunities to dig under the surface of an answer: to find out the why, the how, and all of the nuance in-between. These are all details that help replace 'hype' with authentic, real stories.

Unexpected bonuses

But the benefits don't stop there. Far beyond the final outputs, there is hidden value in the process of letting your users and/or customers speak openly and candidly about their experience of your product or service.

Shoot days move beyond a means-to-an-end and express themselves as a significant part of the value to be derived from video. Just because something doesn’t make its way into the final cut doesn’t mean it’s not of use.

Beyond providing social assets, we've surprised teams as diverse as customer success, product, and sales with uncovered insights, bugs and desired functionality that has gone onto create further positive financial impact for our clients.

If not scripts, then what?

The list against scripts is long, all of which we will cover one day:

• scripts tend to sound too polished and contrived to have an effect

• we hate being sold to but are fascinated by hearing stories and seeking meaning in what others share

But if scripts aren’t the answer, what is?

The first port of call for us is to hold a Creative & Compliance Discovery Session with our clients. It’s an opportunity for them to provide a steer where, in any context, they think we might find interesting insights or golden nuggets. Often, they will have a particular lens in mind through which they’d like to approach the video and that’s fine as long as it’s not too limiting.

The key is, off the back of this session, we’re heading into the Production phase of the engagement with gentle prompts and questions — but never any concrete plans or soundbites. This always has to be driven by the contributor's actual experience, or it's just not worthwhile in the first place.

Conversations, not Choreography

To finish, imagine that you're the one asking a customer to talk on camera about their experience working with your firm. Would you rather stress them out with a jumble of pre-conceived lines to uncomfortably deliver to camera, or let them relax and just be themselves?

Yes, for starters you will get much more effective outputs. But, perhaps most importantly, your client in the hot seat has a much more positive experience of being on camera too.

Conversations, not choreography. That's the aim.

P.S You can learn more about how we balance the tension between unscripted storytelling and compliance requirements in Start With What You Can't Say.

At Bear Video we help highly-regulated firms earn trust & communicate complex concepts with clarity, whilst avoiding compliance headaches. If anything in this article resonated, feel free to get in touch to discuss.