What I learned after sharing good stories

One of the best ideas I could be involved this 2019 has been the production of a webcast (releasing contents exclusively on the Internet), what we called, objecting the rules of branding, A Good Story To Share, or BHC for the Spanish acronyme we chose it, which concept is simple – to tell and to release real, inspiring stories those give us back the faith in the good news.

It seems easy to write it, but 13 episodes later, it has been a whole challenge for sure, because the enthusiasm of Francesco Navarrete and Daniella Peña, who became my producers, was not enough, or the care we gave to choose the topics, or the contents management, or the performance of a complicated technique despite its simplicity – the sequence shot, the art to feature an audiovisual piece without edition cuts, even travelling the camera, plus –as we decided to complicate with our few resources—completely on live.

Who say it’s like making radio are wrong, not because the radio is more simple to perform, but they are two totally different languages. Also, the television has a critical component than the radio doesn’t have – images. But, being fair, inclusive the radio has like its main task to estimulate the imagination of audiences for creating mental pictures, so the only-audio media neither is a piece of cake. Meanwhile, let’s get back to the sequence shot stuff.

Who reads this and has no most notion about audiovisual contents production, or still has no notion about how to produce mass-releasing contents at worst, could think it’s about pre-historical television, when there were no 1-inch tapes those allowed to keep images neither, but curiously, the simple in times of digital recording, storage, and distribution formats, is turning on the camera, making what it must to make, cutting, and gathering all by edition, especially if bloopers have happened a lot. And if there are mistakes, there are filters in post-production.

It’s not about  screaming action!, or cut!, or print! Is easy neither, what I say is, suddenly, many producers are seeing in edition an easy resource to make contents, and it’s not so. If the play is not set up in three acts with its related plot points, even when it’s about non-fictional reality, then that magical moment to play with the emotion of audiences will not be gotten, technique we inherited from Classic Greece, that must be about 3000 years old as a little.

Lesson 1 – Live means on live

On preset-content on live television, as made in Peru until mid-1960s (and in the U.S. during the 1950s), there were no option to cut. Probably some adjustment in sound, lighting, but basically performing everything, to begin, requires three key characteristics: a very good communication in the whole crew, that the on-camera talent (not only the anchor) has enough resources to save the frame if something gets out of control, and whenever losing the awareness that there won’t be reverse back once the first second gets released.

The first was solved  by handling a checklist that sets that is going to be spoken, to be shown, which moment is going to be shown. It seems I were talking about a teleplay but it’s not strictly. Yes, who thought that the webcasting just began, Nelson started to speak the first coming to his head like a parrot, get wrong. Behind the camera, my producers were marking me timing, topics, and time. And the work document was the checklist I wrote.

The second, even when you don’t believe it, was to apply casting. There are people who know that proposed us themes and characters, but they were never included in the season. The answer of why we didn’t include them is simple: the stories were not pitched adequately, or they didn’t sound consistent, so it would be complicated to understand what hook would be we can use to catch the audience. Is it possible to get? Yes, it is, and I’ll comment how to get it later.

The point is when we began to work with other persons on camera, whom we named the stars (not the guests because, basically, we were to get inside their daily space to webcast), we became rehearsal sessions and even we did rehearsals before going online to be sure that everybody was synchronized.

And the third was definetly a general focusing exercise –not only the producers or mine, I repeat—where the main instruction was forget abot there’s a camera, continue talking to me and the another was if something goes wwrong, there’s no problem ‘cause we solve it on the way. What I can say, indeed, is every webcast was a weekly conversation topic for everybody was sure we were speaking the same language. Of course, details broke out, as the camera trembling so much, or the wi-fi signal fell down bitting pieces of audio or video, but, in general, the work was really good.

Lesson 2 – The story is more important than the technology

When we were to webcast on location, some stars expected we appeared with a huge camera, cables everywhere, lights, microphones, and a truck with large dishes linking the signal up to any satellite outside. We are sorry to deceive you but everything was made with a smartphone linked to a wireless Internet signal, and there was no more car than Homero, the red VW beetle that transported us through the city and around.

Of course, when it came to the ears of our competitors, they started to say us for introducing this device or this one or this another one, and the truth is every suggestion has been very good, and that proves the feature generates interest as much as your competitors wanted it improves. But in this first season, Francesco and I wanted to encourage ourselves for taking all the possible advantages that a such little device as a cellphone allowed us, making things not needing to carry more equipment, and that is the sign of this time – the convergence allows you to put in public anything including with a spy device. More than a technological challenge, it was a technical challenge.

Then, if the technology was not our spot, which was it? The story, the narration, the data management, the logic of the storyline. And overall this, the veracity of the released. And the proof of that is the multimedia version, we mean a content that the audience can play again and complement with additional information in text, audio, and video existent on the net and in sources those are not necessarily belong to or are controlled by our feature. Research, in other words.

Like I said up before about the facts, the next was to dose them someway so the interest went growing in the audience. And another challenge came here: everybody is usually assuming to tell something in two, exceptionally five minutes. ON BHC, we took until 29 minutes 30 seconds to make it, uncut (remember it), and the reason why is pretty simple: the narration became too good  at the time to perform it that basically we let to flow. The stars have much of the credit, and this is not about we discovered the penicilin.

The very talented Mexican artist Verónica Castro told once that an interview with late singer and songwriter Juan Gabriel scheduled for two hours (music included) extended five due to the guest deserved to take more time. The funny thing is I was not much inspired on  la chaparrita. Rather, my reference, as I told it to many people, is the Cuban journalist Cristina Saralegui. And in fact, thinking of her, we have talked about the possibility to migrate to a live-audience format, but we are still thinking of it, because everything is submitted to funding.

Lesson 3 – The trust in the own story

Another challenge of this first webcasts package happened since the episode 8, when we left the monologues and incorporated the participation of the stars. Actually, the idea to bring in more people on camera began since the episode 3 when I shared the anchoring  and we had our first star, but different factors, the availability of the other person among them, made we to postergate it for four more webcasts.

But what people would be able to share us their stories? During the first half of the second phase, we worked to search and convince them  that their experience, including to be inspirational, had to be told on camera not like an interview but a natural conversation between old buddies rather. Getting it was such as complicated as building trust in the format, in the manner how we were to treat the contents, and in myself.

And in this sense, the webcasts working better in terms of positive feedback were the ones starred by women. There’s no much science to explain why: the women value better their life stories than the men, and when they tell them, they update them so much that the audience connect to them so easy, instantaneously. Right for those webcasts. Our remaining challenge, if we launch a second season, is to alternate a webcast starred by a male to another one starred by a female, as we encourage initially.

In the second half of the second phase, the stuff was relatively simple. People watched on the video what we were making, trusted in the format quality, and started to appear within who we invited to feature on camera and who requested to be featured on it. So now, what’s the power to share a good story? First, you re-validate what you lived no matter wwhat kind is, second, the lesson you learned is a learning to be useful for somebody else, third, you contribute to change the attitude of people turning to a much positive vision of the life and themselves. In brief, we build peace culture by using a mass-media.

Lesson 4 – The planet wants to meet you

No doubt – the accurate thing of the format was when we included  a star on camera in terms of impact on the people who watched every episode. And the magical comes here: not only we reached netsurfers around Sullana (the city where our headquarters are located, actually), but we got beyond it and expand to the north as much as Canada and the U.S, to the south as much as Chile and Argentina, around as much as Western Europe and even Japan. Wherever a native or adopted Spanish-speaker was, the content works perfectly the same, and as we try the style to be unactual, if you play it right now, is so current as the day it was webcasted.

Then, when somebody features on the BHC project, must consider not only is speaking the buddies known face-to-face or via Facebook, but is able to generate the community spirit joining thousands around the globe. The point is to face. That’s why the show’s slogan is the planet wants to meet you.

The challenge in this sense is going out Sullana, exploring other towns. We became to make a webcast in Piura, and other elsess left to launch. But good stories also appeared in Chulucanas, Ayabaca, Catacaos, Paita or Huancabamba, other places in Piura Region. We couldn’t cover them because a logistic issue (sponsor wanted, by the way), but we would like to feature on the screen.

Other activities we have thought around the format, and I’m going to announce right now, are living on live experiences which we teach you to identify your good story and hhow to use our own platform or the yours to go sharing with your buddies as well as everybody, so if you are interested to have your own, where you are, go to https://facebook.com/BHXoficial and leave us a little message. Also, you can watch all the episodes on their three versions.

And I close this year with the footer of the show, and that should be a kind of manthra for 2020 and the upcoming years – I have a good story to share, and you? So, the planet wants to meet you!

Please, forgive me if you don’t speak Spanish, but I share along this posts some webcasts with a better impact in our audience. Leave me your comments on my Facebook or Twitter accounts, my YouTube channel, or right below here.