Everything I know about instagram stories.

if this is the first time you've ever seen me in video you might be thinking yourself oh what did you learn that no one gives a [ __ ] about your coffee boomerangs yes i did learn that and a whole lot [Music] more my name is jessie driftwood and i make internet videos sometimes here on youtube sometimes on instagram and sometimes for other brand social media pages and believe it or not i have instagram stories to thank for all of that way back in the summer of 2016 not too long after facebook failed to acquire snapchat they launched instagram stories it was part of the platform that was meant to be fun and spontaneous and not so curated and ultimately was meant to be impermanent you know disappear and i thought to myself i should spend several hours every day making these and i did and it worked and i learned a lot and that's what i want to talk to you about you've gotta do it for you i had been working professionally in video and film for about six or seven years before i started making instagram stories and honestly the reason i did it is because i wanted to prove to myself that i still loved doing it it had been so long since i had done anything video wise that i wasn't being paid for and i just wanted to feel like i was 14 again filming my friends ollie down their first five stare getting noticed is tricky everyone's trying to grow their brand and stuff like that and so i think about it like this there are two main ways to get notice you either have to be doing something unique something people haven't seen before or you do something that they're familiar with and you do it better the second one is kind of like jumping on a trend on tick-tock it's not enough to just do it you have to do something unique you have to do it better than other people have done it whereas the first one is like being the person that came up with the trend in the first place now while i certainly didn't invent vlogging or short form storytelling or anything like that to my knowledge i was the first person that was treating instagram stories as a platform for quality curated content and at the time that was enough for the average instagram scroller to stop watch and consider actually following be consistent i learned more in the two years i spent making instagram stories on the daily than i did in the previous six shooting weddings and events and small commercials and stuff like that and the reason is i was making more videos and when you make more videos you make more mistakes and when you make more mistakes you learn how to solve those mistakes and so far in my experience a huge portion of filmmaking is problem solving especially on set [Music] film yourself the truth is when i started doing this i hated being on camera i really just felt so uncomfortable but when you're trying to make like videos every day you know what's the thing you spend the most time with yourself in the earliest days of my instagram stories i was almost exclusively just filming time lapses of me editing and funny enough i still do this and it's such a great technique because when i point my camera at my computer screen and i shoot a time lapse i don't want people to know i don't even want to know how much time i waste so i just end up making a point of staying on task if only to make it look like i'm the kind of person that stays on task so that was a benefit find characters now i don't mean people necessarily though it could be i more so mean objects ideas themes things that you can come back to over time because what that's going to do is it's actually going to tie together all of your videos as like a single body of work imagine this like a a sitcom that has a running joke if you watched how i met your mother which i i didn't really but they'll make a joke in season 14 that is only really as funny as it is because of all the other instances of that joke beforehand for me the most common thing at the time was soylent and the reason i kept bringing it back is because the first story that i put it in i got so many dms half from people being like oh this is really interesting tell me more and half from people being like uh don't drink that don't drink that and so i knew right away something like soylent was actually creating an emotional response in people in a way that time lapses of myself editing never could [Music] don't be complacent after about 40 or 50 instagram stories that were mostly just me editing and time lapses from my phone i realized that this was no longer a surprise to people and so i needed to turn things up a notch so what i did is i bought a canon m5 which was at the time like a small mirrorless camera because i wanted to experiment with things like slow motion and shallow depth of field using prime lenses and this really brought the quality up a notch in fact one of the first times i made a story like this a good friend of mine she texted me and said jessie no and right away i knew i was onto something make it visually interesting i had been experimenting with in camera transitions into my professional work as early as 2011 and way back into my high school videos in the mid 2000s but for some reason it took 53 instagram stories before i thought i can do that here too and one thing i learned over time was just how many people watch instagram stories without any sound and so by adding a little bit of visual eye candy making your story stand out more than the one they saw before it they're that much more likely to stick around and see what's up make it mundane now this might seem a little bit counterintuitive but hear me out for a second when you're making these short form stories especially on a platform for casual viewing for large amounts of people it's good to try and find topics that are relatable to people not only that but it's a heck of a lot easier to find something to make when you just look around you and go i can make a story about that you can make it about getting a sodi pop from the fridge or one i made this week where i just got creative with my mcdonald's order seriously in 15 seconds you could make almost anything interesting in fact if you got an idea for me that you don't think i could make interesting let me know down in the comments and maybe i'll give it a shot make it rough it is fun to make videos that are epic and buttery and smooth but don't be afraid to show the moments that didn't work out this is something casey neistat has been preaching for i don't know ever rough edges make it relatable oh it is gonna rain i just locked myself out of the studio i don't know if he said it like that but that sounds like a catchphrase rough edges make it relatable by including those moments of humanity to it not only does it make it more relatable to an audience but it helps distinguish your videos from just a polished advertisement that they're being served and oh my goodness instagram puts so many ads and stories now so you actually might want to try and like steer away from some of that high gloss look [Music] you're gonna be glad you did as i started experimenting with making stories that weren't just me at work or me commuting to work i started including my family more and more and looking back now i realized i captured so many memories so many moments that i wouldn't have had i not been doing this and so i'm just so thankful that not only have i documented things like my growth as a filmmaker but also the early moments of my kids lives keep your characters i knew from the beginning that including these characters were gonna tie my videos together but one unexpected benefit is that when you film the same types of things so many times you have to start looking at it in new ways so if you did it in a silly way yesterday try and do it in a serious way today or if you did it as a time lapse yesterday try it as slow motion today doing that with my instagram stories has helped me tremendously to this day now when i have a sequence to shoot i think about it as like what are all the different ways i could approach this rather than just like what do i do don't forget to have fun it's easy to get really stressed out especially when you're in this daily grind but you've got to like it that's the whole point so if you plan to shoot the sunset and it starts raining film that make it about getting soaked in the rain in fact this story right here i was convinced my m5 was gonna die before i got to the studio and i was strangely okay with it not because i could afford another camera not even close but because i just thought i'm really doing something here i'm really doing it film in 60 frames per second this is very bad filmmaking advice but very good content creation advice when you don't know what the end result is going to be when you don't know what the story is necessarily having those extra frames per second is going to come in handy if you fall in a river or get hit by a pie nice slow motion keep going it's easy to get discouraged when you've been doing something for what feels like a while and maybe you're not gaining followers heck you're maybe even you're losing followers but like a a workout program or how i imagine they work you really have to keep going for a while to see the results and sometimes all it takes is just the right person seeing one of your videos at the time i started even booking weddings because some random couple saw an instagram story i made when i was filming at another wedding and so just because it hasn't worked yet does not mean it's time to pack your bags keep going change it up maybe you found exactly the type of videos you made but i still think especially in the learning stages it's really important to try something new to this day i still mine my old instagram stories for ideas and inspiration for my current youtube videos this story right here [Music] became the inspiration for this scene in a youtube video four years later it takes time it wasn't until like six months to a year of doing this that i really started noticing patterns in my own videos and that's a good thing because as you notice patterns in your videos you either a notice things you need to fix like how often i say like or b you also start to discover what your style is keep it short this is a mistake that i ended up making later on in my instagram story career but rather than making 15 second 30 second stories i was slowly making three minute four minute stories and here's the problem instagram stories is primarily a passively consumed app that is to say people open it on the toilet in line at the bank but almost never because they're like time to consume some quality content and so when people started seeing you know 20 frames across my stories the drop off from frame 1 to frame 2 was so much more significant than when it was like 45 seconds a minute because when someone isn't asking to see your video the odds of them watching the whole thing without knowing what it is are incredibly slim my best advice would be to keep it under a minute this way not only can you try and capture as many people watching through the whole thing as possible but you can also repurpose that content for tick tock youtube shorts or even your instagram main feed one minute [Music] use an iphone listen i hate that this is the case i hate that i'm even saying in this video but uploading your stories from an iphone is the best way to do it mostly i've had so many messages of people being like what are the best export settings your videos are so crisp mine are so mushy with almost no exceptions the answer is always upload it from an iphone not an android there are some newer androids that have fixed this problem but like i don't know which one so i can't tell you all i know is that i learned android upload quality is mostly just the worst you do you don't make my videos make your videos you don't have to be eccentric and annoying in order to get people to be interested if you're someone who speaks slowly and thoughtfully there is a market of people that hate me and are going to love you and don't be afraid to put in some of your actual hobbies and interests it doesn't matter if it's dungeons and dragons or fencing or something like that one thing that i do is i'll often try and put a close-up of my phone that shows the song i'm listening to at the time especially if it's on the slightly more obscure end that way most people won't think twice about it but a handful of people are gonna see that and be like i love that band and then they're instantly gonna have a slightly deeper connection because now we relate on that thing so figure out what are the things about your personality about your life that you could incorporate and do that [Music] making money this is a fun one because a very unexpected benefit of doing this for so long is that brands wanted to get involved because brands always want to get involved when people are watching i asked on my twitter the other day you know for people that have been watching for a while what are some stories that have really stood out to you and to my surprise a lot of people mentioned some of the ads that i've done in particular one that i did for uh this cold brew company called stoke in colombia when i was visiting their coffee farms so when you have an audience that's started following you because of a specific style of video you do they don't seem to mind the ads as long as you're still doing it in that specific style you know the thing they signed up for they're still getting it now speaking of advertisements this video right here is sponsored by storyblocks storyblocks is not only my go-to for client videos when we didn't have the time or budget to get all the shots we needed but i've also been using them in my youtube videos and even my instagram stories for a very long time this story right here i got so many dms from people praising me for one shot in particular which is uh this one at the end just kind of makes me wonder like will time ever slow down i hope it does i didn't shoot it i got it from storyblocks so whether you're an individual looking to spice up your social media content or even a production company working with lots of big clients storyblocks has an affordable subscription to suit your needs they have over 1 million high quality royalty-free stock footage clips but they have so much more than that they also have sound effects and after effects motion templates they've got graphic elements music and they are constantly updating their library so if you want to learn more go check out the unlimited all-access subscription plan that they have so that you can go and make more videos that's the whole point that's what we're talking about make more videos and then you'll get better thank you storyblocks you guys are the greatest [Music] be critical watch your own videos as if you're someone else watching your videos no wait as if you're watching someone else's videos watch them over and over again even after you've posted them and pay attention to did i get confused at any point was it boring were there shots that i held too long shots that i cut too soon study them because it's in doing so that you're going to be able to find those mistakes and fix them in the future i did this for about two years of daily stories until i made this story right here yo the car is upside down [Music] let me quickly tell you how i got here i'm gonna tell you how we got this truck completely covered in mud on this random front lawn there is a limit in my endless pursuit to see just how far i could take this format of instagram stories i got to the point where i was making these three four minute vlogs videos that i loved but that were ultimately unsustainable because if you're spending every single day always trying to one-up not just the quality of your videos but the content within them you're inevitably going to hit a wall i never had a logan paul in the forest moment but i remember so clearly being so stressed all the time about what my next video was gonna be and how i was gonna one-up myself not to mention that i was only sleeping maybe four or five hours a night because of this i had to learn to be a regular human sometimes you know go on adventure with my friends or pay for the person's food in the drive-through behind me or make a fort with my kids and not film it not tweet about it not even tell another person because there was a life outside of content and you'd be surprised at just how quickly you can forget that gosh that got preachy if you're looking for more resources on this type of topic why not check out my youtube channel i've put out a full video on how to compose vertically without it being the absolute worst i've put out a couple of videos on how to make in-camera transitions i've also got a bunch of editing tutorials and if you're looking for a deep dive into how i plan for an instagram story how i shoot an instagram story and then how i edit that instagram story i put out an entire lesson last year with moment that over 2300 people signed up for and the response has been overwhelmingly excellent which like i'm not trying to toot my own horn but that feels really really good uh so there's a link down below for that as well please do subscribe and if you don't subscribe i would appreciate just like leaving a like or a comment i hate that it does but it does help me out thank you i love you you are probably a good person not not you not you hey please don't do that you're too loud there's roofers right now and it has been going on for a month and it's truly ruined my entire life

Channel: JesseDriftwood

Views: 134,751

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Id: 6nfy3myaImI

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021