Our recent webinar, featuring School of Story Design’s Rance Greene and Vyond’s Taylor Morgan and Jeniffer Strub, explores how you can deliver more tailored, believable storytelling in your videos and walks through some clever use cases for Vyond’s new AI features.
Watch the webinar replay for all the insights. And in the meantime, here are three ideas that stuck with us.
Watch the Replay
Animated videos rock for engaging and educating people
Video producer Taylor Morgan says that animated videos are a great way to engage and educate employees. Live-action production is time- and resource-intensive: it can take months, depending on project size and how much post-production work it needs. Animated videos, on the other hand, let you combine all production stages into one easy-to-control workflow.
What’s more, Taylor says, with animated videos you’re not limited by budget or the physical world around you; if you can imagine it, you can make it. And animated videos are far easier and less expensive to update than live action videos. “With animation, I can easily swap in new characters, update text, re-record voiceover or use text to speech, and I’m done,” Taylor says.
Taylor Morgan on why animated videos rock for engaging and educating people at work
Relatable characters and strong conflict are keys to good storytelling
The ultimate goal of employee communications and training is to get your audience to take action. Stories can be a powerful catalyst for action, because stories access our intellect through the backdoor of our emotions, says Rance. But how do you draw a clear line for your audience from your story to the desired action?
Rance says that to nudge your audience to action, your stories must have two elements: relatable characters and strong conflict. When those are paired, your viewers get a desire for resolution: they want to see the characters get out of the situation and succeed. That desire for resolution opens up your viewers to take action, whether that’s to receive instruction or hear your message.
To create those relatable characters and strong conflict, you need to know your audience. If it’s a new audience, create a profile for them. What circumstances are they in? What are they feeling as they enter the training or receive your message? What do they fear, what do they value? Who are they as people? Then get clear on what you want them to do as a result of the training or your message.
Rance on the two keys to good storytelling
AI helps make your animated video characters more relatable
If we want our video scenarios to resonate with our audiences, the characters in those scenarios need to be good actors, Rance says. Whatever the scene, they should be able to call upon a wide range of believable actions and reactions, from big and sweeping to small and subtle.
Vyond’s AI-powered Video to Action feature means that if you’re looking for an action that doesn’t yet exist in the library, you can simply create it. Just upload a video of yourself (or a willing subject) performing the action you want to animate into Vyond, and within seconds, the action will be ready for you to apply to a character.
Rance shares his tips for recording a useful video clip for Video to Action
For a deeper dive into Vyond’s Text to Prop and Video to Action features, watch the webinar replay. And if you haven’t yet tried these features for yourself but would like to, try Vyond free here for two weeks — sign up is simple and there’s no credit card required!
