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Storytelling with CueCam, Shoot and Video Pencil
When you’re making videos or presenting remotely, what’s the best way to tell a great story?
Tell it to the camera!
If you’ve ever tried making a video on your Mac or on your phone, you’ll know that this is easier said than done. You can spend thousands on cameras, lights, switchers, software and other equipment and still feel stuck on the starting blocks. Why is that?
It’s because you never focused on the most important part of video production: telling a story. You can make yourself look great on camera but if you don’t have anything to say? Nobody will watch.
If you have a couple of Apple devices, CueCam Presenter is everything you need to create great videos. It’s a teleprompter, script-writing tool, a switcher, virtual mic with headphone monitoring and production grade audio monitoring. It turns your iPad into a telestrator and your iPhone into a camera, screen and teleprompter. It does all this while looking no more complicated than a video calling app like Zoom or Teams.
The reason CueCam Presenter doesn’t feel like OBS or Ecamm Live is that it was never designed to be a highly customisable video switching utility, it was designed to be a powerful and easy to use storytelling tool.
Yes, you can customise and link into other software and advanced hardware, but you don’t need to, especially not when you’re first getting started.
CueCam boils down all the best ways I’ve seen to communicate and teach on camera, letting you create great videos without doing any configuration yourself.
The easiest way to produce videos
Speaking to the camera is easier than producing videos where you don’t show your face, because you don’t have to create special footage for every section of the video. You can just cut back to your face.
It’s not just easier, it makes more of a connection. How often do you interact with people in the real world without showing your face? Your face is part of who you are. It’s how people connect to you. You should use it.
No need to learn your lines
The tough part about speaking to camera is learning your lines, speaking confidently and coherently, without a lot of filler words.
With a teleprompter, you don’t need to learn your lines, they’re right there where your audience is - through the camera lens.
A teleprompter needs a script. A script can be a sequence of talking points that you can flesh out on while you present, or it can be something very precise that you read verbatim. Different situations call for different types of script.
A traditional scrolling teleprompter needs an operator who can keep the script in sync with your speech. But we don’t want to rely on anybody else to run our teleprompter, so we approach it a little differently.
CueCam scripts are made of cue cards, with one card being a paragraph or two - not so much that our eyes move too much. Then we navigate the script with a simple tap of the keyboard, click of the trackpad or clunk of a foot pedal. No production crew needed.
Show, don’t tell
Some people can captivate an audience and conjure up worlds of imagination just by speaking. We don’t have to do that because we’re on video. We always have the option to cut to an image or video clip that shows something more clearly than words alone.
CueCam’s cue cards are smart. You can cue up a video clip on a card and trim it to length. You can split a clip across multiple cards and add your teleprompter notes so you always know what to say.
You can share an image, or a different camera, or an app, or a few different apps, and it all works seamlessly.
CueCam lets you stay on screen even if you’re sharing something full-screen. Keep yourself in a circle or use CueCam’s built-in virtual chroma key feature to appear larger, over the top of your content, with a transparent background.
Think on your feet
Live performance isn’t all about reading from a script. You want the freedom to improvise. You want to be able to go off-script sometimes. How does CueCam help you do this?
Video Pencil lets you draw on whatever you’re sharing using your iPad. If someone asks a question, you can instantly bring up a blank board to draw on and sketch something out.
Aside 3D lets you instantly move whatever you’re sharing out of the way so you people can see you properly.
Finding the story
Finding the story is not easy. That’s why it’s so easy to procrastinate by buying and learning to use new gear. It takes work, it takes vulnerability and it takes the willingness to fail.
There are many approaches to finding a story, so I’ll tell you what I do.
I start by thinking about the topic I want to discuss. I collect everything I’d like to say in a Notes doc. This can take a few days or weeks.
Then I start writing. A headline and a few paragraphs. I’ll try a few different ideas. I’ll usually be surprised by what ends up on the page.
Once I have the approach, perhaps a headline, then it’s time to do a couple of rewrites.
Around this point, a story might show itself. I know it’s a story because I can describe it in a sentence encompassing a challenge and a personal transformation.
Then I rewrite until the entire piece supports this story.
It doesn’t have to be profound. You can introduce a tension, explain a challenge, then walk people through a transformation that allowed overcoming that challenge. You can built up to saying it in a sentence.
I think the best story pulls from concrete experiences and rich details, all building towards a singular theme.
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