Our Program

This session opens with a few important concepts about storytelling itself, and the intangible ‘why’ behind everything we do at LookUp.  This instructional portion is about 30 minutes.

• What Makes a Story? (and why do we humans like them so much?)
• Leadership Through Stories
• Knowing Your Audience
• How to LIFT any Community (and yourself!) by Telling the Right Story

WE WANT YOU to be great storytellers, and the only way to do that is to start telling stories.  We will provide you any technology or training you want or need, you just provide the action.  You bring the ‘do’, and we’ll make sure you succeed.  So in work session one, here’s what you’ll be doing, using our secret-sauce recipe for great storytelling.  This process is so easy, it’s like paint by numbers- fill in the blanks and you’re good to go.

• Choose the right story. Bring your own or pick one from our leads.
• Build a prep packet, for yourself or the reporter assigned to the story.
• Structure the shoot by preparing a shotlist and special instructions.
• Book a time to shoot your story.

The work portion will use anywhere from 15-45 minutes, depending how fast you work and how much you want to get done.  You can even do the work during the instruction if you want.  But be prepared to give the full 90 minutes, because once you get started you probably won’t want to stop.

In production training, we’ll show you how to frame shots, which settings to use on your phone, big mistakes to avoid, and how to get great audio on your phone.  We will show you some examples of good b-roll and bad b-roll, and why you should keep your shooting lean and barebones rather than overshooting.  We’ll also discuss helping your interview subjects relax and look good on camera.  

In our introductory training, we’ll cover:

• Shot Composition
• Shooting b-roll:  the good, the bad, and the ugly
• Shooting for Sound: working with environments
• How to Direct an Interview:  The do’s, the do-nots, and the nevers!

After 15 minutes of training, we’re gonna launch you right into the process.  We have found that the best way to learn production is to get right in the middle of it, and then try, fail, and adjust.  On your first assignment, you’ll be working with a tool everyone has access to; a smart phone.

We will be there with you, but our role is mostly to answer any questions you have, and to make sure that even though you’re focused on the technical process, you keep your eye on the bigger picture; the story.  You’ll have completed the shoot when you have checked off your shot list, interview question list, and said goodbye to your contact on site. This whole process can take 30 minutes, or it can take 2 hours.  Hint;  If it takes 2 hours, you’re probably doing it wrong.

When you’re done shooting, the only remaining step is transferring the footage and any notes you might have to a ‘materials bin’ on a hard drive or USB thumb drive.  

Post production is where your story goes from a basketful of assorted shots, and becomes a completed video file. This process can be extremely time consuming if you’ve never done it before, but if you stick to the prep packet during your shoot, the whole process is really very simple.  It’s just assembling the interviews you have in your materials bin into a 60-90 second cut, then dropping B-roll on top of that…. Then music choices, licensing, sound mixing, titling….. Ok, well there are a lot of steps, but it definitely isn’t as bad as it sounds.

We will walk you through the edit process step by step, at your own pace, and I do mean every step.

• Sorting your files in the edit station
• Additive and subtractive editing models
• Music selection and licensing
• B-Roll Selection and Cleanup
• Color Grading: Make your footage pop
• Sound Mixing:  Make your audio snap and crackle

As well as a few technical things to keep the project clean and tidy when you finish.  So far, this is the part that tends to make people nervous, but students genuinely feel like the rest of the process (prep packets and interviews) makes so much more sense to them after they have gone through an edit.  The sense of satisfaction you get from seeing your finished work is… well, pretty darn good!

This is a skillset that is incredibly helpful for small-businesses and self-employed freelancers alike.  The web is a crowded, busy space, and making sure your product or message stands out is where a lot of really talented people get stuck.

This is a very hands-on session, where we walk you through:

• Writing for the web
• SEO and why it matters
• Writing compelling headlines
• Social media strategy
• Self-promotion and Page-promotion

This part sounds technical, but in actuality it’s the same as every other session;  It’s about making sure in every headline, every paragraph, every tag, and every release focuses on the story, and connects it to your audience.