Speaker 1: In this video, I'm gonna take you shot by shot and we're gonna go through one of my videos where I use storytelling and I actually wrote out a whole script. And I wanted to make this video because I wanna show you how I go from script to the actual video. Now this video was when I went up to the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley and tried to capture the sound of the singing dunes. And in this video, I talk about the history, I talk about this weird phenomenon that happens at these Eureka Dunes, and I try to paint the picture of the entire experience while also showing some of my adventure to get to the top of these dunes. And so I wrote out an entire script to make this video. And you'll see as we're going through this script, I did use the script for a lot of the filming, but then there was also these other moments that I added and things happened when I was actually out there filming. And you'll see how something just goes from a simple script that I put together to an actual video that is engaging and keeps viewers watching. And when looking at the data for this video, there's a good average view duration, so that's how I know that people are watching towards the end. Now there's a couple things I wanna talk about before we actually get into shot by shot. First, I just wanna explain how I came up with the story for this video. So I've heard about the Eureka Sand Dunes in Death Valley, and I heard that they sing, but I didn't really understand what that meant. So what I did is I went into Google, I typed in Eureka Dunes singing, and I found some videos of people actually going and exploring this. And some of the videos just weren't that good, but it was an interesting story because of this weird phenomenon. So what I did is I dug into the research a little bit more and started writing out my script. So I use a few different sources, government websites, Wikipedia, I use Atlas Obscura, which is a great one for these kind of oddities. And then I just hunt through a bunch of different travel vloggers or people who have been there and written about this place. And what I do is I look at all of these sources and then pull all that information into one document. And then I start rearranging it and coming up with what the outline is. So what story beats do I wanna hit and what do I wanna touch on? And then I could start going through and actually crafting the script from beginning to end. So to start any video, you want a hook. So I want a hook that explains what's going on, and then also gives you an introduction of what you're gonna experience in this video. So this is what I wrote. There's a place in California that I've had on my bucket list for a long time. This is the Eureka Dunes. And I drove over eight hours today from the sunny beach in Southern California to the northern section of Death Valley to stand on a giant pile of sand just to hear this strange phenomenon. I'm gonna kick the sand and then I'm gonna tell you that is the sound of singing sand. Now when I was out filming, I made sure to capture this when I was at the top of the dunes because I want this to be the hook and I want it to be from the location of where we're at. I didn't wanna do this hook sitting here in my office, sitting at home or down by my Jeep. I wanted to actually be in there and show you what is coming. And that's a big thing when you're doing a hook is you wanna preview what's coming in the video. Now I've had a place on my bucket list for a long time. This is the Eureka Dunes. And I'm standing at the top where there's this strange phenomenon that happens when you kick sand off of the edge. Listen to this. Here we go. So the next section I wanna get into is some of the backstory to kind of set up what the dunes are and where they're at and some information about them. So I wrote, the Eureka Dunes are some of the tallest dunes in North America. They sit on top of what was the seafloor a long time ago. It's crazy to think that this whole region was underwater, especially because we're on the eastern side of California in the middle of the hottest desert in the world. Temperatures in Death Valley have been recorded up to 134 degrees in summertime. And we've come out here to the end of winter to catch a cool 80 degrees. Now when I wrote that section, I'm sitting at home. So I don't actually know what it's like out there. I'm actually gonna change some of this when I'm out filming. But this gives you a sense of kind of the story beats that I wanted to hit to set up what we're doing. And so when I was filming, I didn't just go right into this. I wanted to use some visual storytelling to show the process of getting to these dunes. Eureka Dunes are the tallest dunes in North America. And this whole region used to be underwater. This was all once the seafloor, which is crazy to think about because we're on the eastern side of California in the hottest desert in the world. It's been recorded up to 134 degrees in Death Valley. But I'm not out here in the middle of summer. It's a cool 90 degrees. And we're gonna climb to the top of that dune. So a lot of that footage that you saw from this intro, we shot as we approached the dunes. I didn't know where I was gonna use that footage. But something that I do when I create these stories is I'm just trying to film the process. So I'm constantly just grabbing shots as I'm getting to the location. I don't do a ton, but I make sure to spend a little bit of time and get some different angles and shot variety. Now when I'm doing these stand-ups, I'm not using a teleprompter. I look at my phone, I read a section. I'll try to get it out a few takes. And then after doing it a couple times, I'll memorize all the beats that I wanna hit and then it comes natural. And this is just something that comes from experience. The more that you talk on camera, the easier it'll be to just ad-lib different sections like this. But if you are newer to making videos, a teleprompter does make a big difference. It's a lot easier to get through these sections, especially when you're trying to hit specific things. All right, so this is the next section in the script. Now scientists who study this region believe that these dunes are over 10,000 years old and were only recently added to the National Park System in 1994. The entirety of Death Valley is 140 miles long and the park covers 5,270 square miles. Whereas the Eureka Dunes are only three square miles of that, one mile across and three miles long. It's a tiny section of sand in comparison to the massive valleys and towering mountains around. Now scientists who study this region believe that these dunes are over 10,000 years old. Now Death Valley in its entirety is massive. It covers over 5,000 square miles of land, but these dunes that I'm climbing up, which is pretty tough to climb up, are only three square miles of the entire region. You have one mile from the valley over there to the mountains behind me, and then three miles from end to end. That's it. If you look in the surrounding region around these dunes, there's no sand. It's just this one patch of sand and that's it. So for that section, I really changed up how I said the information, but I still tried to hit the same beats that I was talking about. And there was actually some stuff that I cut out from the script and talked more about my experience actually climbing up the dunes. Now the process of me shooting my A-roll was basically either I do it on a tripod where I'm standing there with a cool background, or I'm doing the vlog style where I'm walking around hand-holding the camera. And a lot of times when I'm making these kind of videos, I like to switch it up between tripod, hand-hold. It just feels a lot more fluid when you have this kind of motion and you have these variety of shots. And then all the B-roll that you're seeing, we were just shooting throughout the experience. Whenever I would see a cool shot or something unique, I would grab it. And if there was something that was gonna help tell the story, I would make sure to grab some extra shots of that. And so for example, we shot some footage of me dumping sand out of my shoes. It just shows some more of this experience as we were climbing the dunes. Okay, the next section of script goes like this. What makes this so special though is the unique characteristic of sound. Some call it singing, some call it booming. It's the sound that's created when you climb to the top and push sand off the side. Now don't get me wrong, this is not an easy climb to the summit. The tallest of these dunes are around 700 feet and we're sitting at 3,000 feet of elevation. On top of that, you have soft shifting sands that feel like one step forward and two steps backward. And so for this section, I actually broke it up into a few different shots. But what makes the Eureka Dunes so special is not the fact that it's just these dunes in the middle of the desert, but it's this unique characteristic of the sound when you climb these dunes and kick the sand off the side. Some call it singing, some call it booming, but it's essentially a weird phenomenon that happens when you push the sand off of these steep cliffs. Now the tallest of these dunes is around 700 feet. And when doing my research, I thought this was gonna be a much easier climb, but it feels like every one step forward, it's two steps back. Now this is where there's a big shift between my script and what I actually film. So when we were out there filming, we got hit by a big windstorm on top of the mountain. And so we actually had to turn back at this point. So this is all I got shot in the first day. Originally, I had planned to shoot this all the way through till sunset. And then the final shots of the video were gonna be at sunset on top of the peaks. But we got up there and got hit by this windstorm and it became a mess. All of our gear was covered in sand and we just wanted to get out of there. So we ended up climbing the dunes again the next day. And then I had to bring that into the story because it looks completely different. We were shooting sunset looking footage. It's golden hour, it was looking really beautiful. And then it's bright early morning, completely different look. And so that's where I started incorporating some more just vlogging elements of what was going on. And then I added some moments in to keep the story moving and show more of the experience. Now there is one section later in the script that talks about how difficult it is to hear the sound. And it goes like this. Now this doesn't always work. You have to have the perfect conditions. The sand has to be dry. There has to be low humidity to hear the singing. But when you hear it, the sound is out of this world. But what I did is I actually talked about our experience of trying to capture the sound. And I put this information in a way that makes sense for what was actually going on while we were there. Now the reality is in that last shot, I just superimposed the sound of the singing or booming over the footage. Because getting that sound is actually not as easy as just walking up and kicking sand off. You have to have the proper conditions. It needs to be super dry and it has to be low humidity to be able to actually hear that sound. And so day one yesterday, I came up to the top with my buddy Jesse, who's helping me film this video. And we got to the summit and got hit by a crazy windstorm. And it was just awful. Only filmed about half the video. And so last night we slept down there in the valley on top of my rooftop tent. And day two, we're climbing up again so that we can get that sound clean to be able to use in the video. So you can see how this whole section was added because of the situation that we are in when we're out there filming. And this is part of when you're making videos, things will change, especially when you're doing this kind of content, outdoor adventure. It's not always gonna go as planned and you need to be able to change the script or change the way that you approach the content because you're gonna have these things that happen and gonna change the way that you're filming. So the next section goes like this. Why this occurs is not fully understood, but the leading theory is that the sound is caused when a sheet of sand avalanches down a slip face, exciting the sand grains. The friction between these grains creates acoustic airwave that emits an audible sound. And it may have something to do with the smooth texture of the grain sands and the friction of those grain sands sliding against each other. It's like the bass note of a pipe organ or the distant drone of an airplane. So that really doesn't roll off the tongue well. And this is something where I had to actually go through and change it and just make it feel more natural. And this is where I'm gonna bring some of my personal experience of actually going up the sand dunes and talking about this while trying to hit these points of what actually might cause the sound when you're on these dunes. Now, the reason for this sound is not fully understood, but the leading theory is that when there's an avalanche of sand sliding down these hillsides, the air pocket that's created from the smooth sand particles emits this sound that you and me can hear. And when I've been up here, stepping on the edges of these cliffs, I just see a big cascading fall of sand. And then you start feeling a vibration and then you start hearing the sound and it's eerie. It's kind of like the drone of an airplane out in the distance or like the bass note on a pipe organ. It's so bizarre and you can feel it through your entire body. Now, I wanted to have a payoff for this video, which was actually getting to the top of the dunes, kicking the sound off and hearing the booming or the eerie sound. And I didn't write anything for this, but I knew this was something that I wanted to capture for the climax of this video. I've driven over eight hours and climbed 700 feet of sand just to get up to this point and kick sand off the side to hear this sound. Now, the last thing that I have written down in my script is a takeaway. Now, this I figured I was gonna write when I was out there because a big part of it is experience and actually going through this. But this is what I wrote. Some people might think it's crazy to spend all day driving through the desert just to climb a sand hill, but so when you come up with a takeaway, you want something that the audience can take with them. And for me, it was something that I was thinking about when I was actually doing this experience, like why is this important or why even come out here and do this, and that's gonna be my takeaway. Now, when we're done filming, we started running down the sand dunes, so I decided to capture a little bit of this and I ended up adding it into the video. It's been a tough couple days climbing these dunes up and down, but we finally got a clean recording to hear that rumble. Now comes the fun part. Now, some people might think it's crazy to drive all the way out here and hike up these sand dunes in this heat just to kick some sand off the side and hear this weird, strange phenomenon, but finding these cool, unique things to go explore gives us a reason to go do something and gets you to see somewhere that you probably would have never seen or go to a location that you probably would have never visited. And so I follow the same story structure when I'm making all of my videos. That's the hook, backstory gets you into the story, the experience, have a climax, some point that you're building to, and then a takeaway that the audience can walk away with. That framework is the simplest way to create a story that's engaging and keeps people from beginning to the end. Now, if you wanna see another video where I break down storytelling step-by-step through a vlog and through one of these adventure films, make sure you check out this video right here. Goes through the entire aspect of filming, shooting, editing, and everything it took to make this video.