Visual Storytelling: What is visual storytelling?

Visual storyteller
Many multimedia producers describe them self as visual storyteller: a sort of umbrella term to cover motion graphic, photography, video journalism and many more.

And as an umbrella term it’s a good one..but how many visual storytellers are really that?

The mantra in creating television news, documentaries, cinema and now online video – is to let the pictures tell the story. But this is actually extremely rare: watch the majority of news, docs and online video stories and instead the words lead the way, dragging pictures along behind them.

So what exactly is visual storytelling?

To be a visual storyteller you should be able to tell a story with as few words as possible – maybe even none. If someone was watching your film with the sound turned off, would they understand what was happening?

There are a huge number of tools we can use as visual storytellers to convey messages with images alone: from the type of shot we use, the editing style, whether we go handheld, use a steady cam or sticks, transition, repeated motifs and all sorts.

In a nut shell, visual storytelling is to tell a story with visual, not words. So, as a visual storyteller, we need to plan very well, analyze and use any kind techniques that is required to tell a story visually. The short animation below is a great example by Walt Disney.