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What is the value of a storytelling approach?

I'll never forget my experience with a Dutch Engineer named Joost. At first, he was grumpy about appearing on camera for his company video; "I leave that stuff to the communcations team." But he enjoyed it more than expected. Through the video, colleagues saw Joost in a new light. His wife admitted she finally understood his job. For the first time he saw himself as someone with a story to tell about the company. And when our videos were shared with his investor audience, they saw his project differently, he said, because of our video approach. The videos we created for LNG Canada felt different: human rather than corporate, authentic rather than slick. Joost assured me that our video approach was key to the overall effort that landed the biggest private industry investment in Canadian history: $40 Billion. That means Canada will ship natural gas to Asia and help reduce coal fired GHG emissions there. And that will help fight climate change while building Canada's economy. That's a big deal.

Organizations often tell the wrong story in their video content. At Journeyman, we use the power of Hollywood film structure and a Documentary style to create the right story to win attention with a target audience.

Real people are interesting.

My name is Mathew Welsh and I started Journeyman Film Company in 2008.  I knew we could use filmmaking fundamentals to make “corporate video” more human. Over time, I've learned how to tap the power of the hero's journey to help organizations make better video. We take real people's story elements, then build that story with Hollywood story structure: a character faces a daunting challenge, debates whether or not to take it on, usually has a helper, then works through trials and tribulations to overcome obstacles to arrive at a new place, a changed person. We've all seen that story hundreds of times. Think Rocky, Dune, The Wizard of Oz,...And think Joost, the engineer!

This story structure is the key. It's actually hard to do with real people stories. Not a lot of video production companies do it. But it's our specialty.

A lot of people have asked me: "why would an award winning documentary filmmaker do corporate work?" Some folks in the TV/film business might think of corporate video production as lower-status or less creative - but that's not my view. I had success with documentary films, winning a Gemini Award in 2000, and I could have continued doing work for TV, but I wanted to bring a filmmaker's eye to company brand stories, to see where it could lead.

The hero's journey is like the customer journey.  Marketing folks ask: where is your audience now, and where do you want to take them? A good video story is a powerful tool that moves your target audience along the customer journey. It "moves" them to new point of view and changes the perception of ideas, places, products, and organizations.

To take this idea further, I decided to build a team, starting with one employee in 2008. Over a decade we grew to 17 employees and made a ton of fantastic videos over those years. We travelled far and wide. We met people from all walks of life -- from Navy Divers to CEOs, doctors to engineers, farmers to Gambian children and First Nations leaders.

As I shifted away from hands-on production to lead a growing company, I found it very challenging. Building a company is a crash course in business strategy. I felt like I did an MBA, "the hard way." I saw my own limitations and strengths.

Our creative people brought new ideas to the table. In turn, I drove a lot of employees crazy with my obsession with story structure. It led to spirited debates. Lots of video is simply utilitarian, or funny, or novel, and gets an audience. But I was committed to making "build your story" the focus for Journeyman, to help our clients really connect to audiences with relevant content.

We built a reputation for client service and video quality. But at the end of our busiest year in 2018-2019, I asked Oren, head of production, what projects he was most proud of in the past year. He confessed that most of the content was starting to feel a bit "corporate," and different from the early Journeyman work. Our growth and operations had perhaps led us away from that story focus. Also that year, a couple of major clients pulled back on their video content needs at the same time, for unrelated reasons. Revenue declined. And then Covid-19 happened. So the company went through a major struggle and contracted. It was painful and challenging for me as the founder.

But through that change, I returned to work hands-on again on most of our projects. Now we're a tight collaborative group of creative freelancers who do solid work. And I get to produce and direct again, doing what I do best: building that story structure and elevating real people's stories.

Video storytelling can be transformational. This is why Journeyman focuses on telling a human story. It's the main value we offer the world.