2024 / Week 3

The secret formula behind Johnny Harris' popular explainer videos. A visual look at how this ex Vox "Borders" video maker structures his journalism, map, & historical stories. Insight into scripting & editing YouTube videos that inspire, retain viewers, & get views. The clips of Johnny Harris explaining his structure come from a much larger talk he gave, I've linked to the region I sampled from here: https://youtu.be/lRq6rIiGFAU?t=3301 Those ideas were used as a base, but much of the ideas were original, for example, the "experience it, understand it", which my creative editor Michelle Jia helped come up with. It's also important to note: 1. This structure isn't Johnny's creation: he learned it in large part at Vox under the mentorship of folks like Joss Fong. 2. Beyond his structure, Johnny Harris puts weeks of effort into deeply understanding a topic, which enables him to use this story structure so effectively. It's not the structure alone doing all the work :) 3. Johnny has a larger storytelling (paid) course here: https://www.brighttrip.com/courses/visual-storytelling 00:00 the formula behind Johnny's virality 01:40 1. Visual Anchors 03:02 look at his use of "look at this thing" 3:56 2. Contextual Bridges 4:53 look at his formula again Music used: https://artlist.io/song/82272/bloom https://artlist.io/song/55750/still-life That click sound effect in the video that everyone super excited about in the comments: https://artlist.io/sfx/track/modern-ui---perfect-click/77184