Digital Storytelling 3: Bringing the Colors Out

When it comes to digital storytelling, honesty is the best policy. Whether you’re conveying your message to a potential client, customer, or employee, you want to be 100% clear about who your organization is and what it stands for. There are a lot of ways to get that message across.  Color palette, music, audio, and video are all key parts of crafting a narrative that’s authentic to your message and identity. 

For example, the right color choices can impact the emotional experience of a viewer, amplifying your narrative's impact. Music can also be used to powerful effect in online storytelling, guiding the audience through your story's highs and lows. Let’s take a look at a few ways in which various different media come together to create a multisensory experience that engages a potential audience. 

Color Story

In filmmaking, color theory refers to the idea that certain hues on the color wheel combine to evoke a mood or atmosphere in the viewer, or to help the audience identify with characters and explain their motivations. The same is true for online marketing. 

In digital marketing, we’re often taught that certain colors have certain cultural or emotional associations. This is helpful, to a point, but can get tricky. Associations with colors vary widely across cultures, and can have multiple meanings even within the same culture. Red, for instance, can stand for anger as easily as it can represent passion and romance.

Here’s a better way to think about color: Instead of trying to map colors back to cultural associations, instead, assign meaning to each color you use and stick with it.

Does the idea of “success” look like a vibrant blue? Great! Use that shade of blue throughout your story to indicate success. Is orange the color for confusion and frustration? Perfect! Try it out. Whatever your choices, make sure to be consistent.

The way the color changes over the course of your story can also help illustrate the move from challenge to outcome. For instance, if your setting changes from a dark, dull gray, to a bright, vibrant, yellow, it’s pretty clear you’re trying to tell a story of moving from something sad or boring to something joyful and hopeful. Or if your character suddenly becomes the only one wearing red in an endless sea of white, that makes a real statement about standing out.

Music, Images, and Video

Have you ever tried to watch a commercial — but with different music? What happens when you put classical piano in the background, or hip-hop, or New Orleans jazz? Does your visual experience change? 

I’ll bet it does. 

Music has a huge impact on how we experience a digital story. A 2016 study on the role of music in digital storytelling found that music doesn’t just support the story, it can play a structural role, helping to demonstrate the narrative arc of a story. Music can help set the pace and tone, keep the viewer’s attention, and help persuade an audience. In short, the right music will help your audience internalize your organization’s story.

But online marketing needs more than color and music — it needs visuals, too. Still photographs, gifs, and video all personality and drive the narrative for your digital storytelling. Choose images and videos that showcase human faces and real emotion — they draw us in and make a piece believable. When you bring together clear, focused images or video with powerful musical choices, you are creating an opportunity for your audience to connect with a real person. That makes a huge difference when it comes to the return on investment (or ROI) of a digital marketing campaign. 

Whatever materials you use to bring your digital storytelling to life, you need to make sure you’re using them legally. Don’t just grab images or sound bites off the internet — you might get slapped with a fine or lawsuit. Research the material you use, and look into the difference between labels such as “fair use” and “creative commons.” With music, make sure you own the rights to that music, you properly attribute the music, or that the music is royalty free or in the public domain. In every case, the best way to avoid all of these complications - and to create truly original digital stories - is to create your own unique content or partner with an audio or video library. 

Digital storytelling doesn’t have to be scary! It can be a fun, multimedia opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of the people you seek to serve. To learn more about how Tiny Windows Consulting can help you realize your online storytelling dreams, reach out to us today and book a consultation.