When George Lucas released the first of the Star Wars prequels in 1999 I was a kid.
I remember watching the trailer and being excited by the droids, pod-racing and Jedi duels — ”Wow, double lightsaber!”
Soon it was time to go see the actual film in the cinema. I remember sitting there in the dark, and suddenly “STAR WARS” appeared on screen with a burst of theme music. I felt a rush of job.
But then the opening text started to scroll.
“Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star system is in dispute…”
Wait, what? I thought Star Wars was about force powers and fighting bad guys so why is it talking about tax?!
Today the prequels are largely seen as a failure; a director so excited about blue-screen technology and computer animation, he forgot about the script.
The script is key to everything!
Video explainers are no different, and yet I see many video explainers where the script has clearly been written in-house by someone inexperienced and untrained.
If an explainer is interesting, the audience cares little about the fancy visuals. Independent YouTubers that get big audiences with small budgets have proven that time and time again.
It doesn’t mean visuals aren’t important, but if you put them ahead of everything else, the results aren’t good.
Get your script right and everything will follow.