Christoph Geiseler on the Power of Short Video Stories
“I’m obsessed with surrounding myself with people who can teach me something new while also striving for perfection.”
Together with One Minute Academy we are hosting a training program for journalists, local leaders, activists, artists, entrepreneurs and everyone who want to tell their stories through engaging and informative one minute videos.
Before the start of the program, we decided to sit together with Christoph Alexander Geiseler, the founder of the One Minute Academy, and interview him about his creative process, the one minute method and its power. Let’s dive in!
Personal/Professional
In 1-2 sentences, introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
I am an entrepreneur and filmmaker who developed a one minute video storytelling method, and I teach it to people all around the world. I think one minute videos have the ability to empower people and inform societies if they are made in an elegant and authentic way; teaching this art form is something I am happy to dedicate my life to.
Walk us through how you developed your interest in visual storytelling and video making. What skills/specific experiences inspired you to found One Minute Academy?
I have been taking photos since age 10, when my father gave me a simple black and white film camera. Throughout high school and university, I spent a lot of time developing photographs in darkrooms and playing live music with bands. In my opinion, video is a perfect synthesis of photography and music, and I love the way that moving images can capture emotions. After teaching myself all the basics of video editing, I realized that people didn’t want to watch long online videos, so I started making short, one minute films during music projects. When American embassies started seeing these short videos, they asked me to teach the methodology around the world, which is why I started One Minute Academy.
Tell us about a mentor you’ve had (or have presently). What qualities make a good mentor?
One mentor that I had in college was a renowned photographer named Emmet Gowin at Princeton University. I only took one introductory photography course with him, but he taught me a valuable lesson on the first day of class. I brought 15 of my favorite black and white photographs to share with him. He immediately pointed to the two best photographs in the stack and said, “You would have made a much stronger impression with your work during this first encounter if you had only brought these two photographs.” This is when I learned the mantra that “less is more”. A good mentor is encouraging but principled, and can divest a lifetime of experience into short and powerful observations.
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
“Always stay true to your word,” which is what Chris Blackwell told me at a dinner in Jamaica. Chris founded Island Records and managed some of my favorite bands, like Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Describe one of your most memorable partnerships during your career at One Minute Academy.
Working with National Geographic was a defining moment in my career. I assembled a team to write, film and edit 120 one minute videos about photography, social media, public speaking and writing. The one minute videos won several online awards for distinction in online education, and, most importantly, they’re being used to train National Geographic’s global network of explorers and grantees.
Tell us about something you struggled with early on in founding One Minute Academy and how you overcame (or are overcoming) it.
When you start an educational business, you try to give every student and partner 100% attention. Perfection becomes a goal and an obsession. In order to grow and scale, however, it’s important to let other people “into the kitchen”, because it’s impossible to do everything on your own. When new people come, they do things differently; at first it was hard for me to let go of control, but now I’m obsessed with surrounding myself with people who can teach me something new while also striving for perfection.
As a founder and CEO of a business, there are certain risks one must take. Tell us about a risk you’ve taken in your career. What was the outcome? Would you have done anything different?
In 2017, I was invited by the U.S. Department of State to teach 12 video courses in 12 weeks in 12 countries. I love traveling, but it started to feel like I was only going from hotel to hotel and then classroom to classroom. After this experience, I started developing a curriculum for “virtual training” so that I could deliver the same quality of courses without needing to travel so much. While I was experimenting with this new model of teaching, I lost a lot of opportunities to travel and teach, but now that the world is in lockdown, it feels like I had a three year head start on building a virtual strategy.
Give us the scoop about a future project/goal you have in the works.
The big vision for One Minute Academy is to reduce the cost of media literacy training to $1/person for anyone that lives anywhere in the world. Our goal is to develop a teaching network and software to make our programs scalable. Ironically, COVID-19 has accelerated our development process, and I hope we can reach our goal in five years, instead of ten years.
One Minute Academy & Seenfire Foundation
Break down the two terms: “video literacy” and “strategy video first.”
Video literacy means being able to speak about a video with technical fluency and to film and edit a basic story with a beginning, middle and end. When I use the term “video first”, I mean to say that video is the centerpiece of a communication strategy; i.e. make the video first and then build a website around it, or make the video first and then build a brand around it.
Why can a 60-second video be so powerful?
People have limited attention spans because they’re being bombarded by stories on every device and in every format. If your 60-second video can say something beautifully and succinctly without wasting someone’s time, I think you can be very proud of yourself because it’s very rare. For example, I’m always impressed with the videos made by the company Nike, because their videos capture so much emotion but still manage to promote their products in innovative ways.
What types of individuals would benefit from One Minute Academy?
The secret behind the One Minute Academy is teaching people how to accept limitations. Every video we make is exactly 60 seconds long, no fewer or more. Sometimes advanced filmmakers find this type of limitation just as challenging as amateur storytellers. The advanced storytellers can learn about teaching methodologies by observing the way I teach. The amateur storytellers can learn new technical abilities that can help them build their own businesses and raise their online profiles.
Because one minute is arguably not a lot of time, how does One Minute Academy teach students to capture depth and diversity in narratives while also “keeping it short?”
One minute videos are never stand alone stories. They might fit into a cultural context or moment, which is ultimately a sum of all of its parts. Or, a one minute video might be a single story in a series of stories made by the same person. These videos then can merge together to form a “meta story arc”. The beauty of the short videos that come together in a meta story structure is that they can be viewed in any order. I would say that a “zen-like” moment occurs in making a one minute video when you only turn your camera on one time during the day, film for exactly 60 seconds and everything you’re trying to say that day is perfectly captured in those 60 seconds: no need for edits, music or effects.
Tell us about a particular video that struck you (such as a video made by one of One Minute Academy’s students).
One of the most powerful videos that I have seen our students produce in the One Minute Academy was made in Calcutta, India. The students made a video about anti-trafficking, and it made me cry when I first saw it.
(Briefly!) walk us through the process of producing a video. If there is only one tip you would give to making a successful video, what would it be?
Making a good video always starts with music or song selection. It’s much easier to film a video when you have a pulse or an emotional feeling in your head. Then, when you start editing, you match the video footage to the audio track. Most people, however, film and edit their video before selecting their music, which is actually much more cumbersome because it’s much harder to match a song to an edited storyline, rather than the other way around.
Do you have any free, online resources you would recommend for aspiring video makers?
There’s a saying, “You get what you pay for.” The hardest part about free online resources is that there are too many of them, but they never really get to the point. LinkedIn Learning is probably the best place to get quick and easy explanations to the technical aspects of storytelling software. Otherwise, I’d say sign up for our course!
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I’m excited to work with the US Embassy in Ukraine, and I look forward to sharing my knowledge during our virtual storytelling course, which will take place from December 7-11, 2020.
Go ahead and apply for One Minute Academy program at America House here!
Vocabulary list:
Authentic (adj): genuine, real, not false
Darkroom (n.): a dark room where photographs are developed
Methodology (n.): a set of principles or knowledge used to achieve a certain task
Encounter (n.): meeting
Divest (v.): to uncover
Defining (adj.): most noteworthy, significant, important
Strive (v.): to persevere, to work hard to accomplish a goal
Scalable (adj.): accessible, able to grow to accommodate more business
Bombard (v.): attack with force
Succinctly (adv.): short, with few words
Amateur (n.): beginner
Merge (v.): bring together
Pulse (n.): beat (in a musical sense)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Texas native, Bianca Navia is currently in her senior year at Arizona State University pursuing a dual major in Political Science and Global Studies. She is most passionate about international affairs, diplomacy, foreign languages, traveling, and teaching. A fun fact about her? She’s the oldest of four sisters in a big Cuban-Italian-American family!