As cinematographers we’re fascinated by B-roll and what we can create with it. It’s like this moment when we get to do our work without all the bothersome interruptions of dialogue, or characters, or costumes and makeup. We get to focus on the beauty of the image. But over time we’ve lost touch what the term B-Roll actually means and how it evolved, and in doing so I think we’ve blurred its purpose, and frankly, we end up creating a lot of crap. Too often, people use the term B-roll to refer to either filler (to help cover edits) or montage. And these two terms miss the heart of what these silent clips were meant to achieve.
In the early days of cinema, B-roll was actually on a separate projection reel from A roll. Most of the B-roll reel was black, and they’d start the two projectors at the same time. When it came time for the B-roll, they’d just switch which projector was being shown. Believe it or not, in the beginning they did this live while the audience watched. B-roll was mostly used to create continuity for interviews. As B-roll evolved, cinematographers realized that you could tell a story just with the images, and they began to edit sequences. As the demand for “content” grew, modern day filmmakers spliced together visually striking clips of beaches and bridges and street corners and walking… oh, the walking—camera pointed down at the feet… and our videos became filled with forgettable beauty.
There’s one sure-fire way to make your b-roll better. Stop shooting it. Honestly, it’ll make your videos better. Instead, shoot silent A-Roll. The real difference between the two is that A-Roll is integral to your story. Without those images, the film wouldn’t make sense. Here’s how to transform your B-roll into something powerful, and my challenge to you.
These days, people sometimes use B-roll to show a process, like how to cook something. That’s usually a pretty good example of silent A-Roll. You wouldn’t know what was happening, how to cook the dish, without the images. The imagery tells us something vital to our understanding, and its progressive. On the flipside, I also see a lot of filmmakers creating morning-to-night videos of a location... and no matter how beautiful the images or exciting the transitions, these are pretty forgettable. And that’s because “Morning-to-Night” isn’t a meaningful concept, they’re just a montage of pretty images.
Good B-roll tells a meaningful story. That story can be narrative—with a sequence of events—or it can be an emotional journey. The stronger, the clearer the story, the better the B-roll. The weaker the story, the worse the B-roll, and it doesn’t matter how beautiful the individual images are. Tell me a morning to night story only if it will change me in some way.
There are a lot of elements that go into a good story, but essentially it takes the viewer from one point to another. The person in the video changes and we journey with him, her, or them, or subject stays the same and the audience changes how they think or feel. A story will always have a beginning, middle, and end. How you shoot and edit it will depend on the story you’re telling, not a set of techniques and styles you like. The greater the journey from A to Z, the more engaging the story... and therein lies the challenge for many creators. If you work in the corporate videography world, many companies don't want to show the "opposite" of what they want to accomplish or who they are. The journey is from W to Z, and as a result too many corporate videos have no stakes, no real threat of loss or promise of gain. If you work in documentaries, an A to Z story can take an enormous amount of time, resources, and luck to film. If you're a blogger (or vlogger), the challenges are similar. But it's always worth it to make the journey from beginning to end as great as possible.
If you’ve been following this channel, you know I just bought a Z Cam E2. To get familiar with the camera, I took it to the woods. There was no purpose for the shoot other than to learn my camera, so it’s obviously going to be B-roll. But I also wanted to put this idea of A-roll to work, so here’s what I shot.
It was my first day with the camera so I was just figuring things out; it’s mostly hand held, without a rig or handle. I was playing with different frame rates and file types and all kinds of crap. So there are a ton of technical problems with the footage. But I wanted to show a story of some sort, in this case a procession from pristine woods (my beginning), to human disruption (my middle), to the loss of peace and harmony (my end). Because it was about nature, I wanted it to feel organic, so I went handheld and I avoided flashy transitions. I wanted the human disruption to appear callous, so I grabbed a pair of boots rather than my sneakers. And the advent of disruption and loss it mirrored in the city-sounds that creep into the music. In retrospect, I probably should have cut the opera, as it somewhat detracts for the sense of nature.
Is it a great story? No. Within the context of something else—as true B-roll to some other A-roll—maybe it would be stronger. As is, it’s just an exercise in creating a story based on a location.
So here’s my challenge to you. Pick a street corner, or a park, or any location, and tell a story about it. Give it a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can decide your story ahead of time, or simply show up and take a moment to ask how the pieces of your location fit together to make a journey. What ties together this peeled paint relates to that newly painted wall? Use juxtaposition. Limit yourself to 30 minutes. In real life, we usually have to shoot quickly, so there’s a mental muscle that needs exercise when it comes to creating the best possible story quickly.
While the title of “No More B-Roll” might seem like irritating click-bait, I actually believe that the language we use changes our relationship to the process. Many filmmakers don’t think twice about what they mean when they say “B-roll;” it’s natural and instinctual. But for a lot of those filmmakers, the idea of B-roll doesn’t include the question, “how can I make a story out of this footage?” And if you don’t believe that matters, then think about your favorite movie… filmed at a cost of $260,000 a day on set, and edited (at another astronomical figure) within an inch of its life. Not a moment is wasted on an image that doesn’t move the story forward in a meaningful way, and at a significant pace. For this reason, you rarely see characters walking (without talking), or packing up their gear, or starting their cars.
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