Formats Unpacked: A View, from a Bridge

Hey,

How are you all? It’s been a while.

After five years of writing Formats Unpacked, I began looking back at some of the incredible formats we’ve covered and started pulling out more learning for business content. Particularly B2B. You can find my Format Heavyweights on LinkedIn.

Today, I’m unpacking a wonderful format that feels like a throwback to those lovely early internet video experiments. It’s visually interesting despite being very simple, and it’s packed with learnings for brands that want a more human approach to storytelling.

Enjoy.

What's it called? 

A View, from a Bridge (Instagram video series)

What's the format?

A View, from a Bridge is a beautifully simple video format in which a person on a bridge picks up a phone and shares their view of the world. With an old-school red telephone receiver in hand, the person talks to the filmmaker, who is capturing the conversation from the riverbank. The conversation is first viewed in close-up, but as the story unfolds, the lo-fi camera slowly zooms out, revealing the person standing in the middle of the bridge as passersby get about their day.

What’s the magic that makes it special?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of ‘Zoom video’ in the world of content marketing. You know what I mean! Talking heads in the boardroom, the home office, in front of a bookshelf, often with a pixelated background. As brands battle to make themselves look and sound more human, they couldn’t choose a worse visual setting.

A View, from a Bridge takes a location and makes it a star. It always starts the same way with the guest on a Bridge, talking into a battered old telephone. Sometimes it’s an unknown business person, occasionally it’s someone famous, but mostly it’s a stranger with a story you simply have to listen to. As soon as they start talking, something changes. The camera slowly zooms out and the bridge comes alive with commuters passing by. Once revealed, the background frames the person beautifully, adding more layers to the story being told.

Choosing a bridge is genius. It's not just a fascinating backdrop. The bridge is a stage, and it’s also a character. It’s a space between things, where people are open to reflection. The phone itself pushes that even further, becoming a mashup of confession booth and street theatre. On the other end, there’s filmmaker Joe Bloom, listening but out of sight. There is no visible interviewer. No “performance for the camera.” Just the bridge, the backdrop, the subject, and a moment of raw honesty.

The distance between the subject and the production team is the magic that enables such wonderful confessional stories to be told. The telephone and distant crew provide the right amount of space for someone to talk about their chosen subject without having to hold eye contact. It’s a trick the catholic church has been using for years by placing a curtain or perforated screen between priest and sinner. Both are aware of each other’s presence, but somehow it makes digging deeper into the soul a lot easier.

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Similar formats

Strangers on a Bench uses - you guessed it - a park bench to great effect. Musician Tom Rosenthal sits side by side with random strangers who reveal intimate stories about their lives. Going for walks or sitting on benches are great for conversations that are improved by a lack of eye contact. I used this trick frequently when I needed my teenage children to open up to me.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Chichen Shop Date does a brilliant job of eliciting a different kind of response. If A View, from a Bridge puts the subject at ease, the location, the host, and the extreme eye contact are designed to make guests feel really uncomfortable - all for comic effect, of course.

Favourite episode

We help a lot of companies think about how they tell stories about company culture, so I really like this story from Sue, who works in HR, about a moment she realised she wanted to dedicate her working life to helping managers and leaders get better at being open and honest. It doesn’t feel like an HR story; it just feels like a piece of culture that fits in perfectly with all the other human stories it’s surrounded by.

Thanks for reading.

If you need help telling stories about company culture, hit that big button above. We can start by running a Formats Unpacked Workshop to identify potential stories and formats, then help you test your format by producing a pilot episode. Our tried and tested process is a quick and cost-effective way to help your team develop and implement a manageable content strategy.

Get in touch if you have a favourite format you’d like to unpack. We’re always looking for guest contributors.

See you all next time,
Hugh

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