How to Tell Your Story

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Our submission process is simple. Just follow these steps and you’re set:

1: Sign-up for a profile on our Web site. With this profile, you will be able to submit your story and comment on all the stories we post on onthecommons.org
2: Fill out our submission the best you can. Remember the answer the classic questions of Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.
3: Attach a photo of your commons work and/or a logo of your organization
4: Hit “Save” and it’ll be in our inbox for review
5: Once it’s up on our Web site, we will contact you

Filming Tips:

1. Think About Your Story
• Before you begin filming, prepare your subject (or yourself) on the general aim of the video.
• Read over our Key Questions and think about how they apply to you and your project.
• Introduce yourself. Share your name, where you are from, and what you are doing
• In your video, avoid jargon. As a general rule the simpler, the better
• Focus on content and thinking about what kinds of interesting shots you can feature.
• Make it personal by talking about yourself and the other people your project involves.
• Be lose, tell jokes and share anecdotes if you want. Overall, have fun with it!

2. Think About Framing
• Taking five minutes to set up your shot can make all the difference in terms of your final video quality.

Here are a few things to remember when framing:
• Set up your camera so that the lens is level with the midpoint of the shot, set up your camera so that the lens is level with the subject’s neck.
• Position the subject off-center to add perspective.
• Don’t film too close so that their face fills the whole screen, yet try not to be so far away that the background dominates the shot.
• Use a tripod or rest your camera on books to hold the shot steady.
• If you can, film in a quiet environment with minimal ambient noise.
• Think about a natural environment to film in, maybe a venue that relates to your project somehow.

3. Please keep it short
• Unfortunately we can’t load a video that runs longer than 2 minutes. You likely have a lot to share, so we encourage you to shoot more than one video!