When I first started working in digital media, I was actually one of the first creators to experiment with short-form videos on YouTube, before YouTube Shorts even existed. I noticed that attention spans were shrinking, and I wanted to adapt. So I learned how to make stories quick, catchy, and emotionally engaging in under a minute. It worked. My channel grew fast, and I built an incredible community online.
Still, the more I created, the more I realized that not every story could fit into sixty seconds. Some needed space to breathe, to unfold slowly and meaningfully. That realization led me to my latest project, a full-length, hour-long documentary on food insecurity.
The film is built from over twenty hour-long interviews, each one packed with emotion, honesty, and perspective. I spent months compiling them into a single, cohesive story that doesn’t just talk about food insecurity; it shows it, through the people living it every day. Their quotes, their pauses, their stories, all stitched together to highlight the dignity, strength, and complexity behind an issue that too often gets simplified.
That’s what long-form storytelling gives you: the ability to preserve dignity. It allows people to share their experiences without being reduced to a clip or a quote. In a world that moves so fast, sitting with someone’s story for an hour might feel like a luxury, but I think it’s exactly what we need to really understand one another again.
Starting Narratives 
Leave a comment