Reel Talk: The Art of Storytelling in an Instagram Reel

And the planning it takes to make it look easy-breezy ..

I’ve just landed home after 3 gloriously solo days mooching around the pretty coastal town of Lyme Regis in Dorset. It’s a place that holds real nostalgia for me, from annual family holidays spent in nearby Hook Farm.

Keen to revisit the glory days of zero responsibilities, I decided to take a detour to go and visit the campsite. Happy to report that it’s still thriving - and so is the little shop that five-year-old me used to sprint down the hill to visit every morning, living it large with a shiny 10p in my pocket. To give this some context for anyone who didn’t grow up in the heady wilderness of the pre-internet age, 10p could easily translate to a bag fizzy sweets, a copy of the Beano and potentially enough leftover for a go on the ride outside the shop.

The “hill” however is a gentle slope at best, and the shop is better described as a “kiosk”. Funny how getting bigger makes everything smaller.

This time I was travelling solo, invited by Lyme Regis Stays to take some footage showing the pleasure of carving out time just for yourself. The brief was to create an Instagram Reel celebrating the joy of doing exactly what you love - to write, paint, eat, photograph, whatever floats your creative boat. (But, if I’m honest, mostly involved eating snacks in peace without anyone asking for a bite.)

So, I thought it might be useful to show my workings, share a behind-the-scenes look at how I approached it. Before heading down to Lyme Regis, I scribbled these notes to loosely structure the filming, and to focus my attention when it wandered back to the aforementioned snacks:

✏️ 1 - A strong Hook

A short, eye-catching 3-second clip of around 3 secs to overlay with some words - something that captured the idea of sneaking off to the coast for a few days of escape from the everyday. Once down there, this translated into a panning shot of a seagull flying solo along the shoreline.

✏️ 2 - Scene Setting

A first glimpse of the area to engage the viewer and set out my stall -