Why every Johnny Harris video goes viral

The secret formula behind Johnny Harris' popular explainer videos. A visual look at how this ex Vox "Borders" video maker structures his journalism, map, & historical stories. Insight into scripting & editing YouTube videos that inspire, retain viewers, & get views.

The clips of Johnny Harris explaining his structure come from a much larger talk he gave, I've linked to the region I sampled from here:

Those ideas were used as a base, but much of the ideas were original, for example, the "experience it, understand it", which my creative editor Michelle Jia helped come up with.

It's also important to note:
1. This structure isn't Johnny's creation: he learned it in large part at Vox under the mentorship of folks like Joss Fong.
2. Beyond his structure, Johnny Harris puts weeks of effort into deeply understanding a topic, which enables him to use this story structure so effectively. It's not the structure alone doing all the work :)

00:00 the formula behind Johnny's virality
01:40 1. Visual Anchors
03:02 look at his use of "look at this thing"
3:56 2. Contextual Bridges
4:53 look at his formula again

Music used:

That click sound effect in the video that everyone super excited about in the comments:

[ThomasFlight]

Love how you're using the forumula to explain it. Brilliant.

[kaseywahl]

In writing, there's a concept called "show, don't tell."

Amazing how universally it works.

[pcholtz]

I'm one of the producers on Johnny's team, and I must say, amazing job with this analysis! 🙌

[axamitidynamit]

Honestly, I believe that a huge part Johnny’s success is a result of what I call a "dumb boy effect". The way he presents these topics is something like "hey, look at this interesting thing. Awesome, right? But what’s this all about? You don’t know. I didn’t know either, but now I do and I’ll show you", or sometimes even "Watch me trying to figure this out for myself and yourselves". He makes the viewers believe that he’s one of them, that all those topics were unknown to him and he has just found out and he’s coming to share his findings. His appearance, his voice, his body language, it all helps and enhances this effect. It’s like your buddy saying "hey, look what I’ve just learned". He doesn’t position himself as an expert or even a journalist in his videos. He’s a curious boy. And it works.

[kjul.]

I've always wondered why Vox's (or Voxes?) and especially Johnny's videos were so intriguing. Surely the master class editing and great pacing plays a big role, but I never could point my finger on what exactly made these videos so "different" from a storytelling perspective. Thanks for the explanation, looking forward to more videos from you! 😊

[CleoAbram]

You really captured it! And you yourself showed the evidence (Johnny's clips) in your own explanatory style (the music layout!!!). You also did what we'd call a "key visual" - you had a one viz (the purple+green graphic in this case, but it could be a clip or an image or a demonstration) that people *had* to see in order to understand your point. Without that visual, it would have made much less sense, which makes this a great video. And you came back to that key visual over and over again, helping us better understand it each time. Love this so much.

[The_Horizon]

this is like the level beyond next level content

[NotJustBikes]

Huh. That's really interesting. I think I do this on my channel, by accident.

In my videos, I really focus on the experience of actually being there, standing on the street. It's all about visual evidence.

After watching this video, I'm going to think more consciously about how often I trade off between that visual evidence and context.

[heychrisfox]

While this is all true, and Johnny makes great videos, I think it's important to also differentiate between the styles of information. Johnny makes infotainment. It's entertaining, and is meant to inform. Something like PBS is strict journalism; it's not entertainment, but rather 100% context. That means by necessity, it's not as fun or engaging to watch, but it's more jam packed with context than any Johnny Harris video ever could be.

While it's definitely good Johnny can ingratiate us to deep, complicated, interesting topics - and it's good the video go viral, because they're on very complicated, hard topics to cover - it's also important for things like PBS to exist, which can give extremely dense, fact-based, well researched context dumps that actually explain more than show. Sometimes that explanation is vital, especially for extremely complicated topics.

[motioneer]

Man this is well made video. The amount of effort and work is seen throughout the video. You got a new subscriber.

[KiskeyaLife]

Wow, that explains so much. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Mogswamp]

Great editing man. Congrats on your first YouTube hit, won't be the last.

[smartideas-pedro]

I've watched the hole presentation where he talks about the structure but I was so hooked up about it that I forgot to take notes. Well, glad you made this video, it's way better than any note I could ever take. You synthesized the whole think in a few minutes and it's amazing.

[sameedshariq]

Really loved this. I've loved making my own Johnny Harris style videos about topics I'm passionate about. Having it clearly laid out why I find his format so compelling was fascinating. Keep making videos please.

[santoshaiyar]

When i got out of college, YouTube didn't even exist - (yeah that makes me like 40) - but I've spent my entire career thus far in advertising and communication, so I can say I understand a bit about filmmaking techniques and storytelling. But I have been truly amazed how everything has evolved and continues to evolve with many emerging communication platforms - and the idea of explanatory journalism, first born with Vox, is truly amazing and its former star journalist Johnny Harris is one of its great proponents. I have been his admirer for long - and this video of yours gives a very neat insight into what makes his work - work. So thanks a lot man! And here's hoping you're the next one to rock!

[atulkumar]

The extraordinary amount of his editing skills, mapping structures used, the analysis behind every video, and the simple way of explaining the topics is exactly what excites me!!

[edzion]

Impressive that you did this, giving us the evidence then the context. Nice to see you adopting your own advice and it working well. Thanks for the video!

[AuthenTech]

Great breakdown, and sweet graphics/animations, well done 👊

[rithiksrivastava]

Oh Man, mark my words, you are going to be a successful YouTuber one day, you have a great sense of storytelling. all d best

[KingdomOfStars]

Underrated video 🙌 Good job explaining Johnny's video structure!