A YouTube user, "whitelightbringer," posted a six minute video of the Toowoomba Flood on January 10, 2011. Camcorder or cellphone videographers learning to put together a short documentary can take note of a basic storytelling structure that gives heft to this handheld eyewitness account of a natural disaster: the flood video has a beginning, middle, and end. Top still: a rapidly rising creek is still within its banks. Second still: a succession of cars is swept away as the creek becomes a torrent. The third still provides suspense: can the man with the flimsy umbrella move his car in time? The end of the video shows the jumble of cars after the water has receded (bottom still). If you hadn't seen the first images of the water contained in the creek, the flooded creek wouldn't have been as meaningful. Visuals tell the story without talking heads or extra information.
