Last week Maria and I decided to check out what Disneynature’s new film Chimpanzee might have to teach us about storytelling. Turns out, quite a bit.

Led by director Alastair Fothergill, who also produced BBC’s Blue Planet, the Chimpanzee crew set about finding the narrative in what must have appeared to be a series of disparate events when shooting began.

In plain English: they sat around shooting footage and getting attacked by sweat bees, literally waiting for the story to come to them. Later, they used devices like time-lapse sequences to creepy mushrooms (yes, fungi are a device in this movie) to show and tell a fascinating story of love, trust, family and socio-political drama among chimpanzees.

Your company or magazine could definitely do the same, even without sweat bees, especially if you’ve got a brand journalist on your side.

Find out why you should and how you can in our new Story by Numbers podcast available on iTunes now.