Yesterday (as of writing this) I released a scripted video on my youtube channel for the first time in 2 months. Less than a week ago (again, as of writing this) this blog post by the person I would call my biggest inspiration for all of this was released. The subject of that blog post was on the writing process for the man's video series. The release of both of these things got me thinking. Maybe someone wants to know what the process is for making my videos. If you are that person, read on.
A video always has to start with an idea. Now finding ideas isn't particularly difficult (I have six or seven ideas for scripted videos in my head right now) as I tend to think about video production whenever I'm bored. If you however are someone that has a hard time coming up with ideas. I've got nothing. I'm sorry it's just not a problem that comes up for me.
Next is the largest phase of the video making: writing. I don't research before I write, I just do it when I need to. The first few sentences of the script are always the most heavily thought about ones. Since I don't want people to click away from the video. Other then that I just write the whole thing in one draft. (Because I have a life outside of making videos). By the end I like to have 1000-2000 words that would make sense to someone that was not me. I do edit the thing a little bit to try to catch grammar mistakes that spell-check wouldn't catch. When doing this I recommend reading the script aloud because you just seem to catch more mistakes that way. The word processor that I've used to write these things has historically been Google Docs but I recently got a copy of microsoft office 2013 so now I'm using word 2013.
Now, the recording. And before anyone asks here's the microphone that I use. (This is not sponsored in any way and I can say, that mic is amazing for anything under 100 CAD). I record the audio with audacity, which conveniently also works as an audio editor. The way I go about recording is straightforward. I read a sentence, if I screw up or it didn't sound that good, I repeat the sentence. If it sounded good, I read the next sentence. Rinse and repeat until I've read the whole thing. For the usual 5-10 minute the recording takes about 20 minutes. Recording is fairly unpleasant as I get easily distracted when there's an internet connection available (I have a reddit problem ok) because of this I'm not as used to doing unbroken-up work when I'm not being forced to do it. Editing the audio, while uncomfortable doesn't take that long and is just a matter of cutting out screwed up lines and unnecessarily long pauses.
Finally, the editing. Starting with the email video, my first step is going to be--with a combination of google drawings and photoshop elements--to create a thumbnail with a duo-colo(u)r style inspired by this man's thumbnails. Now the editing program I use is Pinnacle Studio 14 which is immensely outdated (the current version is 18) and based on the fact that the newest version is only 60 USD (there's no canadian site but given how the Canadian dollar is doing right now that might not be a bad thing) I'll probably upgrade soon. However the software has served me well for the lightweight stuff I need to do. I really don't have much to say when it comes to the editing process itself. All it consists of is 50% finding relevant images to whatever I'm talking about and placing them in the correct spots. The other half is writing relevant text on top of or next to a picture and placing the text boxes in the correct spots. If you're curious the font that I used for the Email video and plan to be using for videos in the future is here.
So that's my video production process. Tons of ideas, 1.5 copies of a script, a bunch of recorded lines, significantly less good sounding lines, one quasi-professional looking thumbnail, 20 or so relevant images and text boxes, and one final 5-10 minute video. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go through this process on the next internet protocols video.
