Additional Reading

Training Videos

Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction . John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003.

Richard E. Mayer, Multimedia Learning . Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Alan S. Pringle and Sarah S. O’Keefe, Technical Writing 101: A Real-World Guide to Planning and Writing Technical Documentation . Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc., 2000.

Marketing Videos

Robert W. Bly, The Copywriter’s Handbook . Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1985.

Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice . Allyn & Bacon, 2001.

Bryan Eisenburg, Jeffrey Eisenburg, and Lisa T. Davis, Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank . Future Now, Inc., 2002.

Demonstration Videos

Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points . Microsoft Press, 2005.

Peter E. Cohan, Great Demo! How to Create and Execute Stunning Software Demonstrations , 2nd ed. iUniverse, 2005.

Robert Riefstahl, Demonstrating to Win! The Indispensable Guide for Demonstrating Software . Xlibris Corporation, 2000.

Summary

For each of the three common video types (training, marketing, and demonstration), there are techniques that will help you create compelling content. Regardless of the video type, you must consider two predominant factors:

Who is your audience? In figuring out whom you’re trying to reach as well as what that population’s needs are, you can craft a video that addresses those needs.
What is your purpose? While the purpose of your video may seem obvious, refining your objective(s) to be as specific as possible will aid you in planning a project that accomplishes its goals without a lot of superfluous fluff.

In the next chapter, we’ll talk a bit more about how a video’s audience and purpose can shape the visuals and especially the narration of your project.

Chapter 4: Scripting and Storyboarding

I once took an improvisation course as a college undergraduate . I, along with a roomful of fellow student improvisers, would ad-lib scenes based on a given premise . I can honestly say it was the most fun I’d ever had in an academic setting, almost like schoolyard recess for adults. Of course, I would have been dreadfully embarrassed had any of those scenes ever been recorded and put up on the Internet for all to see. While we occasionally mined a golden nugget or two from these scenes, most of the time they were a meandering muddle of mediocrity . Video creation works much the same way. Even though improvised recording is a terrific tool to get the creative juices flowing (and one which we’ll discuss in detail a bit later on), this should be done only as a launch pad to a more structured approach. It is but one (early) step in the process, not the entire process in and of itself. Remember, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

So how do we remedy this? Well, now that you’ve gotten more acquainted with your audience, and hopefully have a better sense of purpose based on their needs (and on your goals for them), it’s time to put it all down on paper. I typically do this in two steps:

Scripting , where you clarify your basic message and draft the video’s voice narration.
Storyboarding , where you plan the visuals (be it in words, pictures, or video) and tighten up your script to match them. The storyboard is the plan from which your video will ultimately be created.

General Tips on Scripting

This section covers the basics of writing your narration script. Even if you’re not planning on narrating your video, it’s still a good exercise to put on paper the various points you’ll want to convey . We’ll be covering subjects such as information gathering, style and content, and using terminology. I’ll conclude by mentioning a couple of scripting techniques developed by others that may help you in your own scriptwriting endeavors.

Note

A lot of people have asked me whether it’s a good idea to narrate your videos at all. After all, you’ll need to invest in equipment as well as possibly hire voice-over talent, and the audio track can sometimes more than double the file size . In the end, it is really worth the hassle?

My answer is an unequivocal yes . As you read in the last chapter, Richard Mayer’s studies tell us that engaging multiple pathways into the brain (e.g., sight and sound) greatly enhances learning. My own experience tells me that people typically respond more favorably to a technological medium when it’s administered with a touch of humanity. After all, what are we really trying to do with these videos? I would argue that, more often than not, we’re trying to convey the feeling of that human touch that accompanies an in-person training session (or sales demo or presentation, etc.), without all the cost and trouble of actually being there in person. It’s that inherent “humanness” of a video to which the audience really seems to respond.

The trick lies in trying to figure out ways of pushing your personality, knowledge, and enthusiasm over the ether . Your voice is a big part of the equation. From infancy onward, we human beings are trained to respond to the human voice. By silencing your video, you’re not only shutting off one of the learning pathways, you’re robbing your work of the lion’s share of its personality. The content takes on a more robotic feel, and the end result is listless and dull. After all, there’s a good reason nobody makes silent movies any more.

Gathering All the Pieces

Before sitting down to write a single word of narration, you need to start out in information-gathering mode. In addition to the acts of finding out about your audience and discovering your purpose that we talked about in the previous chapter, it’s a good idea to approach a few content experts so that you can collect their input. For example, you might approach the developers of the software for tips on the easiest way of executing a complicated process. Or you might want to speak with someone in your MarComm department about the survey they recently conducted , where users were given the chance to rate the usefulness of the software’s various features. This could aid you in determining not only what topics to include in your video, but the order in which to place them and how long to linger on each point.

Once you’ve assembled both your own notes and the advice of others, it’s time to compile it into a workable outline ( assuming that one hasn’t been dictated to you by management). While there are a multitude of software outliners and project management tools that can help you, I generally prefer 3x5 index cards or Post-it notes, with one talking point on each. It helps me to visualize the flow of my narration. Only after I’ve scribbled, laid out, shuffled, pondered, reshuffled, torn up a couple of cards, added a couple new ones, and shuffled the order once again do I know that I’m ready to put my outline into Word or some other tool. But everyone has their own process; do what makes you comfortable.

Avoiding the “Blank Page” Syndrome

Once you have a good sense of what you want to cover and how, it’s finally time to hunker down and get typing. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of people become paralyzed. You fire up a new word processing document, and there’s just something about the vastness of that blank screen, with its I-beam cursor blinking tauntingly at you, that seems to freeze the creative juices right in their tracks.

The best tip I can recommend here is to go back to the good work you did during your preparation. Return to your assessments of the audience and purpose, and determine how those things interact with the outline you’ve established. Once you’ve got that blueprint in place, trust me, the text will practically write itself. Focus on your objective, and start typing content that speaks to that objective.

If you’re still stuck, there is one technique I use that helps me overcome writer’s block without fail. I simply make a rough recording. Remember at the beginning of the chapter, when I said that improvisation can be an effective tool if used appropriately? This is where ad-libbing is the most helpful. Jot down your video’s main objective, and tape it to the top of your monitor. Then record a tutorial/marketing/demo video without the help of any notes or scripts. Just pretend that a representative person of your target audience is in the room, and start talking to that fictitious person, recording all the content with the video’s overriding purpose in mind. Remember to record your audio narration at the same time. Then, preview and analyze your recorded content. Even when wading through all the “umms” and the uneven pacing, provided you’ve remained focused on the objective, I guarantee you’ll find something salvageable to include in your script. Additionally, it can really help you target potential problems in your thought process as well as any lingering technical issues. You’ll learn all about recording your first video in the next chapter.

If you’ve done a rough cut and actually find that it provides a good basis for a script, here’s an idea that can save you additional time transcribing it. Instructional designer Dan Kazup came up with this idea for auto-generating a rough script using the voice recognition capabilities built into the English-, Chinese-, and Japanese- language versions of Word 2003. With the proper setup and equipment, Word can actually take dictation as you’re playing back your rough video. Here’s how it works:

Record your first-draft video in Camtasia Recorder, complete with narration. Make sure that your system is equipped with a microphone and is set up to record sound. You’ll discover the intricacies of sound recording in Chapter 10, “Working with Other Media: Audio, PIP, and Title Clips.”
In Word 2003, choose Speech from the Tools menu. You’ll be prompted to install the feature if you haven’t already done so.
If this is your first time using the Speech feature, you’ll need to spend at least 10 to 15 minutes training Microsoft’s speech recognition technology to better recognize your voice. Even more time is recommended if you want good accuracy. If ever you want to further train your speech profile later, just go to the Speech control panel, and on the Speech Recognition tab, click the Train Profile… button. From there, you’ll be able to select from a number of passages to read. Do as many of these as you can; it can really help boost the software’s accuracy.
Employ one of the methods discussed in Chapter 10 for recording your system sound. The idea is to make the voice recognition tool “hear” the sound coming from your video playback and take it down as dictation.
Return to Microsoft Word. You should now have the language bar located at the top of your screen. Click the Dictation button if it’s not already selected. A special tooltip on the toolbar will designate it as “Listening…”
Open your video. After beginning playback, return to Word again. Provided that Word is listening to the correct audio device and input line, you should see Word transcribing what you hear in the video.

What to Write: Form and Content

Included in this section are a few content and style tips to keep in mind when hammering out a script for a video audience. First, let’s talk a bit about the wording we use in a video script.

Make the Wording Audience-Appropriate

When doing videos about software, you’re bound to be producing for both technical and decidedly nontechnical audiences. Remember, in each and every video project you undertake, part of your discovery process with the target audience is figuring out which applies (if not both). The technical savvy of your group will have a profound effect on the terminology you employ. For example, if you’re doing a marketing spot designed for general public consumption, don’t use a lot of technical jargon that would mystify anyone not in possession of a computer science degree. If you must introduce an unfamiliar term , take a moment to explain it.

And this isn’t just limited to techie words. The same concept applies to marketing buzzwords , industry jargon, and any other kind of gobbledygook that might not be immediately apparent to certain members of your audience. If this is a special demo video aimed at your sales and marketing staff, you can probably get away with using industry-specific terms and acronyms such as ROI, B2C, CPC, M-O-U-S-E, etc. However, any techies or administrative staff viewing your video would probably be lost. Try to play to the lowest common denominator, even though you’re often walking a fine line between insulting their intelligence on the one hand and leaving them completely confused on the other. If you have distinct audiences with vastly differing areas of expertise, consider a separate video for each group.

That said, you’ll want to “speak their language” as much as possible where it doesn’t obscure your point. When citing examples, make them appropriate to the industry of your target audience rather than using generic filler content. For example, when demonstrating a particular feature of your new home design software, fill in the software’s various fields with terms that an actual contractor (or architect, or whoever your target audience happens to be) would really use when using your product in a real-world situation. So, if you’re showing off the Door & Window Inventory List feature, ask yourself which field entry would be more compelling: “Widget” or “Loose pin back flap hinge.” Using the former is tantamount to saying, “I understand nothing about you or the things you care about,” which doesn’t do much to make a sale or establish yourself as a content expert.

Be Consistent in Your Terminology

Okay, I have one final point to make before I shut up about terminology. For some odd reason, presumably in the interest of adding variety to the narration, many writers of narration scripts will invariably use two or three different terms for the same concept. This is severely detrimental to helping your audience comprehend the content. It’s the kiss of death for a tutorial video.

In this book, for example, I always call a video a video . I don’t say movie, or film, or motion picture. And all of these are terms with which the general populace is pretty familiar. Imagine my throwing around a few highly technical, polysyllabic words, all of which meant the same thing. The only instance in which I find such usage appropriate is when you actually introduce the words at the same time. Here’s an example from Chapter 7 of this very book:

A key frame is a frame that has a complete picture in it. Also called an I-frame (short for “intra-frame”), a key frame anchors your video by providing a fully assembled image every so many frames .

Even when presenting both terms at once, I’d still typically use one of them pretty much exclusively, only mentioning the other once as background information.

Possible Scripting Techniques

While there are any number of methods for approaching the actual crafting of a video script, there are two that I’ve found particularly helpful with certain video projects, and I’d like to share them with you here.

The “Sesame Street” technique. This organizational scripting technique is sometimes credited to the Children’s Television Workshop and its educational research in developing its Sesame Street TV series. It actually predates Big Bird and Cookie Monster in its use by trainers , marketers, salespeople, and professional speakers , yet is still often lovingly referred to as the “Sesame Street” technique.

The premise is simple. First, tell them what you intend to show them today. Show them. And then tell them what you’ve shown them. This tell-show-tell technique tips off the audience as to what to expect, reinforces that expectation with the actual material, and then closes by summarizing all the important points. In fact, as you read through this book, you’ll quickly realize that each chapter is laid out much the same way, with a topic introduction, the actual content, and then a handy summary.

A brief introduction not only prepares the audience for the content, it selects the audience as well. Viewers can therefore tell in the first 30 seconds whether this video contains information that will be useful to them. Due to the shorter length of most screen videos, I tend to gloss over the summary portion, even skipping it entirely if the video is less than seven minutes in duration.

I use this technique all the time. Its inherent sense of structure really seems to speak to people. Additionally, it helps you organize your own thoughts as well as get you thinking about the overall flow of the piece.
Storytelling. In his book Beyond Bullet Points , management consultant Cliff Atkinson concocted a method of conducting a PowerPoint presentation that avoids the “bullet point syndrome” with which most of us are all too familiar. He suggests using your presentation to tell a story, casting your audience in the role of protagonist. Much like a stage play, this story consists of multiple acts where your characters (audience) must overcome obstacles in order to reach their overriding objective ( la Stanislavsky).

While intended for the PowerPoint set, this book offers a remarkable , alternate way of constructing your video scripts. By offering an appropriate metaphor for the current difficulties and future opportunities of your audience, you can construct a compelling story that guides them from problem to solution.

Of course, a brief synopsis doesn’t really do the technique justice , so make sure you check out Cliff’s book for more details (a full reference to which can be found at the end of the previous chapter).

I’ve been on the business end of this technique several times, and I can tell you that when it works, it works remarkably well.

There have also been a couple of instances when I’ve seen this technique fail miserably, mainly because its creator chose the wrong metaphor or didn’t fully commit to the story. When done half-heartedly, it comes across as artificial, contrived, and, well…, cheesy. But when done well, it can accomplish the objective you’ve established as well as connect with the audience on a more basic human level than might otherwise have been possible.