Video for eLearning: How to Think Like Hollywood

eLearning video doesn’t deal with budgets in the millions.Heck, $20,000 is a big-budget production in eLearning! Even with a budget of $20,000,our video frequently isn’t very good. The technical quality of the video mightbe great, but technically great and beautifully shot video doesn’t necessarily engagea learning audience. Why? Why doesn’t money buy engaging eLearning?

There are many reasons, but perhaps the biggest might be howwe think about the creation of trainingvideos. I believe a lot of people in our industry do think about the creationof video, but more of us need to understand and work in the mindset of a Hollywoodwriter, producer, or director. Creative cinema style and out-of-the-boxthinking are what’s needed to make great and engaging become the norm ratherthan the exception.

In many ways it’s more difficult to make good training videoor motion graphics than it is to make a good Hollywood movie. There is no limiton subject matter for movie making. The story gets whatever creative freedom itneeds to create a film. But even given that, most Hollywood movies aren’t verygood! They don’t make money, and money is the point of the movie industry.

In our case, we get the subject matter, and then it’s ourresponsibility to put that information into a script that has all the learningobjectives baked into it, and after that to make a video from the script. Inmany ways, the result might be more like a documentary, but it’s also like amovie. Our job is to devise media that learners need to help them get theirjobs done better, and we need to devise creatively. Unlike the entertainmentindustry, we do this mostly alone or perhaps with a small team. We also have anotherchallenge when we create eLearning; we have corporate standards, compliance,accessibility issues and many other concerns that we might feel cramp ourcreative style. It’s not easy to write good eLearning video. Finally, since wemostly have to do all the production jobs, writing, scouting, shooting, andpost production, we’ve got far more responsibility than any one person inHollywood. So why is Hollywood generally better?

It’s about the writers

The best Hollywood movies are clever, saturated with ideas,and enjoyable to watch. And they tell stories. And they’re frequently prescientabout styles and society to name a few things movies are good at. We don’t wantto live in Blade Runner-land, butother futures can have both a Pollyanna-like feel along with a darker side.Movies frequently predict the future of things. A movie made in 1985 did apretty good job with new ideas and things to come. Back to the Future Part II went forward waaaaaaaaaaaay into thefuture, all the way to 2015. Wait! We’re already there! And the writers got alot of it right. Except for hoverboards and some other minor things, but theygot some really big swipes correct. And it was a fun story. So why do Hollywoodwriters seem better at telling stories?

In Hollywood, the writers really make up the story. Theactors, director, sound, lighting, music, and post production people (editors,CG artists, etc.) are the ones who bring it to life. Writers in Hollywood areunfettered. They can think of anything or have their characters say anything ordo anything. It doesn’t mean the idea will ever see the klieg-light of day, butit does mean the writers need to be creative, all the time.

In our eLearning space, writers are usually instructional designers.Instructional designers have more constraints, but still… The “but still…”means that, as an instructional designer or developer we might get anassignment, but it doesn’t mean we have to put the instructions for “How toOperate a Grinding Machine” or “How to Adhere to Corporate Governance” or whateverinto a video as a verbatim regurgitation of the knowledge. You won’t really bea subject matter expert (SME) on the topics you need to design, but you canlearn a lot about your subject. And you CAN try to put yourself in the SME’sshoes.

Why not make up a story of how the grinding machine makes a partthat instructs us on how the machine is used and what the parts are used for? Orshow governance issues in a humorous light. Those ideas could fulfill the needas well as making the resulting instruction engaging. The training doesn’t haveto be in every single word, but we can tell a story around what is needed.That’s the way writers think about what they’re writing about. What Hollywoodwriters do is find their muse.

Finding your muse

Their muse? Maybe this is the most important part of creativity.Finding your muse. We all need to be inspired. Your muse is what inspires youto be creative. How do we find our muse? Or your inspiration? The first thingto ask yourself is, “What do I like to do for relaxation?” Are you a gamer? Doyou spend a lot of the day on Facebook? Sometimes our muse is a friend. You talkto them for ten or fifteen minutes and bounce around ideas. And you get moreideas. It doesn’t matter how you find your muse. Do what you like for 10 or 15minutes, but have in your front-of-mind the problem you’re trying to solve.That’s it. One time you’ll hit on an activity that makes you crazy with ideas.That’s your muse … for today anyway.

Why is this a good thing? Not all eLearning is edutainment.Not all edutainment is even appropriate for eLearning. But if you look at thethings that inspire you the most, your answer is in there. Take a subject,apply your muse to it. and voila!You’re telling a story. A muse is personal. I like to say that I look to the Python (Monty, that is), the Firesign Theater (who isthat?) and Wile E. Coyote. OK, they’re unusual sources. But that’s the point for me. Imight take a topic and think about how Monty Python would tell the story. (Asan aside, John Cleese started an educational training company after MontyPython dissolved. Video Arts is one of the best [if not the best] video trainingcompanies in the eLearning space. Started in 1987, they’re still aroundtoday and with good reason.) What if you’re thinking that you have the need to createvideos with a serious intent? My muse might start out in the funny zone, but itquickly morphs into whatever it needs to be.

Examples

Maybe the best way to explain finding your muse is to describehow I found my muse for a few projects. It’s a bit personal, but what the heck,I’m happy to share.

Bioterrorism and Public Health Law

This project for the University of Michigan School of PublicHealth started out as a 25-page tabletop exercise. Or so I thought. The schoolwanted me to take video of the students doing the exercise and publish a PDF ofthe 25 pages. Boring. There was nothing about what they wanted that could possiblymake it interesting to anyone. They had to read the exercise online or print itout in order to do the exercise. It was already a story. I didn’t know it was agood one until I took the document home over the weekend and started readingit. By the time I got to the second page, the hair on my neck started to go up.My muse started telling me this was a lot like a sensationalist news story.

The storyline is about a man who was admitted to a hospitalwith a rash that looked like chicken pox. It turned out to be smallpox that wasthe weaponized virus spread by aerosol (Smallpox does not exist in the wild any more). The point of the story was toteach public health officials their legal responsibilities and limitations inthe face of a public health emergency, in this case a contagious disease andquarantine, and how to deal with people who won’t obey the public health laws.So I was off to the races. Since this is about the inspiration and not aboutthe perspiration, I hope you enjoy the solution of how we made a sensationalistnews story and still teach. There were seven days of segments that progressthrough the disease and all segments were punctuated by questions that showedcompetence. This is the very first segment. By the way, there’s not a physicianunder the age of 50 who could recognize a smallpox rash because there hasn’tbeen a case of smallpox anywhere in the world for almost 40 years.

Reflections on the Experienceof Cancer

Thiswas a hard video to make and figure out on several levels. First, I didn’t haveany idea how I wanted to present this to its intended audience: cancer patientsand their families. But we had 13 people lined up to talk to us and each ofthem was going to be asked the same group of questions that spoke to theirjourney through the disease. While our crew was doing the interviews, one fact kepton coming across; every one of the patients we filmed had at least six monthswhen their thoughts wouldn’t stop coming. Many of them described it as theirbrain exploding or white noise in their head all the time. My muse started totalk to me … finally. Also, it seemed like everyone the patients knew came atthem with advice and comments. Everyone they knew was talking to them at thesame time. So the patients told me how to make the video. It starts out withwhite noise, which never quite disappears and after the titles, everyone is talkingat once. Cancer patients got it. Others didn’t. Cancer patients have told methis is a true reflection of the stages they went through during the course oftheir disease.

History of Amber Lager

This one was fun. I had worked in the wine business (it was mostly training … OK,tasting too … a lot 😉 for a number of years. I met Bob Mack at an eLearningconference. He is one of the top 10 people in the world in the beer industry. Thebreadth of his knowledge of craft beer and the beer industry is amazing. Hedeveloped Beer Spy and created the basic curriculum at Beer U. It was already agood fit. We’d both worked in various tiers in the beer and wine industries. Itwas a good fit. Bob decided we would start with a project about Amber Lager.Amber Lager was invented by two young men in the early 1840s. They had traveledEurope and England trying to find out how English brewers made their beer sopale in color compared to the almost black continental beers. They stolesamples of beers and ales with a hollow cane. Really. They purloined samples oflighter colored barley. In short, they were beer spies.

Of course, the James Bond spoof came out of that. I think Bob came up with the ideaof James Bond. I was stuck on the Pink Panther, and he was a detective. I justbounced away from there. We found out that a GoPro fits neatly inside a bottleof beer so you can pour beer all around it.

 Now it’s your turn

Theseexamples demonstrate how I found my muse for a few of the projects I’ve done.Finding your own muse will happen differently. When I began writing thisarticle, I thought a lot about how to describe the feeling I get when I’m inthe creative zone and the creative juices are cooking. I also tried to figureout how I got to that feeling. Along the way, I realized that I don’t have justone muse. I don’t believe anyone does. I realized the best way to describe mymuses is to describe the way I got to the ideas embodied in these projects. Iwas fascinated by how clearly I remembered the details about how I got to thestarting point of a project (the 10 percent inspiration) and the details of howI actually made the project after the inspiration came to me (the 90 percentperspiration). However you do it, it’s the right way. Just find your muse andcreativity will follow.