Recommended Workflow

Suggested Workflow for Beginners

Each type of video will have a different workflow, and with experience you will develop your own. 

In order to help a beginner get started with creating short "how to" videos, it is helpful to know how to approach the project. As much as is possible, the order of topics on this website reflects a good approach to producing a video that has a mixture of content types: video, audio, and stills.

Recommended Workflow

1. Be creative. Identify an audience and establish learning objectives for your video.
2. Reflection. Reflect on your idea. Decide if video is the right medium and whether the topic is too broad. (Your goal is a 3 to 15 minute video.) This is a good point to review what, if any, content already exists on YouTube. Some topics have a lot of existing competition. 
3. Storyboard. Write a storyboard and include the accompanying script with each panel. Think of each panel as a "paragraph." It can be helpful to write some script for the panel and then draw out the scene, revising the script as needed. Each panel represents about 15 to 25 seconds.
4. Review. Review the script. If you are unsure of the technical content, this is a good time to ask for someone to review it. 
5. Shot list. Look at your storyboard and identify all the content you need to create. Organize the list by type: stills, video, narration, etc. Sort the list to create a sequence of shots that is efficient and make or collect the footage you require. Remember the order they appear in the video may not be the best order to record. You should capture similar shots together, for example clips where you address the camera directly can be filmed together. If you will be assembling something, record in that order even if you plan to show the final result at the video's start. Plan to make multiple versions of video ("takes"), especially spoken parts.
6. Download and Organize. Download all your media to a single folder. Review each clip to ensure it is acceptable. Choose the best takes. Give each clip you will be using a descriptive name. You may want to use those clips in another project. (If so, copy or make a hard link in that new project's folder to keep a project's files together.)
7. Editing. Edit your video using the media collection you've just organized. Save any files in this folder, and give them useful names. If it is a draft, label it as such. If you save multiple edits, name the final one in an obvious way. "Final" is a good word to tack on to ensure you don't accidentally delete it.
8. Encode. Encode the video and play it back with a separate video player to ensure it looks and sounds the way you want. You may need to do some touch up editing and re-encode the video.
9. Post-Production. Come up with a good title and a keyword-rich description. If you followed your storyboard, it should be easy to have a script ready at this point to facilitate closed captioning. Your video is ready for uploading.

For sending to UC ANR's channels:

Send your script, video file, releases, permissions, title and description as described on the uploading page. Strategic Communications staff will handle it from there.

For uploading to your own channel:

You will need to complete the steps that Strategic Communications staff would do for you. Start by uploading the video. You can mark it "unlisted" until you are ready to show it.

After uploading, you will need to handle closed captioning, and possibly replace the recommended title thumbnails provided by YouTube. Finally make the video public and tell the world about your new video!