The ability to do basic video creation and editing is critical for instructional designers. One way to demonstrate your video creation skills is through a video introduction.

Video Explanation of Video Creation Process

Step 1: Ideate

A story or two will go a long way in making your video introduction speak to the audience. Try to stay away from relaying facts and focus more on stories. One way to do this is to think of what emotions you want to evoke in the viewer, then think of things that you have done in the past to evoke those emotions.

Ask: 

• What emotions do you want to evoke?
• What stories do you want to share?

When speaking specifically about your introductory video, you might want to consider answering some of these questions:

• What inspires you to do good work?
• How did you get into instructional design? Everyone’s path is different, is there an interesting ah-ha moment in your story?
• What types of projects do you find most interesting?
• What do you want to be remembered for?
• What type of work do you want to do? Do you have a story about that type of work?
• What message do you want people to leave with?

Step 2: Script

Some people don’t think it is necessary to script. They are wrong. Scripting allows you to communicate what you want to communicate in a concise way - without the umms and other filler words that sneak into our language when we speak. Scripting also makes sure we say everything we want to say.

A 2-3 minute introduction is approximately 250-300 words.

Once you have scripted your story, practice reading it out several times. Does it flow? Is it easy to read? When it comes time to recording your story audio, you may wish to consider using a teleprompter application. These tools make it easier for you to read without sounding like you are reading. 

Step 3: Storyboard

Once you have written your script, break your script up into logical chunks. Generally this aligns with a few sentences and can be thought of as a change in scenes. Each chunk then  becomes its own panel on a storyboard. 

Creating a storyboard is a vital step as it saves you a lot of time when it comes to producing your video. It also helps you ensure that you have all the visuals and audio that you will need before you attempt to put your video together. 

Step 4: Film

If you have any live panels on your board that you need to film, now is the time to do it. Your storyboard will guide you so that you gather the clips that you need. Creating audio and creating images also occurs in this step. 

Step 5: Collect and Construct

In this step you take all the pieces of your story, specifically any audio, image, or video footage and collect it all together in one place. Then you import it into whatever software you are using to construct your story. Your storyboards provide a detailed guide for what you need to do to put your story together. 

Step 6: Publish and Distribute

The final step is to publish and distribute. I recommend uploading to YouTube and then linking to the YouTube video. This ensures that the video will play appropriately regardless of the device it is played on.