Lee LeFever and The Common Craft Show.
Common Craft is the specialist in non-geek explanations of geekdom.
Check out Social Bookmarking in Plain English.
Behind the scenes:
* What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?
* They script it out. This is the most important thing. They get that right.
* They’ll do storyboards and then divide it into scenes.
* They film it.
Lee says the first couple of videos were harder to film. They are now refining their style.
Rules:
* No video over 5 min.
* No external sound effects. Lee hums.
* Try to stay copyright-free.
* Educational
* Constraints are good: hands, humming, paper, whiteboard
* Low tech to explain high tech
Common Craft is focusing their business on being good storytellers. It’s not about being good high-end video producers.
So who’s watching these?
Everyone. Lee also says librarians seem to get and like these videos.
Things that are good to get right: sound quality and visual quality.
Here’s how they started making this a business:
“Problems get solved when they need to get solved.”
Lee showed photos of their great, home set-up. Very MacGyver.
They use strings to move things across the screen.
Technical stuff:
* Edit video in FinalCut Express.
* Edit audio first to get it down. Then place video.
* Use Blip.tv to host videos. Lee likes Blip because the player isn’t branded. Better quality.
* Dotsub.com Uploaded video to dotsub so that you can upload video and add subtitles. Then anyone can translate it.
* Vimeo is how they share video with client. It’s never exposed. Client can download video. Secure.
Good books that influenced Common Craft:
Made to Stick
Other ideas:
Lee has an idea about explaining other things, like solar energy.