Project explainer video

Produce a short video presentation that documents and explains the project process and outcomes for a general audience unfamiliar with the work (~2-3 minutes).

Example of excellent explainer videos

• A world of our own by Grace Brown

Structuring the presentation

There are different approaches to documentation video. A typical documentation video consists of the following:

1. Project title and name screen
2. Concept: Short overview statement, typically white, bold text on a black background. Ensure that it is visible on screen long enough to be read by the viewer.
3. Research: Photographs, images or video clips showing the research or key aspects that you developed to make the project successful.
4. Production process: Photographs, images or video clips showing the production of the project at various stages of development. You can photograph yourself or others participating in the experience or show relevant digital images that give the audience context of your narration.
   • Figure out the best way to communicate the things you are making. This can be screen captured videos or images, photographs of in-progress work, diagrams, etc.
5. Project outcomes: Include any of the following — Results of the project, insights, lessons learned, and plans for the future.

You can overlay text on top of the images and video to describe the project's development and outcomes along with voice narration to describe the project. Do not leave the images and video up to interpretation.

Creating and exporting the video (recommended)

1. Create a presentation folder on your computer and save everything to this folder.
2. Create a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation in widescreen aspect ratio
3. Export the slides as images
4. Record an audio narration for each slide using quicktime (should be about 1-3 minutes of audio)
5. Import the images and audio into premiere pro or aftereffects
6. Edit and export using H.264 format. This should be a small file size.

Additional software tutorials

Recording and editing software

• Screen Recording
  • Apple Quicktime
  • How record your screen with Quicktime
• Screenflow (free trial)
• Camtasia (free trial)
  • LinkedIn Learning
• Zoom
  • Using Zoom to record a slides presentation
• Video Editors (NLE)
  • Adobe Premiere Pro — Great all purpose editor
    • Adobe Premiere Pro: Adding text to video
    • Essential Training (LinkedIn Learning)
  • Adobe AfterEffects — For fancy animations
    • Essential Training: Motion Graphics (LinkedIn Learning)
  • Adobe Spark — For simple slideshow videos — Easy!
    • Telling a Story with Adobe Spark (LinkedIn Learning)

Exporting Your Video

Videos should be exported as a .mp4 file with an h.264 codec. This is most common format for distributing videos on the web.

1920px x 1080px is standard HD video size, so that's a great target to make your video, but if you have a conceptual or technical reason you need to size your video differently, other sizes may be acceptable.

• How to export in H.264 format with Adobe Premiere

Videos should be smaller than 500MB. To decrease your file size, you can try the following:

• Ensure you are using the h.264 codec when exporting. Use the share feature in quicktime to export a large video.
• Decrease your video's bitrate in the export settings (for reference check out the recommended bitrate settings for YouTube). Bitrate is basically how much detail goes into each frame of your video.
• If you aren't happy with the results from that you can always decrease the overall size of your video to 1280px by 720px or something similar.

Submission details

Submit this video as part of the documentation step.