Picture this:  Your training department has just formed a five-person “multimedia team.”  Each team member is competent in IT, and they are self-taught when it comes to video.

Within a few weeks the unit is buzzing with everyone busy working on projects for colleagues across the learning division.  However, during an important project, Sean falls ill. Someone needs to step in and finish his project to meet an important internal deadline.   

Thanks Suzy!

Fortunately, Suzy volunteers to step in.  But she’s faced with a problem: Sean didn’t write a script for the video because he thought it was easier to “wing it.” 

Suzy now has to determine the learning objective of the video and then write the script.  But what’s the video really about?  She finally finds his notes scattered through a manila folder in his camera case. 

But there’s no shot list or list of footage that he had captured.  Sean, who is very creative and a talented graphic designer, didn’t log the video he had already shot.  Why should he?  He knew where everything was. 

But Suzy doesn’t.  So, she spends an entire day viewing and re-viewing hours of video to find appropriate clips.

Where are the graphics files?

What about the graphics files?  Sean had completed them, but Suzy couldn’t find any of them—and she cannot get in touch with Sean. Suzy must start from scratch.

This should have been a simple job.  But Sean’s approach was entire differently to hers, and he was a bit sloppy in his housekeeping.  As the deadline approaches, Suzy feels the pressure, so she turns to her colleagues for help. 

Thankfully, her team will pitch in. Stuart, who is an editing whiz, offers to cut the clips together so Suzy can finish the graphics. 

How do I edit this?

The problem is that Stuart wants to edit his section of the video using Final Cut, which he considers to be the best software for editing. Although, in truth, it’s the only editing software he knows. 

There is nothing wrong with Final Cut—except Suzy set the project up in Premier, which she thinks is the best software for editing.  What software should they use?

The boss is losing hair.

Meanwhile, Rachel, the director of learning, feels the heat coming out of the multimedia office every time she walks past their door.  But she has no idea what the problem is.

The multimedia unit is producing a couple of videos a week, but she’d really like to see more output because a team of five should be able to do more, right?  Some of the videos have been really good—but others were disappointing. Cleary, the productivity isn’t outstanding, nor is the video quality standard consistent. She keeps wondering if she should have just budgeted for a professional video crew.

This is real, but it shouldn’t be.

Sound familiar?  This type of scenario happens in organizations all around the globe.  While the challenges vary in degree, they usually follow the same pattern. A multimedia team is formed to churn out great content to avoid hiring external vendors, but things go wrong because team members lack the right skills and everyone has a different way of doing the same thing.

It doesn’t have to be like this.  I believe learning video is the flipchart of the future.  It promises so many benefits to what we as learning professionals offer   our organizations.  We can’t afford to not do it right.

As an industry, we need to professionalize the way learning video is produced in training organizations.  Here are just a few ways to do this.  I’ll elaborate on them more in future posts.

• We need to learn media grammar, and evolve it for learning applications.  We need to learn media psychology and apply it. 

• We need to learn production skills.  These include technical, editorial, and pedagogical disciplines.  These skills should be part of future train-the-trainer classes. 

• We must broaden the talent base.  Learning video is often championed by one person who acts as gatekeeper to all things visual.  Every trainer needs to learn how to make cheep and cheerful video to enhance their classroom and e-learning solutions.

• We need a standard for what is acceptable and what is not.  Poorly lit “wobbly” cam is acceptable for only so long.  Now is the time to demand certain standards about how video looks.

• We need to develop video workflows.  Everyone in your department should follow the same production techniques and housekeeping rules.  If someone is sick, a colleague should be able to jump in quickly.  

• We need to know when not to use video.  Video is expensive, and it is not ideal for every training situation or topic.  We need to go beyond the “gee this is fun” stage to producing video only when it really achieves a learning outcome linked to the business.

What do you think?  What are your experiences with video? Have you found the magic workflow or series of production disciplines for your organization?  Or are you still searching for them?