SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everybody, I want to take a second to tell you about Snagit 2022. I don't have time to go into all the details about Snagit 2022, but it has a variety of options for fast and easy to use video creation. It's got new ways to work across devices and platforms with the new cloud library. And your purchase or upgrade includes your first year of maintenance and the newly updated Snagit certification course. With 20 plus videos and Snagit how-tos, certification is a great way to help you speed up your workflows, unlock potential, and get your work done faster. So check out Snagget 2022 today at Snagit.com. And now back to the podcast. We're so grateful you're here because we've been doing this thing for 10 weeks. Every week we've been talking to people about creating instructional videos. And we've been talking about all sorts of parts of the process. We've been talking about scripting and creating. We've been talking about getting audio, we've been talking about measurement, we've been talking about all these different things. And now here we come to the conclusion of our 10-week series about creating tutorial videos. And we're gonna be talking about workflows. And you might be thinking workflows at the end, but I can tell you, today's guest is fantastic and it's gonna be well worth your while. But before I get into introducing Josh Cavalier, let me just say if you like what you hear today, if there's something you learned from, tag me, tag TechSmith. We can do it on LinkedIn, you can do it wherever you're on social, and we'd love to see that because we'd love to hear and know what's resonating with you guys. And if you you're so inclined, you can always like, subscribe, and share whatever channel you're on so that you can always be notified when we go live, which is usually Thursdays at 2 p.m. So, with that said, let's jump in to our guest, the final of this 10-week series here. Josh Cavalier has been working in learning and development for 25 years and has a passion for creating instructional videos and sharing his knowledge. He has delivered workshops for Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, Lowe's, and Pfizer, just to name a few. You can find him presenting at learning conferences each year. And Josh is someone who I admire not only because of his friendly, awesome nature, but because he has spent a ton of time researching, learning, and figuring out about video. He not only knows more about instructional video than anyone else that I know, but he has created a ton of videos. He is full of practical advice, down-to-earth wisdom, and I seem to remember that he might be one heck of a giant Jenga player. Not as he plays a lot, but it's a giant version of Jenga. So with that said, let me welcome Josh Cavalier to the Visual Lounge.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Hey Josh. Hey Matt. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. Yeah. I think that giant Jenga was Leela Fever.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Was it Lee? Weren't you? You were there playing. I'm I you didn't knock it over, I don't think. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

We had a good time.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah. Actually, Lee's gonna be on the show in uh sometime in October. So we're really grateful for that. We're bringing bringing in all the heavy hitters here, Josh, including that includes you. So let's let's dive into today's conversation. So we we prefaced this that you know we're gonna be talking about video workflow. And I'm I'm curious for you, what does that mean to have a video workflow? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Right. So, I mean, for me, it's definitely focusing in on the audience and the outcomes that you want. And I think that that goes ahead and drives really everything that I do from a workflow standpoint. So, you know, and thinking about from an instruction, instructional standpoint, you know, what are we trying to measure on the back end? And, you know, are we trying to change behaviors or attitudes? Um, or just, you know, insert knowledge and have knowledge lift uh with our audience members. So, you know, all those things considered will change or modify my workflow as I move forward and think about uh doing any kind of video production.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah, that makes sense. So because we'd like to start really broad here. So generally, though, because obviously there's a lot of factor things that factor into that, the type of things you're trying to accomplish, you know, like you just mentioned, are there generally some best kind of advice or heuristics workflow best practices that you say, like generally if you have these things, you're gonna again generally be successful? Or is it too hard to narrow down to a couple things?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, I think you know, one of the things that I'm always thinking about is access. So, what is the ease of access to the video itself? Are there any barriers? And I consider that all the time. You know, whether we're coming from a video content management system or it's it's the video is inserted inside of an e-learning course, which you know kind of puts up some barriers there. Ease of access is critical because you think about how individuals day to day they go to YouTube or they go to Instagram or TikTok and they have instant access to content. And they want that same type of experience in the workplace or at school or where they're consuming the content. That's our job. Our job is to remove those barriers. And so, as part of the workflow, I'm not only thinking about the creation process, but the access. Where is it gonna be stored? How is it gonna be consumed? Am I gonna get any analytics off the back end that I can then go ahead and try to confirm from a measurement standpoint if some of our objectives have been met. But again, it's that access is where are we gonna place the video and how is my audience gonna consume it?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, so I I love this idea of making it, you know, much more open, but I I can imagine someone that's gonna listen to this at some point says, well, that's not really what not really what we want to do. We want to control the flow. We want to, you know, the our our name our nature is to either gate it or to make sure that we do, or because we can only gather information if we do put certain things in place that make it harder to access. So so how do you deal with that balance? Like what is there an appropriate balance, or is it just you gotta work with what you you work with and try to make it as best as possible?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, I I think it depends upon the content itself and what the objectives are. So obviously, if you have situations that are like safety training um, or there's regulations that need to be followed, they're gonna have to go ahead and get that information a certain kind of way. But for adjust-in-time training, for performance support, those types of opportunities, I think that's where access is gonna be critical to cut down the amount of time to get to information. So, you know, you really do have to take a look at what the objectives are from a learning standpoint. And then from there, I think that's gonna go ahead and dictate how you're gonna go about with a video strategy, overall video strategy. Also, am I just trying to create some type of content that's used for support? Because then that's gonna be a different type of content, or is this a large objective? Are we rolling out a brand new system? Uh, do we have new facilities that are going in or a new sales process? Those types of initiatives uh require a uh look at the learning journey. So, what is the whole entire process of learning for this individual? And from a video standpoint, how am I going to go about that? Those have a lot of opportunities involved with them when you have a larger type initiative because you can go in and think about um each phase of that learning journey and how video is going to be used or show up for the audience member.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah, so I I love this idea of a learning journey. And I, you know, let's let's break this down a little bit for for folks because I I feel like it's good to put to put people on a journey, but if I'm a newer video creator or maybe I'm maybe it's I'm an instructional designer and I'm like, I really want to bring in video, and I made some videos, but I haven't approached it from this way. Like typical typical journey. Well, you got we got you know, Frodo's in in bag end and he's ready to go on the journey, right? So if we're gonna we won't we don't have to use the whole Lord of the Rings ref uh analogy here, but like I'm I'm thinking about like where where does someone start? And and you know, you've you've had a lot of great questions, and like I love the questions that you're putting out there, like I'm asking this, I'm asking this. But I I feel like if I'm inexperienced, I probably don't even know what to ask. So help help us let's start with the journey though. What does a typical journey look like? What should it look like? Are there things we should avoid?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Well, Gandalf is gonna go ahead and knock on your door, and so and and uh seriously, if we think about that for a moment, that was the beginning of Frodo's journey right there. We didn't plop them right into the middle of the story, which could be the training. So, you know, for me, it's about awareness. And your audience members are constantly gonna ask, well, what is it, what's in it for me? Why do I care? Why should I care about this content? And they're bombarded, constantly bombarded with information. And there is a pecking order that they're gonna go through as far as the content. What's the most important today? And I'm gonna spend my brain energy on either you know learning this content or it's not that important. I'm gonna go ahead and just you know worry about this later on or not even consume it at all. So I'm always thinking about the instructional marketing. That is the beginning of the journey where we're building awareness, and that's tied in a lot with emotion. So my video-based content at the beginning of the learning journey is very emotional. We'll bring in leadership, we'll we'll cite what the company is uh or what our objectives are long term. Like, why are we even doing this? Why is this information important to you? And then as we progress through the learning journey, then we have pre-training, which is just prior to a training event, and it's kind of like a buildup, it's like a primer. And we're gonna mix a little bit of emotion with some kind of um information about what's gonna happen in the training so that users can prepare themselves for the information that's coming in. Then we have the training event itself, and that is strict knowledge with just a little bit of emotion in there, just to kind of fence post the information. We have post-training events, we have performance support. Uh we even have user-generated video way off the back end uh when you have individuals that are creating their own base content. So to me, you know, that is that is the learning journey. That that's going from awareness all the way through, you know, pre-the training event itself, post-training, performance support, um, all the way through.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

So as you as you go through those things, I'm I'm thinking in my back of my mind, are all of those does video obviously it doesn't have to be video, I'm sure, but are you can can you use video in all those kind of steps along the way? Should you? Or like are there some like uh video is really not good at that emotional thing? I know that's not true, but right.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Well, you know, again, I um I'm not using video for everything. That's that's not the that's not the solution. I mean it it you have to again understand your audience and how they want to consume the information. Where are they consuming the information? If my audience is frontline sales and they're on the road and they're looking at their mobile device and they'd rather be listening instead of reading, well then yeah, probably a video and or a podcast. And so again, going back to access, how are they going to access the content all throughout the learning journey? Is it gonna be from a desktop, a mobile phone? And and so thinking about that, that's gonna go ahead and drive how I'm gonna work do my workflow, right? And and so one of the things that I'll look at is from a knowledge lift standpoint, what is the content? Like, what am I trying to do uh to either change the behavior or increase knowledge and change individuals' actions? And then how am I gonna leverage that information in the awareness part? I call it instructional marketing to the pre-training, to the training itself, to the post-training, and then performance support. Um by thinking about the whole entire learning journey, you will find opportunities from a recording and creation standpoint that you'll never have seen before, especially if you're like have laser sharp focus on the training. And so many of us are under the gun to create content. So typically individuals will just go ahead and say, Yes, we're gonna go ahead and create that video for this course that's gonna be inside the LMS. Okay, well, I mean, that's that you know, takes care of part of it. But what else can we do during the production process to take care of the awareness part, right? As far as far as the instructional marketing and the um pre-training information prior to a you know, a training being released, and then the post-training and then and then the performance support. And I think that's where all those opportunities will present themselves. So if we go ahead and we know that we have to record a leader, right, whether they're gonna go ahead and tell us about a new process or a new tool or a new feature that's gonna impact a line of business, well, okay, when I go ahead and I record that leader, I have a very limited amount of time. Well, why don't I go ahead and plan for the instructional marketing for the pre-training, you know, which could be emails or leadups to the actual training event itself or the training being released on the LMS, have them inserted in the training for an emotional boost. And so we can, you know, circle back around and understand why we are even doing this in the first place, and even put them into the post-training. Like maybe we're gonna go ahead and they can introduce uh some of the quick performance support videos that support the training itself. And again, this isn't after the fact, this is all done and premeditated ahead of time when you look at that whole learning journey and then take advantage of each of those little fence posts along the way during uh the production process.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

So, so Josh, as a there's a comment and kind of looking for some clarification in the chat, but I I I think you've you might have done a little bit of this, but I'm curious because you're talking about emotion. And in my experience, it's been with learning and development. Learning and development is like facts, straightforward. We we we try to keep it very, you know, uh on the level, like this is learning. We want you to learn. Right. And you're talking about something like that is uh like and you've said marketing, you know, you've used the word marketing and emotion. And like, how do how do these things really play in? Because and and we can step away from maybe just video, but what what role does emotion have? And and maybe even you can add in like why do you want your CEO or your senior leaders to be doing some of this? Like, help help us understand why that's important for for any training, not just like what you're doing with video. Obviously, video is a great way to convey emotion because you got sound, you got motion, you got all these pieces that come together, but help clarify for us, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Well, I mean, you know, emotion is the driver for us to maintain active listening and active uh viewing of any type of content. How can we sit in front and watch a 90-minute movie uninterrupted and be totally engrossed in it where we watch a training video and then after six minutes it starts to fall off? Why is that, right? Well, I mean, our you know, you you have your temporary storage, your cognitive load being loaded up, and it's got to get released somehow, right? There's got to be some kind of fence post. And emotion is a great way, it's a great strategy to offer the time to not only release that information, whether it be somebody coming on the screen to say, okay, let's go ahead and let's do something with the information that you just learned, whether it be take a note uh or perform some type of activity, and then let's go ahead and carry over to the next learning objective, right? So we have that emotional fence post there. Now, when we talk about instructional marketing, that's all emotion. That's that's pure emotion because I want to go ahead and get your attention. You know, so if you go back to Gagne, right? The number one was gain attention. And so um it's it's critical to place those emotional uh items inside of your training videos all the way through. Now, I think where it does drop off is performance support, right? So if you think about performance support, somebody just wants information in the moment of need to perform a task or make a decision, right? And so from an emotion standpoint, that's pretty much void of emotion unless they're trying to use it as a way to get inspired, right? From a and so that would be kind of like an outlier type item. Um, so again, strategically off the end for performance support, typically there's not as much emotion because we just want the pure information in the moment of need.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah, so I I I love this this conversation because I think so so often, like I mentioned before, we are devoid of the kind of like the like, and I I and I say this lovingly to all my instructional design friends that sometimes we're like we're all about the training, but we forget that in that learning process, emotion has such an important part to play, attention, drawing people in. So I love what you're saying here. Um, and I love this that you're thinking much bigger than a singular video, right? You're you're thinking about you know, because my world is full of singular videos, Josh. I that I mean, just the reality of what I do, like singular video, tutorial, tutorial, tutorial, right? Like, but it but as I've moved into making more things for like the Tech Smith Academy course, it is thinking about not only what's gonna get them to watch this eight-minute video or and then the next eight-minute video and the next eight-minute video, but what's gonna get them to be invested enough to look at the thing that's maybe the downloadable guide that's going to actually be the support performance support. So I I love this, and I think it's so far, you know, in learning content, it's overlooked. So I love how you're bringing all these pieces together and that you're planning for it. Um, as you are thinking about these things, you're going through and you're you're looking at these programs. What advice could you give us about, you know, we get often asked about size of video, and I know you've you've looked at length of video. Is there a role here in and particularly we can we can break this up, right? For these kind of pre, we'll call them pre-learning, the marketing-ish learning content. You got your learning content videos, and then you got your performance support videos, perhaps. Um and I know you you might be using all sorts of content in there, but like are there differences we should be considering in kind of overall length for each of those?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

For sure. You know, and so again, it goes back to the individual and what their expectations are with consuming the video content itself, right? So, you know, for the emotional instructional marketing type content at the front end, that could be really short and sweet. Again, all we're trying to do is make something memorable and emotional so that people will remember it when it comes up again in the pre-training. Again, in the pre-training itself, again, that's just a reminder that the training information is coming up and it could be associated information that they'll need to be successful to take a class or an online course or watch a video or whatever the case may be. And so, you know, in thinking about the role of emotion there and you know, used throughout, um, you know, it it it really comes down to um the individual user and where they're at in that journey. Um the the length itself, let me put to you this way. You know, so if I'm looking for information about how to fix my washer, right? And I have to go ahead and watch a nine-minute video to see a multi-step process on how to fix my washer properly, I'm sticking around for all nine minutes. Would the highlights suffice? Maybe, maybe not. I might miss something, but I'm gonna be there for all nine minutes. So, as a learner, if I know that somebody is in a state of mind that they need to have X amount of information to be successful, and that's where their mind is at, they'll be sticking around for a long time. But if somebody else is looking for just a little nugget of information, well, of course I'm gonna go ahead and make a short video, especially if it's for performance support. And I think that is the like the crux of the issue, is that we have a lot of individuals who will hear terms like micro learning or short form video or a micro video and will intentionally try to make something short. That's not always the best strategy. The best strategy is to make the content as long as it needs to be for where the learner is at in their learning journey, and that's the critical part. Now, the other the other aspect of that is that if I do create long form video, and remember I talked earlier about access, we need to not only access individual videos, but we have to make content accessible within the video itself, and that's the other critical part because I know if somebody wants to go ahead and watch a long form video, they're gonna go ahead and stick around. But if somebody just wants a little snippet out of there, if I can make it accessible either through search or um you know tagging individual time codes or whatever the case may be, that will also be successful. All right, so you're gonna have to do additional work there, like metadata and tagging and things like that to have that content there. So, you know, which is kind of interesting because here I have a long form video that's serving somebody who wants to watch long form. Form, but I have it set up to where somebody who wants to watch short form content will also be successful.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yeah, it made me when you as you're talking, it made me think about one thing that Google does. If you have a video that's been chaptered, indexed, uh, and it's got decent search engine optimization on it. Now, this is obviously Google and public facing, but I have asked questions in Google and it has linked me to a part of the video. It's like this, it kind of makes a suggestion like you might want this part of the video. It's trying to save me kind of the pre-I was looking for something for uh my my fixing a bike. Uh real example, right? Like how to tune up the because the gears weren't shifting great. And it was show and it just tried to show me just a part of the video. Like that was the first suggestion. I think that's really interesting, right? Like you can, you can can you make it as easy as possible for people to get in to get it to access. And and of course, we're big fans of long as as needed, short as possible in the visual labs. That's you know, something we go back to. So so I think um I the other thing I've been thinking here, Josh, and I apologize. Uh I'll get to a question here, I promise. Uh uh, I'm thinking about the emotion, right? And I've been I came kind of noodling my head, and and I I worry that there's a misunderstanding about what emotion is. Um because I want to tie it back to that that with them or the what's in it for me. We call it with them here, you know, what's in it for me because emotion, we don't mean we're necessarily trying to tie into like we want them to be happy or sad, but we want them to it. Help me and help me understand if I'm correct here, but we want them to understand if the if you got the CEO or some senior leader or somebody uh you know saying, like, we this is important, this is going to help our bottom line, this is going to help you be safe. This is like that's the kind we want them to feel like yes, that is that what we're talking about emotion, because we're not talking about happy, sad, you know, like joyful, cheerful. Maybe we are, but it's maybe more important than business emotion, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

So when I when I think about using emotion in um any kind of video, it's it's like a high vibration for your brain. All right. And so this could be anything like somebody who's extremely popular being on the screen. That's a high vibration. It could be a certain type of music, it could be um visuals that are on the screen, like you show anybody just some clips from Star Wars and they go ballistic, right? You know, and so these are these reactions that we have that put the brain into um a certain range of theta, you know, so theta waves, and that's optimal for learning because you are actively paying attention and you are in a high state of paying attention, and that's what we want individuals to be. Uh, as far as emotions, um, you know, there's some seriously intense emotions that you can go through that are memorable, both negative and positive. Um, but I don't I don't think that's what we're trying to get at here. I think what we're trying to do is get the user in a state of being like active listening and active watching, right? So we're gonna be strategic about our emotion and the way that we use emotion. Um, like here's a good example. So, you know, there was a study done um where they were taking uh mice and they were introducing mice together for the first time. And they were they had um you know, EKG devices on mice, and they wanted to see exactly where their brains were at when they would see each other for the first time. So they introduced the mice to each other for the first time, and it was like through the roof in regards to their theta, like they were just like totally interested in each other, like trying to figure out like you know, fight or flight, what's going on, who is this creature, um, friend or foe or whatever the case may be. But then they kept on introducing the same mice to each other over and over again, and what would happen over time is that theta would drop. Okay, theta would drop because it's just familiarity. Like I've seen this, you know, this mouse before, not a threat. I get it, you know, I'll go about my day. Um, so how does that relate back to us? Well, if I were to do a series of videos with this blue background and this blue shirt, and it was a series of 60 videos, and I didn't change my background, and I didn't change my shirt, and I didn't change my delivery or anything like that, about the you know, eighth or ninth time that you saw me, it would get a little boring, regardless of my delivery. You know, unless I was extremely on point, highly energetic, and very entertaining, um, I might get a pass. But for the most part, we need to go ahead and eject change, right? Um, I know this is a really weird example, but I see this over and over again in entertainment. I was just recently in Chicago, and my cousin decided to go ahead and time her wedding up with the same weekend as Lollapalooza.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

So wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah, that was a whole thing. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that one of the bands, Limp Biscuit, the lead singer, I haven't seen him in quite some time. So what does he do? Completely changed his look. Like he used to have the ball cap backwards, and then next time you see him, he's got the mustache, gray, thick gray hair, probably a wig, orange shades, completely different look. Completely different look. And so what what happens? People are like, well, this is different. Theta goes way up. People are paying attention. And you see that with entertainers all the time, people like Madonna, Prince. People go ahead and change their look and their vibe all the time because it maintains that that point of interest, right? So, as instruct instructional designers or video creators, educational video creators, how can we take advantage of that? Simply just change your background, change your environment, change the clothes that you're wearing, change your delivery. Maybe go ahead and change the way that you present the information. Maybe start your video with a question, right? And and change it up. Um, maybe change the pacing of your videos. These are all techniques and all things that you can do to help raise emotion. Again, you're not strategically trying to say, I'm gonna go ahead and make this person happy. It's I just want you to pay attention, is really what we're trying to do with it.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Wow. That that is awesome. And I'm I'm making some changes as we speak. So, you know, make gotta apply what you're next time, Josh, you're on I will have a wig and yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

I was like trying to find one of my wigs that I have here. I don't carry a lot of them, but you know, because of Halloween and things like that. Like I maybe I should put one on.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Well, but I but I love that, right? Because and and I don't know a lot about the the neurology of uh the theta waves and stuff like that. So that's super fascinating to me. But it but it does make sense, right? Because we, you know, and I've been through these trainings where it's the same narrator, which it's fine, but it's the same kind of tone, which is uh it could be okay, but it it's then it gets hard to distinguish, right? Like, is this the video I saw? Did I see the like and or it's just because I and you know, classic HR training. We love our HR people, but you know, sometimes you get these trainers and you're like, I've seen this one. You know, it's like it's hard to pay pay attention. So I love that you're introducing some novelty and you're pulling, and I can imagine pulling in the senior leaders. You know, look, I I have a great deal of respect for my senior leaders, and I, you know, I think that's an you know, they're doing a great job. So, but I sit up a little bit when our CEO's talking, because I'm like, okay, I need to pay attention, right? And so you're I can see how you're you're you're using that strategically. Now you don't want to use it from a fear factor or kind of like, but you're using it to say, like, oh, this is keying my brain in. This is important. And if this is important, let's pay a little bit more attention. So that that kind of like, I I better stop and listen. And uh, so this is all all really fascinating and amazing stuff, Josh. Uh, can we can we take just a half a second break here? Uh we don't have a high five this this week. I didn't have time to get one together, so we're not doing a Tech Smith high five, but here's what I want to say to everybody that's watching and listening. If you've got somebody that you know is making something awesome, Josh makes awesome stuff. If you're making something awesome with Camtasia or Snag it or just an awesome like outcome with visuals, we are the visual lounge. Email me, the visualounge at textmith.com. We want to see. It could be yourself. Email your stuff to me. Send me an example. Don't have to send me the full, full you don't have to let me in on proprietary proprietary secrets. But we'd love to give someone else Textmith High Fives. We had a few really awesome examples. I I we had one we thought of, but we're working with them in a relationship. If you haven't seen Steve Dotto's video about how he switched from another product to his whole YouTube video creation workflow in Camtasia, it's pretty fantastic. But but we're working with Steve, and I didn't think it was fair to give him a true high five. We like his stuff too. He's really good.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

There it goes, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

So we got a couple of comments coming in here that I'll just share with you, Josh, and then we'll get back to the questions. Uh good friend for O'Neill over on LinkedIn says if there are multiple tutorials for different topics, but the background or templates changed, user may think there's something needs to be done differently, but that will make them think. So that's a comment for his thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yep. You know, again, I I'm like thinking back to like I think one of my favorite TV shows of all time is the original Alton Brown Good Eats. For those of that are familiar to it. So, you know, one of the things that Alton brought into his shows are different ways of presenting information in fascinating ways, whether it be with live models or puppets or camera angles that are just wacky, like inside the oven and just all kinds of he could have presented and deadpan that content for the whatever 20 some odd mid-its, but the way he presents that information is so fascinating, it just sucks you right in because you don't know what's coming up next. I mean, yeah, it's formulaic to a certain point as far as the structure of the show, but within the structure of the show, he presented content in all kinds of new and interesting ways. And that would be my challenge to, you know, if you have a series of 20 or 30 training videos, you can maintain a basic structure of going in and you know, introduction, priming, content, reflection, you know, end of the video. That's that's a basic structure. But within those structures, that's where you can have fun. That's where you can go ahead and try to change things up to maintain that interest all the way through. Again, you know, he was delivering knowledge, but while he was going in and showing or talking about a temperature, a technique, or anything like that, it was always a different way. And I've just I keep going back to that show because it's absolutely fascinating in the way that he approached the delivery of content.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

So you you you've just hit uh Josh, if I had a bell, and I I should probably ring something here because, like, here we go. This is one of my magic. I loved Alton Brown's good eats. And I his both his books and the show, because I've always, and I've said this for many years, I think Alton Brown, he he's a he first and foremost, he's he was a cinematographer. He actually made music videos for REM. Like, that's one of the things that he credit to his fame, right? And he went to his culinary school, and you can tell I know way too much because I've looked at a lot of this. But his books and his videos, he's a better instructional designer than most of us, and he's not an instructional designer. But you look at the way he presents information, he gains attention, he draws it out for what's in you, and he still uses some of the kind of the tropes of being a cook, you know, that's on the food network, right? Like he's still got story, he's got this stuff. But when and you've like I said, Josh, you asked for it. Uh by bringing Alton Brown. When we started building the Tech Smith Academy, our first eight episodes of the Tech Smith Academy, we were, we were actually, we had several pictures of people up on our law, and one of them was Alton Brown. And we would walk we're I was watching Good Eats, trying to draw inspiration from what he did because I always loved watching this up because it was inform it was informative, it was knowledgeable, you learned, you really did learn how to make something, but you got all this other information, and that's you know, like kind of the prime for what Tech Smith Academy we wanted to do is we don't want you just to know that you should write a script. That's that's good, but we wanted you to know like some of the process. We also wanted you know some of the things to worry about around it, some of the techniques, things like that. And whether we did a good or good job, that's a that's a whole different conversation for another day. Um, but so I love what you're bringing up here, and I think that's uh uh leans into a really good point that I hope we're looking for those inspirations because I love that you're drawing inspiration from that as well, because I I'm I'm just a fan. So like I I've already rambled for too long about how much I like to eat.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

That's a great show. Um, I think you know, one point I do want to make is that you have to be very careful with this because you know, doing emotion for the sake of emotion, it could you could fall fat uh flat on your face. And you know what I mean by that is that if you do something that's like forceful and not well thought out, um, it could actually be a turn off from uh for the viewer. Uh so I mean you you definitely want to be strategic about it, and it's got to be well planned. Uh so you know, you just don't want to do it for the sake of you know doing emotion. Also, you know, when it comes time to create your actual training video, right? I and I and I talked about using emotion very strategically there. Like you want to gain attention right at the beginning, and when you're priming um the student or whoever's you know, the audience member, whoever's watching the video, you could use a little bit of emotion there. But when you're actually giving the content to the audience member, you have to flatten the emotion down because you have a knowledge transfer that's going on and you have information that's flowing into temporary memory, right? And so eventually that temporary memory is gonna fill up at that point that you think it may fill up. It could be, you know, like nine or 10 sentences or something like that. What's the transition? Am I gonna go ahead and come back on camera at that point and make a transitional sentence to the next learning objective, and then go ahead and present that information in such a way that it reduces cognitive load and is easy to consume? Because I've seen training videos to where it's very over the top in regards to that forced emotion. Like maybe they're going ahead and they're putting music in the background of a step-by-step instructional video that is a system-based training. Why is the music there? Right? Does it add is it adding to uh my cognitive load? Possibly. Um, good chance it is. Uh, you know, and so, but can I put music at the beginning to gain their attention? Of course you can, right? We haven't gotten to the point where there's knowledge transfer that's happening. I just really want to gain your attention and flow you into the content. And so when I talk about utilizing emotion in a training video, it's really fence posts of emotion just to get you to that next learning objective, that next topic. And also on the back end of a video, when I'm pushing you out at the end, I could finish the video off with some closing music, or it could be a call to action or a challenge off the back end of the video. And that's gonna be emotional because I want to go ahead and get you to the next video or get you to do that task.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Yeah. So I I want to, there's some there's some great conversations going on in the chat, and I want to bring this next one up because I think it's it's it's a really great point. So we've been talking about these things that seem fairly so. Randy's asking, kind of mentioning this. It seems like you know, some of these are fairly high production. You know, you might have, you know, you're bringing a CEO on, that's all of a sudden your cost, you know, is going up uh a little bit higher than maybe most, just to get their hour of time or 30 minutes of time, whatever it might be. Um, you know, there's a lot of pre-production that's going into it, and we're we're fans of planning, fans of scripting here on the Visual Lounge. But what about when you're on a smaller, maybe tighter timeline, smaller budget? Uh, you know, how does how does that change your workflow? Because those are all these are all really great principles, but maybe you don't have everything you need to do it.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

That's a fantastic question. You know, I've always it um I've been doing e-learning since the early 90s, and I always looked at that type of production or even video production on a scale of quality, like where on the one end you're gonna have a really high, high quality experience and you're gonna get the most out of it, but it takes the most time to produce, it takes the most money to produce, but the results are incredible. And then you have various striations of that spectrum to where all the way down at the other side is that you have a page turner with no animations and it's just read-along and you just click next to continue, right? That's like the worst ever. Um, video is the same way, and so like on one end, so let's just take example of just a CEO. Okay. Uh, I know that in my experience that yes, to get their time uh in the studio and to vet their lines and everything like that, it's monuments like huge. Like it's it takes a lot of effort to do that. But if you can get it, it's very powerful. Okay, so how do I how do I break that down as far as striations? Well, if I can't get them on camera, maybe I can just go ahead and use their image with a voiceover and just go ahead and get um you know them mentioning the lines, and I can use a static image. All right, well, let's say if I can't do that, well then I can go ahead and um you know get communication department to go ahead and approve lines that they would say and structure the structure it so a voiceover artist or myself could actually do the voiceover and say, oh, the CEO mentions that, bop, bop, bop. Right? Um, so it's still the message from the CEO, but I'm you know break you know breaking it down so that it's faster and it's cheaper. Is it as effective? Probably not, but I can get it done, right? And I'm constantly weighing that out. There are some productions that I do that are way on the high end. We're in the studio, we have um leadership in there, um, we have we're we're on site, we're shooting B-roll, we're in facilities, all that's going on. And then there's the opposite the other end of the spectrum, which is like, all right, just get this screen recording, throw a title on it with some music, and uh we're gonna call it done. You know, because it's performance support or whatever. Um and I you have to go ahead and weigh that out when you're looking at your whole entire workflow. What resources do I have available? Time, money, equipment, all those are under consideration. And that's gonna go ahead and drive uh what you're gonna do from a production standpoint, right? Uh, but always aim high. In my mind, I'm always thinking infinite time, infinite money, what would be the best solution for this from a video or instructional standpoint, e-learning, whatever the case may be? What is the optimal solution if I had all the time and all the money? That there's a solution. Now I'm gonna go ahead and work that back to my reality. And that's what I'm gonna go ahead and do, and and that may actually give you more ideas because you're opening up uh to new thoughts and new ways of handling things as opposed to looking at it in a very constrained way because of the resources that you currently have. So I you know, that would be my um recommendation is to think big. Like, how would I go ahead and produce this? And then, all right, now realistically, this is how I need to go ahead and execute here.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Yeah. Uh well, I love the the levels thinking, you know, thinking about all the different ways you can do it. And I think it seems like there's a a point of like you've got to realize what what's gonna have the most impact. You know, some things are gonna be very you want to be super impactful because it's super critical. And other things it's like, well, I want them to know that, but it's not, you know, maybe not as critical uh for you know business outcomes or eventual kind of output of what's gonna happen. Another comment uh that came in is uh Christy Kudabo. Christy, I'm gonna get one of your name right one of these days. Graphitius is also known as YouTube. Give him a high five a couple weeks ago. Uh one way I know he says, one way I know the video has reached its emotional target is I can't wait for it to finish and get to work, applying what I learned. Uh successful videos compel you to action and change. Uh, I mean, I think from a learning perspective, that feels absolutely right. What do you think, Josh?

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Yeah, I think, you know, if you've done your job right and everybody, the audience members have the information that they need to perform an action or, you know, change the behavior or anything like that, as you send them off at the end of the video, yes, they're spurred to action. They're actually going to go ahead and do something uh with that information, or go watch another video or the next video in the series, uh, or put it, put whatever knowledge you've transferred into practice or modify a behavior. So yeah, I mean, if you can, if you can motivate your your learners off the back end of the video to do something actionable, that's huge. As opposed to, yeah, they finish watching the video and they don't feel inspired and you know the video is just okay, and I didn't get all my questions answered, and you know, maybe they're questioning the validity of the content, things like that. You know, there's there's very low motivation there. So yeah, anything that you can do to push them off the end strong, I highly recommend.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Well, I mean, that's the goal of any training in theory, right? Is we want them to do something with the knowledge that they gain, whether that's saving, you know, being safer or helping the company earn more money to be more productive, me, you know, follow a process, what use a tool better, right? Like not just video, but that's like the shingle law. If you can do that with any training, that's a that's amazing. Josh, we're coming up on time and I want to get to our speedrun questions, but another question that came in from Randy, he asks, how much collaboration are you doing for these projects? Are these smaller teams, one or two people? Are you you typically working with large, large groups of people to get this done?

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Yeah, so um, I mean, there are definitely striations in the type of video work that I do day in and day out. For the most part, I'm producing everything myself, and it could be anything from a cartoon to screen recording to um like in studio type stuff. But as the audience increases and as the um I don't know, importance of the video as far as um company impact increases, now we're gonna start bringing in external resources. We could get an external person for a voiceover, we could do more in studio shooting, we could go shoot B-roll and things like that. So again, I'm trying to think of the output and the audience and what the outcomes do I need to happen with the video. And there are things that point to you know more time and more money spent on a certain piece, especially if it's a longer initiative, an important initiative, uh, with with very important business outcomes, that is a long-term type deal. Um, anything that's short and in the moment, and we just need it now, and um, you know, just to fill a gap or anything like that, well, you know, the production value is gonna hurt because we just gotta knock it out. Um because it, you know, again, there's there's some structure to it, but again, it's that striation and it's at the lower end. Um, so I again I I think um again understanding the audience, understanding the outcomes will will dictate how far you need to take the production value.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Well, if I can add to that, Josh, my thought is here as well, is like, yes, obviously it's easier when you add well, sometimes easier when you add more people to do more of the jobs and the roles. However, we see we see people that are very successful making very high, high-end, and I don't want to say Hollywood quality, but like they're making really successful stuff and they're on YouTube, and they're but they built systems, right? Like, this is how I'm gonna be able to capture this equip effectively. This is how I'm gonna, you know, have my outlining scripting process effectively. They they're putting systems in place to allow them to do the work of multiple people efficiently. You know, I look at, you know, I mentioned Steve Dotto earlier, you got Nick Nimmons, you got uh Owen Hemseth, who's been on the show, Owen Video has been on the show, you know, you've got all these amazing video creators, and they're doing it. I mean, obviously they're not making corporate training content, but they're they're doing stuff weekend, you know, like every week, multiple, maybe multiple pieces a week, and it's it's amazing what they're able to do because of not only are they looking at the the levels of quality that I need, but they're also looking at how to eliminate anything they don't and build systems to make it, you know, the production. You know, and they they will hire people, you know, they'll have an editor, they'll have you know somebody that that can do some of that work for them. But I think it's it's amazing what it's amazing what people can create. You know, you don't need to have a huge team anymore. It helps, can definitely be helpful.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

It does help, yes. If you do happen to have a huge team, then that's more power to you. Um, but I think you know, to your point, I think that most people, like the first person they'll grab if they do have the bandwidth or the money to actually get somebody is an editor.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

That's typically the first person.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Josh, we'll wrap up here and jump in. But one more question. Uh can you can you walk us through a quick bullet point list of your workflow for creating tutorials slash training? Kind of a start to finish. Do you have a start to finish list? Or maybe somebody maybe you can even just point us to someplace, and we'd love to see how it typically goes for you.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Yeah, so uh so first bullet point would be what is the business or learning outcome? It's got to be measurable, right? Unless we're trying to change, you know some type of behavior, even that could be measurable. But again, you you have to be really clear as to what the outcome needs to be and how it's going to be measured. I know that some of the things that we've done in the past, especially use or leverage video analytics to check and see what's happening with view rates and audience retention and things like that, which could dictate or show whether what somebody's watching a video or not watching a video, which would have impact into the actual information they're consuming. So, again, what is what is the actual outcome? Then I want to go ahead and map out the whole entire learning journey. Where am I going to create video content right for that learning journey? Where's it going to be stored? How's it going to be consumed? How's it going to be measured? That right there, I mean, if you if you were to go ahead and just like break those items down and think within your learning or um yeah, your learning ecosystem, how each of those are done, I think you're gonna be well on your way. Now, I realize that you know there are a lot of barriers that are out there, especially if like you're you have a learning management system and you're you have to take a video and park it in the LMS, there's some barriers there. You know, you're you're not gonna get a lot of data out of that, out of the you know, viewing analytics and things like that. But that's for me, if you know, again, when I look at an opportunity to transfer knowledge, um, those are the things that I'm thinking about uh before I kick off any type of uh initiative or project.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Awesome. Okay, we've asked a lot of questions, but now we're gonna move more to Josh. These are good, these are gonna be fast, quick, short answered. Here we go. Ready? All right. Okay, Josh, here we go. First one, uh more of a personal question. I I pandemic hits everybody off their game, but I know you you were training there for a while. Uh how's it going? And uh how many punches did you do in a single session? Like what's the the max reps that you know hitting things?

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, it was like in an hour, it was like 10,000, like nine or ten thousand hits on the bag.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

In one session?

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Yeah, it was pretty crazy. That that's insane. Now that was that was pre-pandemic. I don't think I would even be able to come close to that now. Awesome. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Yeah, okay. Uh you're probably familiar with Stephen Covey's concepts, you know, seven effective high habits of highly effective people. He's got one about sharpening the saw, keeping, you know, keeping yourself on top of things. What's something you do regularly to sharpen your shop? Sharp, sharpen, I can't speak. Sharpen your saw. It could be anything.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Uh I love listening to audiobooks. So I'm I'll constantly hit audiobooks, uh, whether it be something current or something old. Um, you know, I will always be learning. I am I am a lifelong learner. So for me, it's just making sure that I'm taking time each day, um, whether it be 10 minutes or an hour, um, to learn something new, uh, whether it be on the industry or business or life in general. Um, I'm making sure that I dedicate time each day.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

That's awesome. So if I remember correctly, you uh studied how to be an illustrator for medical text. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah, it's a medical illustrator, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Medical illustrator. So what's the craziest, most complex illustration you've ever had to create?

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Uh so I think probably the craziest thing that I ever had to illustrate was um actually went into an operation and witnessed a um colonoscopy. And that not to get too graphic, but I didn't realize how much they have to actually take out of you and put on a table to actually take a section of your colon out and then put everything back in. And I had to illustrate all that. Uh it was so crazy. Being a medical illustrator was probably one of those craziest type situations I've ever been in in my professional career. Um, and that was probably one of the top things that just I will constantly think about because it's just so over the top.

SPEAKER_01 53:27

That that is wow. I I did not know what I was in for when I was asking that question writing that question. So let's change gears a little bit. What's the best tip not shared today already for better video?

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Audio. Just if yes, if you focus in on the quality of the audio, whether it be getting a better microphone, uh your pacing, right? So we we always say 2.5 words per second is a great pace for learning across the board. Uh maintaining great quality audio is gonna just reap so many benefits uh sans the video. Uh so yes, focus in on the audio and make sure that it's the best it possibly could be.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Fantastic. Okay, two questions left. One pretty easy, the other one's people struggle with, but it's a good one. Uh, where do you turn for inspiration? Yeah, you talked about being this lifelong learner, but what's kind of your source of inspiration?

SPEAKER_00 54:27

Going to conferences and meet my people. So uh speaking at conferences has been a complete blessing because I have met some of the most intelligent and inspirational individuals in this industry. Um these folks give me life because they're out there solving problems, very difficult problems, and just having those relationships and having those connections is invaluable. And I highly recommend for those of you that are watching this to challenge yourself and go speak at a conference. I know it's for some of you that just you know made your stomach churn, like go and do it. Like you'll make meet connect have connections and meet some fantastic people. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Uh so my last question for you uh is is it really it's flipping the script here a little bit. What question would you like to ask me?

SPEAKER_00 55:24

Um let's see. Well, that's a good one, Matt. I mean, there's a lot of there. Okay, so if you if you were here comes, I'm ready.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

Don't worry. I've got it.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

Uh what kind of creature would you be if you had to be a creature in Dungeons and Dragons?

SPEAKER_01 55:52

I love it. So, okay, if I if I got to be anything, I mean, come on, you gotta go big, right? You gotta be a dragon. I mean, true polymorph, you got polymorph, you got spells, you got they're they're the ultimate, but that's really an unfair. Like, uh, you know, there's so many cool creatures that people people are so creative. Uh uh, I would definitely I'm I tend to be I'd probably be a lawful good creature. There's not that many of them, but you know, or maybe a little bit neutral chaotic because that's right, gold dragon, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, you'd be something like that. That's I'll stick with the dragon answers, probably the because it's the most it's super powerful. Why not be that? Uh, but there's so many cool little creatures, um, or just things that like it from a dungeon master perspective, someone who leads the game, a game master. Uh, I love throwing kind of crazy stuff at at my players. And uh so there's a lot I get to play them all. That's the cool thing. As a dungeon master, I I get to play them all and watch them all get uh slaughtered mercilessly by my players because I'm not a good, I'm not a tactician here, and they're they're I've got some really good players. So as as Jesse can attend to. So great, great question, Josh. Thanks for asking that one. Put me on the spot. I should have had my you know, my dungeon master's guide out. Monster Manual flipping through. Okay. Yeah, this one. This is I want this one. There there was a quick question I saw just as a follow-up about the two point, was it 2.5 audio pacing? Is that yes?

SPEAKER_00 57:14

Um, the be can you measure it? Yeah, so there's so from a cognitive load standpoint, if you speak too fast, it's gonna be over the you know, over the head of many people. But if you speak very slow, you could put a whole bunch of people off. So um we go to newscasters or other you know, individuals that you know will do um training or TV or anything like that. And what we found is that for the most part, anywhere between 2.2 and 2.5 words per second is gonna meet the needs of a majority of your listeners. Okay. Now, of course, there are many methods and ways that I can go ahead and speed up and speed down the playback of audio, um, right? So sometimes you don't even have to think about that anymore. Um, but what's interesting is that I actually had this conversation with Lee, LaFever, um, and they've also pegged in around that range uh as far as the rate at which he speaks and does his voiceovers in his videos.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

So I'm guessing I just record myself talking, and I know I talk too fast, so just record myself and then count kind of words per second, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Also, if we flip it, this is actually a good tip. So let's say that you have a script in front of you, and you're like, well, gosh, I don't know how long this video is gonna be. It's simple. Just go ahead and count up the number of words you have and divide it by 2.5 and then divide it by 60 so you have the actual timing of the length of the video, approximately.

unknown 58:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:49

Well, well, Josh, I know you have a heart out and you've got other things to take care of today. Thank you so much for being with me, answering so many great questions, being willing to be my guinea pig as I put you on the spot with many more questions. But always, always lovely to talk with you and excited to hopefully get to see you maybe at some events, should things work out.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

Yeah, it's been a blast, Matt. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 59:10

Well, thank you again, Josh. Well, Josh Cavalier, he is fantastic. If you haven't seen Josh's stuff, go go find him, joshcavalier.com. He he's done camptature training before. He he consults, he does all sorts of stuff. Uh, you know, he's got stuff in the works that I won't say because we we haven't talked about it, but go keep an eye on what Josh is doing. He's got so many great things. And if you're at an event, go to one of his sessions because they're always fantastic. You will learn something. There's so much knowledge stuck in Josh's head that it's I'm I'm grateful I get to pull out a little bit here and there. So thanks everybody for tuning into the Visual Lounge. We hope you enjoyed this episode. We hope you enjoy all the episodes. You can find them on wherever you find your podcast. You want to watch it on YouTube. Don't forget we've got another kind of, we'll call it another show. We call it the video workflow show where we have conversations about video workflow. It's uh go check those episodes out. A lot of great stuff where we're just focused on video content, like making better video, how you know, b-roll and and conversations around SEO and what that means and how you can get your audience to find your videos. Check those out wherever, again, wherever you can find the Visual Lounge, it will be there as well. With that said, next week we've got a special interview that we're doing. We're pulling something out of the vault uh from a conference we went to a long time ago. And we're gonna share that with you because I've got some travel I need to do to take a kid to college. So, anyways, whatever you're doing in your life, we hope that you take some time to level up. You just spend that time learning and getting better every single day, and take a little time, show what you know. Talk to you later.