At Home Video Production: Taking Your Videos From a C to an A+

Concurrent Session 7

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

In this session you’ll learn simple tips and tricks that will greatly improve the production quality of your at-home videos. No fancy or expensive equipment necessary! The instructor will guide you through a checklist of small tweaks that will turn your course videos from a C to an A+!

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Drew Santorello, The George Washington University

Drew is the Senior Multimedia Producer at the George Washington University's College of Professional Studies and works directly with faculty and a team of instructional designers to design and develop multimedia for online instruction. Drew has spent much time in the video production realm and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Television Production in 2012. Since 2014 Drew has been using his video production knowledge in the higher education sphere. In 2020 Drew also earned a Master of Education in Educational Technology Leadership from GW. Work-life aside, Drew is a New York native living in Frederick, MD with his wife and 2 small children.

Extended Abstract

Producing high quality videos for an online format doesn’t always have to involve expensive cameras, lighting, audio equipment and a professional studio space. As many of us have recently been forced to work from home, creating videos by ourselves that follow production best practices and techniques is a valuable skill that will add a professional edge to your course.  This session, targeted towards anyone creating content, will provide several tips and tricks to help increase the quality of your instructional videos.  Using simple guidelines and everyday items, achieving a better quality video is easy! Participants will be asked to watch and critique different iterations of a video for a course as a group as the instructor works through a “checklist” of necessary improvements. At the end of the presentation, a final video will be compared to the original to mark the differences in quality.  Finally, a brief quiz will be presented to the group that will reinforce the lessons learned. By the end of this presentation attendees will be able to confidently record lecture videos at home using proper shot composition, lighting techniques and audio production best practices. Attendees will also receive a “Video Production Cheat Sheet” which will act as a checklist of steps to complete before clicking the record button, which can be shared with other ID’s and Faculty at their home institution. If you’re looking for easy and inexpensive ways to increase the quality of your self-produced videos, this is definitely a session to check out!