Make a plan

• Start at the end. When the video is over, what purpose should it serve.
• Define an objective for your video. Use this as the start of your planning.
• Why should someone watch your video?
• What will they learn or gain by watching your video?
• What is your measurable goal?
  • This should be a short and easy to understand goal. This is your one line elevator speech?
• Who is your audience?
  • Use your understanding of your primary audience to help you plan your video.
  • A great example of this is the Wired “One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty” series.
    
• Develop a “Call to Action” – Leave your audience with a task.
  • A call to action can be as simple as “Visit our website”, “Contact your County office to learn more”  or more complex and encourage people to do more, such as “Now that you’ve learned how to do this, share your pictures with us via the form listed in the description”
  • Videos with a solid call to action leave a more lasting impression.

This plan is important, as it will help you in both creating your video by developing an outline, as well as with providing you a starting point for writing an effective description for your video. 

Building an Outline as a basic script

Use an outline to help you organize your video. Each bullet point on an outline should account for 15-20 seconds of your video at most. This is especially true when using a slideshow as the foundation of your video. Following this as a guideline will help you ensure you execute your plan. An outline can be as simple or as complex as you want. Building a detailed outline will help you to identify what elements you need to include, and can help you down the road when it comes to putting your presentation or video together. You don’t need a word for word script in order to make a video. Use an outline, and be creative!

Sample Outline

• Intro
  • Shoes can be fastened in a few different ways, let’s learn about them!
• Types of shoe fasteners
  • Shoelace (Video of shoe tying), maybe use the Bunny Ears Rhyme?
  • Velcro (Image of Velcro shoe) 
  • Zipper (Video of boots being zipped) – Zippered leather boots?
• Call to Action
  • Did we miss any ways to fasten your shoes?
  • Do you have any tricks for learning how to tie your shoe? Let us know!

The importance of good audio

It may sound counter-intuitive, but quality audio is one of the most important parts of making a good video. You can always go in later and replace bad video with a picture or other video. Bad audio you’ll have to re-record. 

Audio Tips

• Sometimes you only get one shot to record your audio. When this is the case, consider using a smartphone app as a backup in case you run into problems. 
• Practice being at different distances to a microphone. 
• Consider a headset or dedicated microphone for higher quality audio.

Caption your Videos

Extension’s Captioning Policy – https://kb.wisc.edu/extension/internal/97872

Is your video being shared with the members of the public? Are you posting it to YouTube, Facebook or other social media platforms? In all but a few very rare circumstances, you’ll need captions. Auto-generated captions are a good starting point, but need to be edited in order to meet Federal ADA compliance requirements. Captioning requirements can seem complex and overwhelming at first glance, but are straight forward and should be part of any video content you create.

Submitting to the Extension YouTube Channels

Video content which has a focus beyond just a small local group should be hosted on the main Extension YouTube channel.  More information about the Division of Extension’s Official Internal and Public YouTube channels can be found in the Extension Employee Handbook.

Instructions for submitting content to Extension’s Channels can be found in Instructions for submitting video content to Extension’s YouTube Channels.

Please consider doing the following prior to submitting:

• Create a folder on Google Drive with the video title and date
  • Add the following to the folder:
    • Create a Google Doc in this folder with the following:
      • Title of the Video
      • If you need us to provide you a rough draft version of your captions, let us know in this doc.
      • Description – An effective description is critical for helping to identify your content as relevant, which in turn will help it be discovered by people. Please include the following in your description:
        • Identify any speakers, and why they are relevant to the content
        • Define the objective of the video. What purpose does it hope to serve?
        • Identify the key focus points in the video. What specific outcomes should a person realize by watching the video? What topics is it covering?
        • Call back to more information: Where can the person find out or learn more about the above focus points and objective of the video? (This should try and include a link to an Extension website)
        • Call to action: What are you trying to have people do as a result of watching the content in this video? This can be tied to your call back for more information if the video is strictly informative, or it would lead to directing people towards a course of action if this video is persuasive.
      • Tags – at least 3-4 so the video is searchable
    • Caption File with timing (preferred) or Transcript (transcripts require additional time to process) to the folder (captions are not required for internal only videos unless requested). Please let us know below the title if you need a rough draft version of your captions for review and editing.
    • Optional – Upload a Thumbnail image/picture – An image or picture, 1920x1080p in resolution for your video
    • The video file itself – .wav or .mp4 formats

ETS will not review video content, but will review descriptions and verify video and audio quality prior to posting a video on our channel.