My favorite video production company, CommonCraft, put out another in their series of “paperworks” videos explaining how things work. This time, about blogs:
Blogs in Plain English by CommonCraft
More importantly, Lee LeFever posted about the process behind the videos:
Here’s how the workflow breaks down:
- I create the first draft of the script and basic storyboard, we review it
- We both edit the script, often concurrently using Google docs.
- I create the illustrations
- We walk through the storyboard and script together
- In the studio, Sachi runs the camera and effects (animation/stop-action) and I direct the story
- Sachi does all the video editing/finishing
- I blog about it
I’ve never been more appreciative of the power of teamwork. The finished product that you see is often very different than we first envisioned – and some of the best changes come once the paper hits the whiteboard. Everything is always up for revision and we deal with it as a team.
Video Prototyping with paper puppets
In 2005, as part of a preparation to present at CHI in Portland for the Student Design Competition, I tried to finish a full 20-minute video prototype to describe our idea for an empathic volunteer network manager, mPath. Since everything was conceptual, a video prototype would be a great way to get our point across. Twenty minutes is way too long for a presentation, but part of the value of video prototyping is for the designer to imagine and articulate a vision for the technology intervention. In other words, it is just as important to do the prototype as have it viewed.
Making arrangements for human actors proved too taxing, so I experimented with audio files and sketching, presented as a power point movie, and with non-human actors. At one point, I had contacted local puppeteers to see if I could get footage using one or two handlers and a bunch of puppets. The timing and selection of “actors” didn’t pan out, so I ultimately went with paper puppets.
The process of constructing the paper actors and sets is much more involved than one might think. There are many iterations of the drawings, of course, but also a need to have some engineering. I tried to shoot this alone working late at night, which is a difficult proposition with one camera and—at times—a need for more than two hands. In the end, I wound up with a few scenes out of a couple dozen before time and energy ran out. The footage is buried on some archived CDs somewhere, but at some point it would be worth uploading it to YouTube to add to the portfolio.