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Filming Your Own Video

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Your video should be no longer than 2 minutes.  A recent survey of students suggested that most watch only the first minute to 90 seconds of the video, so be sure to lead with a hook and frontload both the most important information.

As you script your video, be sure to use keywords like "writing," "rhetoric," "research," "presentation," and "argument" as appropriate to help students understand that the primary focus of your course will be writing and rhetoric, not the theme itself.

Recommendations for Preparing to Film Your Own Video

  • Write a script out ahead of time and practice it.  While you don’t need to say it word for word, it’s important to do a few run-throughs for timing. We need all videos to be 2 minutes or less.  Also, don’t use your written course description as your script; the video shouldn’t just be a visual rendition of your written course description.
  • Do not mention the title of your course in your video.  Instructors often change their titles even when teaching the same course; it would be unfortunate to have to reshoot the video for the course in the future because you simply decided to change the title.
  • For similar reasons, do not mention the day or time your class meets next quarter in your video. In case you end up using the video for future quarters, you don’t want to change it because your schedule changed in a different quarter. 
  • In terms of content, try to address the same interview questions that you would had you filmed with our videographer
  • Avoid filming outside if possible (unless you know a lot about filming under unfavorable sound conditions); even a small breeze can compromise the audio in your video.

NOTE: The videos that our videographer makes for us contains b-roll images that the instructor selects.  If you are making your own video, you don’t necessarily need to include b-roll images, unless you are very proficient with film editing.   However, if you do decide to use b-roll images, please see our tips on finding public domain images for b-roll footage.  Occasionally, our videographer is available to edit and insert images into footage that you shoot; let us know as soon as possible if this is something you'd like support for. 

Recommended Software

For film editing, recommended software include iMovie, Final Cut Pro, or Movie Maker on PC.

How To Submit

Please create a Box account if you don’t already have one, upload your video, and share it with pwrcourses@stanford.edupwracademictech@stanford.edu, and alfano@stanford.edu. Please also send us an email separately to confirm that we received the Box link.

Examples

Here are examples of videos that instructors have made on their own (please note – not all of these follow our current recommendations about copyrighted images):

See Also

  1. Creating a narrated PowerPoint screencast. 
  2. Providing a representative image.