A short guide to making simple whiteboard-style videos for scientists
OVERVIEW
Back in 2012, I started playing around with simple yet effective ways of communicating science using YouTube videos. Inspired by the early videos from Kahn Academy, Minute Physics and others, I was intrigued to see what could be achieved by experts who knew a lot, but had little talent and less time.
The result was the YouTube channel Risk Bites–a channel that uses simple whiteboard-style videos to explore and make accessible the science of risk.
For a scrappy channel created by an academic who definitely does have little time and less talent, Risk Bites has been a great success. We’re currently approaching four million views, our top videos have been seen well over 100,000 times each, our videos have been used used by major news outlets as explainers, and each week, visitors to the channel are viewing over three hundred hours of content.*
And yet this is not a high-cost time-intensive enterprise. Over the course of the past several years I’ve learned how to streamline the process, where to focus on production quality and where to lean into my limitations, how to embrace authenticity, and how to produce high-value content with little turnaround time and no funding.
This isn’t to say that making videos using the techniques behind Risk Bites is easy–it’s not. Yet with perseverance and a commitment to quality where it counts, most experts (scientists or otherwise) are capable of doing a surprisingly good job with only a smart phone (and tripod), some basic video editing software, a clear workflow, and a good dollop of humility and imagination!
To help others achieve this, I put this short guide together back in 2017, based on a two and a half day workshop organized through the Arizona State University Risk Innovation Lab.
The guide is built around eight modules, which cover:
Through the modules, the following two videos are used as examples of what can be achieved using a smartphone and some basic equipment:
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*Updated April 2022