At least once a month, we get a call from someone wanting to develop a new video-based curriculum or project. Normally, people are in the initial stages asking questions such as: How much does it cost to make a video? How do you get products into retail stores and online? and Where did you get your actors? (Believe it or not, this last question is asked by almost everyone we talk to, regardless of what they’re wanting to do.) Those questions aside, I honestly think the biggest challenge in putting together a good curriculum is knowing what to do on the front end so that when you’re finished, all the dots line up. It’s not hard creating some of the elements – the hard part is making them all work together harmoniously to become an effective teaching tool in a small group or classroom setting.
1. Figure out everything you’re going to create before you start creating anything. This may seem like common sense, but often people get excited about doing a big project and just want to jump in and start filming. This will inevitably cost you more money in the long run. When I say ‘figure out everything,’ that means outlining every lesson, having finished scripts for the video components, having general outlines of all the written materials, and creating a tight project schedule that shows how everything will get produced and fit together. The more time spent in pre-production (or the period of time leading up to principal photography), the more money saved in the rest of the production process.
2. Create a pilot episode with as many components as possible, then test it on different groups and listen closely to their feedback. This is the next step that will save you money and help you get an effective product. You are making something to meet the needs of a particular group of people: work to make it in a way that’s most useful to them. Furthermore, this process will almost always give you new ideas. Find groups of people who don’t care what you really think: they’ll tell you if something bores them. When you give these test sessions, sit in the back of the room and watch the people going through the class: when they start fidgeting, that’s a potential problem area. (Frank Capra used to do this with his films: if people started to shift in their seats or whisper at certain parts, he’d make a note that that section needed to be re-cut.)
3. Don’t use too much video, but give people time to think and talk. Watching long stretches of video has a soporific effect. (Video causes alphas waves – here is a previous post on that topic.) If you do have multiple elements of video, break them up and try to avoid things going more than 15 or 20 minutes, especially if it’s a talking head. Studies show that people just don’t catch much beyond that.
4. Ensure that everything is as Biblical as possible. The tendency for some studies is to be more topical with a sprinkling of the Bible thrown in. I think this limits the usefulness of a product, as well as the long-term effectiveness. Teaching should be tied back to the Bible as much as possible since that’s the only true authority. I recommend that everything you create has very strong and clear Biblical lines that are easy to follow back to their source.
There are obviously many other technical aspects to creating a curriculum, but if you’ve done the things listed above, it will make it much easier to figure out what your video will cost, or ensure retail stores will want to carry your product.
Finally, as far as actors go, that’s a different issue altogether: the only two solutions are either to live in a place with a lot of good actors or fly them in. After all, hiring local actors that are eager and willing, but who happen to be mediocre, will simply make your entire project mediocre: a river can’t rise higher than its source.
