How thoughtful pre-production helps instructors and media teams create exceptional educational videos
Authors: Jake Wehrman & Jason Jones
Great educational videos can look effortless. Compelling visuals, seamless editing, well-timed motion graphics – when everything works together, it’s easy to forget how much planning happened before anyone pressed “record.”
The most memorable educational videos aren’t defined by expensive equipment or flashy effects. They are the result of instructors and media professionals dedicating time to engage creatively with each other, often weeks before the cameras start rolling. When everyone invests in the entire creative process, the final product becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.
Two recent Oregon State University Ecampus productions illustrate this perfectly. Although the two projects couldn’t be more different in subject matter, H 256 – Silence Equals Death: HIV Stigma to Global Social Movement and MUS 339 – Applied Musicianship: Keyboard, are both great examples of instructors collaborating closely with the Ecampus video team to transform ambitious teaching ideas into engaging online learning experiences. These courses demonstrate how thoughtful pre-productions can bring about the conditions for creative and exceptional educational videos.
The most important part of video production isn’t always the most thrilling.
Whether you are creating a short lecture, a demonstration, or a high-concept lesson video, every video project generally moves through three phases:
- Pre-production: Brainstorming, scripting, planning, and scheduling.
- Production: Capturing video, audio, and other media.
- Post-production: Editing all the pieces into a polished final product.
Of those three phases, pre-production is rarely anyone’s favorite. There’s no production lighting, no cameras rolling, and certainly no dramatic slow-motion montage. But this phase is where first draft ideas become workable timelines, and where great ideas often get even better. Most importantly, pre-production gives instructors and video producers an opportunity to build a shared vision of what success looks like.
H 256 – Silence Equals Death: HIV Stigma to Global Social Movement
Courses about history, health, and social movements often ask students to think visually in order to grasp conceptually. For H 256 – Silence Equals Death: HIV Stigma to Global Social Movement, instructor Jonathan Garcia wanted the opening of one lesson video to do exactly that.
Rather than begin the video with a typical talking-head introduction that showed an illustration, Jonathan envisioned becoming part of the illustration itself. Using a hand-drawn body map, he created an opening sequence that immediately immersed online learners in the lesson’s themes.
Bringing that vision to the screen required careful planning. Jonathan worked closely with Ecampus video producer EJ Albaugh to develop a script that clearly described not only what would be said, but what viewers would see throughout the sequence. That level of preparation gave the production team room to experiment in the studio before recording and ultimately made the ambitious concept achievable.
The solution was deceptively simple: an overhead camera, a large sheet of craft paper, and a single choreographed, continuous take. A filmmaking technique known as a “oner.”
As EJ recalls:
“Producing the video took hours of planning, discussions, and experiments in order to pull off. Because we recorded the introduction with Jonathan on the ground, he had to memorize his own script, as we had just one shot with our limited supplies and time. This took exceptional planning from the instructor, our team, and help from the Craft Center who let us use a whole lot of craft paper at no charge!”
In the video, Jonathan delivers his introduction while lying beneath the overhead camera. During editing, the footage is rotated, reframed, and combined with an illustrated body outline that gradually appears around him. The result is a memorable opening that immediately captures online learners’ attention while reinforcing the topic of the lesson.
“Good communication, freedom to experiment, and a dedicated faculty member made this shoot a reality.”
MUS 339 – Applied Musicianship: Keyboard
Sometimes an instructor’s vision is technically challenging precisely because it sounds so straightforward.
For MUS 339 – Applied Musicianship: Keyboard, instructor Elizabeth Moss wanted online music students to easily see which piano keys were being played throughout each lesson video. The goal seemed simple enough: have the keys light up on screen as she played.
Making that happen required our production team to invent an entirely new workflow.
Video producers Matt Djubasak and Jake Wehrman configured the studio to capture multiple camera angles to clearly illustrate correct posture, hand position, pedal technique, and keyboard performance. Once again, overhead camera shots positioned above the instructor were rigged up to achieve the correct framing needed for the lesson to be taught online. Yet this time, they also became the foundation for a sophisticated post-production workflow.
“Somewhat surprisingly, the creation of these piano instructional videos did not contain a piano, acoustic or electric, at any point! The keyboard featured in these videos is a MIDI controller, incapable of producing sound on its own.”
Instead, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data was synchronized with the recorded video. Then, Matt developed a custom workflow in Adobe After Effects that transformed the data into animated graphics, allowing each piano key to glow the exact moment its corresponding note is played. Careful compositing placed this glowing effect beneath Elizabeth’s hands rather than over them, making the illusion feel remarkably natural.
Jake then integrated the visual effects shots with music, on-screen text, and additional camera angles to create lesson videos that provide students with complementary visual and auditory cues as they learn.
Reflecting on the collaboration, Matt writes:
“Working closely with Elizabeth, we were able to explore new territory integrating instruction, music production technology and videography.”
Collaboration is the Real Innovation
It’s easy to focus on the custom visual effects, clever camera setups, or polished editing in videos like these. But all those technical achievements began as conversations between instructors who had a clear vision for their teaching and video producers who were excited to help bring those ideas to life.
Whether your next media project is a straightforward PowerPoint lecture capture or an ambitious lab demonstration, investing in pre-production creates opportunities to experiment, solve problems, and discover creative solutions together.
Remember: To make engaging videos, engage with video-making.
Start the conversation early. Share your ideas. Be willing to experiment. The most engaging educational videos don’t happen by accident. They emerge from collaboration, curiosity, and a team that’s willing to build something memorable together.