Element Descriptor

Who reads these days? It’s all not just online, but on Youtube (or, at a push vimeo). Being able to put face/gifs to camera and upload a video that does ‘the job’ (a concept, a set of facts, a call to action) is a totally necessary skill, in century 21, even before the “plandemic”. If you don’t have it, you’re sending out incompetent luddite messages…

Level descriptors

NovicePractitionerExpertNinja
You can, with serious planning and hand holding, produce a basic competent video that doesn’t outstay its welcome and has production values (around sound, image quality) that are slightly above Microsoft Paint and Moviemaker. People watch it and don’t troll mercilessly.You can, with minimal planning, put together a relatively polished video, of the ‘right’ length (might be 2 minutes, might be 10) that gets across the key points without embarrassing anyone. There are even clickable links in the video, hark at thee, and people are never disorientated or particularly irritated. Occasionally, they even rise to the level of funny/enjoyable.At speed, and virtually spontaneously, you can put together complex videos, with professional skills, a ‘smooth’ and polished video that – while it could not be mistaken for Hollywood – is also able to make people wonder if you gave up a TV career to devote yerself to Saving the World/campaigning on this issue. People subscribe to your channel, and hassle you for more content because it is just ‘next level’.You’re like an expert, but you are constantly innovating, and doing it faster and better

Element Overview Essay

This is a draft. If something doesn’t make sense, or you see typos, or if you have further ideas, please email us on contact@activecitizenshiptoolkit.net

As with several other items here, the reason that social movement organisations by and large do not make very good videos is that video making is a proper skill that people study for years and have apprenticeships before they become any good at it.

Any monkey with a video camera and an editing package can make a video but a good video is like a Roger Federer forehand. It looks effortless, but it is actually the product of many years of training 

The consequences of mediocre video making are not actually that high, because people expect small social movement organisations to be a bit rough around the edges. So, you could argue that once you’ve hit novice or maybe practitioner level, you don’t really need to invest more. But if someone comes along who is an expert or a ninja, then you make use of them. And of course, one of the ways you make use of them is to get them to spread their skills.

The solutions? Well, there’s no end of advice on the internet, books about video making video podcasting. There are some basic principles about dividing up the screen. One of the main failings – and it’s one that I’m guilty of all the time  -is your audio. You really do need to invest In decent microphones if you’re going to make a lot of videos, you also want to make sure that your videos have subtitles so that people who are hard of hearing or have English as a second language, or want to watch it, with the videos turned down because the sound turned down because they are at work can benefit from that. Pro-tip YouTube will let you add subtitles after you’ve uploaded a video,

Development Resources

Assessment Resources