I recently had the chance to interview Phil Edwards, the man behind Almanac (one of Vox’s most popular series), and a general explainer-video master. Here are three of the most interesting things I learned:
1. When looking for video ideas, start with the visuals
My video projects typically begin with a topic — social media addiction, climate change, crime — and then, once I start researching I look for archive, images, and other assets to make it visually powerful.
Phil’s process, however, often works the other way around. He starts with the powerful visual assets and then dives into research to find the interesting stories and insights.
For example, this film about Concorde is a great journalistic explainer. It centres around an intriguing question: “We had supersonic flight. Why did it fail?” and shows how technology can only succeed with the right economic circumstances to support it.
However, the film actually came about because Vox had some credits with AP Archive that were about to expire, prompting Phil to have a look through its videos. Whilst browsing, his eye was caught by some interesting footage of Concorde which included some intriguing video of the pop star Sting. As Phil says, “It was just a lot of cool footage I hadn’t seen before, and it turned out to be a rich story too, with a lot of interesting twists to it.”
The killer question for producers who have a topic they want to turn into an explainer is, why does this have to be a video, rather than an article or some other medium? However, if you’re thinking about visual assets from the start — in Phil’s words, being “asset driven” — then the answer to this will be obvious, and your chances of producing a successful video will be higher.
2. Share your “shame draft”
One dilemma when working with a commissioner is when to show them a rough version of your work. Ideally we do this early because, as Phil says, “You want to iron out all the story kinks early on with your editor. Once animation starts, making changes is much more of a pain.”
However, while it makes sense to share early, we often hold back. Maybe we’re worried the commissioner doesn’t trust our abilities yet or we’re worried they will reject our ideas prematurely, unable to imagine their potential. Or maybe we’re just perfectionists and sharing unfinished work makes us squirm with discomfort.
For all these reasons we can hold onto work for longer than we should.
This is why I like Phil’s idea of the “shame draft”: an early version of the work you’re ashamed to share because it’s so basic, yet you do so anyway because it’s good practice.
For Phil, this draft includes rough voice over, interviews, music, and interview clips, but doesn’t include finished animation and visuals (many of which are represented by text place-holders). Maybe you’d choose to share an earlier or later version than this, but whatever you opt for, I think “shame draft” is a useful label because it helps us overcome our hesitancy to share early.
(See also: The art of building in layers).
3. To finish your film return to where you started
Here’s a simple idea from Phil about how to finish your film: return to the visual you began with.
An example of this “mirroring” technique (as I’ll call it) can be seen in his film about computer animation. The film starts off with footage of a rock being photographed from every angle by a video games producer deep in the Utah desert. Why — we’re invited to wonder — is he doing this?
At the end of the film, after finding out how computer graphics work, alongside many other interesting insights, we return to the same rock, except now — armed with our new knowledge — we see it in a different light. It’s a nice ending.
This technique almost feels similar to what might happen in a novel. Just as Frodo leaves the Shire at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings and then returns, quite a different person, at the end, so in the computer animation film we return to the rock we began with, but now see it differently.
Yes, I know this is pretentious (the hero journey of a rock!) but it’s perhaps because this technique borrows something from storytelling that it’s so effective.