Teacher Tips: Creating Polished & Professional Skillshare Classes

1. Creating Polished & Professional Skillshare Classes: a little skill share. Teachers are aspiring teachers. My name is John Brahm. It and I predominantly teach classes on graphic design and illustration. In this video, I'm gonna be giving you my tips on how to make your costs is look more professional and polished. I didn't have any background and filming audio editing, lighting or production before I started. But through doing over 20 classes on skill share, I've learned a lot of tips that I'm going to share with you. So the goal is that it's not gonna take you 20 costs is to learn everything that I've learned. And through this little video, you're gonna be ableto skip the line and start making your classes look awesome right away . One of the most important factors for having a professional looking classes often overlooked because you cannot see it. And that is audio. It's really important to have clean, crisp, clear audio with very little background noise, and surprisingly, it doesn't cost much to get that audio. You can actually use a lapel mic simply made from a headphone that came with your smartphone is Liza has a little microphone on it. You just simply hook it over your collar, and you can basically just use it. Just don't put the ear in because you don't want to look a little bit silly, but you can hide it here, kind of clip it some way, and the audio will actually pretty good. But if you want to spend just a little bit of money and get a USB microphone, that's inexpensive. I recommend the blue microphones snowball. I've been using it for most of my classes now, and it sounds really good and it's quite an expensive, and you can get it anywhere When recording your classes. Be sure to turn off any audio distractions in the background. That is, You don't have any music. You don't want to have any fans. You may even want to turn off your refrigerator. If you're recording near it because you don't have that buzz, you'll be surprised at what a microphone can pick up. Just be sure to turn on your refrigerator when you're done. You don't want any spoiled milk. If you're using a USB microphone like I do, just make sure that it's very close to your face so that you get good, loud audio and make sure that you do a test before you start recording, because it could be very frustrating if you're corrida fairly long video, and when you start playing it back, the audio is very poor. I always keep my microphone, either on a table or on a tripod. That way it doesn't bump around and pick up any movements. And I try not to move your wiggle too much in my chair because it can make some squeaky sounds like that. Talking head videos, which is what I'm doing right now, are often the most difficult they can really make or break. The class will make some so difficult is that you need good audio, good video, good lighting, and you need to make sure that you don't have any distractions and that you appear kind of natural on the camera. And putting all of those things together could be really difficult. If you're new at doing these causes. Generally, your first priority for a good talking head video is lighting. You want to make sure that you have a lot of natural light, so that is that you want to film across or beside a big window, as much light as you can get is gonna make your video look more professional. I have purchased some lighting gear, but really nothing beats natural light. Make sure that you put your camera on a tripod. You can get quite inexpensively or even a table. You just want to really study smooth surface. Unless you're trying to go for some kind of documentary kind of style, it will definitely improve the video quality when recording your class. It's actually easy to use a smartphone these days. They have 10 80 p four k. They've got pretty good cameras and you're gonna get good quality so you don't have to spend a normal a getting a digital SLR. I do currently use a canon rebel if you want to make your cost look just a little bit more professional. But honestly, smartphones do a great job. The thing I like about getting into the digital SLR is you get a little more depth of field , although that's starting to come out and smartphones as well, depth of field being that I should be fairly clear and my background is slightly blurry. The great thing about that is that it focuses on me and it, make sure that you're not too distracted by my background. Speaking of background, that is your backdrop. When you're filming your class, it makes sense to have your backdrop match what your classes about. So if you're doing a class on cooking, your background might be a kitchen or dining room, something that makes sense. Same thing if you're doing drawing it should be where you draw. I film all of my classes in my home office. I've moved once or twice, so in my office has changed. But I like to have everything that surrounds me when I'm drawn when I'm doing my art and I try and get that on camera, so it gives the viewer a sense of who I am. Another important thing about your background is to make sure it's very clean, and it's not full of distractions. Also, if you have any pictures or frames or anything that's reflective, make sure that you don't have anything funny reflecting in the background. Believe it or not, you can kind of see over here the reflection on my drawing table is actually showing my cat laying on the ground. But I figured it was settled enough that you wouldn't be able to notice, and hopefully she doesn't move enough. But that's the kind of thing you need to pay a little bit of attention to, to make sure that you don't have anything too distracting. You don't want the viewer getting lost and not listening to you. Lastly, for your talking head videos, I highly suggest you prepare script. I've done many classes where I don't do that, because, frankly, I hate homework. But any of the classes where I've actually had a script, they've come out a lot more professional clean because everything I'm saying is really concise and well thought out. I just recommend not reading off a script. Some people will film by looking directly on the camera like I do. Some people will kind of look off slightly as if the camera or they're talking to someone over here. That's gonna be a decision for you as to the look that you like better. But I recommend don't read off any kind of script. Don't even read off bullet notes. We should try and do. It's kind of memorized what you want to say. Look at it. Have a sheet of paper. I'm using an iPad with my script and then just memorize the paragraph a time. Record it, You know, you might have to do with a bunch of times, but that way you're more comfortable. You're looking into the camera, You know what you're gonna say? And even if you stumble and say a few words wrong, it doesn't really matter because is more important that you come off natural. Otherwise, you might do something like this. Lastly, prepare script. I hate homework. So I've done many classes without a script. Yeah, it doesn't look very good. So we'll talk about editing. Editing is a really important part of making your class look good, and sometimes it can be daunting because you're gonna have to learn some software that you might not be comfortable with. But I recommend making an informed decision. You know, you could get a fairly inexpensive software and learn how to use it. Because editing is extremely important. Making your classes look more professional is definitely the key for retaining viewers and getting more students. And one good thing to do is cut out any hums and haws. Personally. When I'm doing screen recording, I do that a lot. I Because I don't have a script for those parts. It's easier to avoid them when you have a script. But if you don't, you definitely want toe edit out any of those things that make you seem a little unprofessional. Keeping the on one isn't gonna kill you. You're going to see more human. But most the time you do want to cut them out. Something I've been using in my more recent class and I'm finding really useful are slides . Now, you can do that with a still sort of PowerPoint style slide, or you can have a slightly animated slide. But I find that they actually do make the cost of professional. And what I've noticed is that most the time when you're watching a class, you're gonna be watching it straight through. So you're not going to see the video titles, So you may not necessarily know what this video that just started is gonna be about. So it's nice to have a slide. It keeps the viewers knowing exactly what they're doing and what you're gonna talk about. It's a little bit easier for them to remember and kind of just pay attention and know what's going on. Be careful when you're using your slides to pick a nice, clean, easy to read. Fond, you can, of course, you script Fonds. Just make sure they're large. You want to make sure that the viewer can actually read them and off course, make them stay up on the screen long enough that you can read it. So what you might want to do is try and read it yourself and then wait another couple second or two for maybe a slow reader and then that should be long enough for the slot. So next we're gonna talk about introductions. To me, this is the most important part of a skill share class. The idea is that you want to make sure that you give the viewer a reason why they're watching your video, what they're gonna learn and try and entice them to keep watching. Of course, that's how you're gonna make money is by having skill share students actually watch your costs is as important as it is to have a good class cover. It's more important to have a good intro. The reason is that if your classes slightly interesting to the person. If your video is great, they're going to definitely watch it. If it's poor, they're not gonna watch it at all. So that covers really important to get them to click. But then you really need to make sure that you hammer at home in that intro video in your intro videos. If you're talking about something, be sure to show it. You want to vary up your visuals and edit in some different shots, because if you keep it on one thing too often, it gets a little visually dull. That's not as important in your later videos, but the intro. Everything has to be kind of perfect. Same goes with music. You're probably gonna want music in your intro. It has a little bit of, you know, liveliness to it. It makes a little bit more interesting, but most the time. I don't keep it throughout the whole class because it gets a little bit too tiring and you really want them to pay attention to the information rather than music. And getting those levels could be tricky to. But having them in the intro could be really useful, because they will get a little more excitement. A lot of the time, I suggest that you don't have vocals because those could be even more distracted. So try and find instrumental songs. One of things I really recommend when you're doing an intro video is that you actually show yourself. I realize that could be uncomfortable. A lot of people don't like to be in front of the camera. It makes a trickier because you have to get the lighting and everything right. But it's really important that the students sees you, knows who you are and kind of feels like they get to know you. It's so important for building a following for having students come back, and I've seen some really great teachers do it without it. But a lot of the time I find it easier if they get to see you know you and they feel a little bit more engaged in your content that way. Another important thing for intro videos is that you actually record them last, so what you want to do is get all of your content recorded done. You don't have to edit it necessarily, but even anything it's great. And then you record your intro so you know exactly what you're talking about. You know exactly what your class is going to be about, because once in a while you record an intro, and then you record the class, and sometimes you'll realize that you needed edits things out. So you don't want to say those in your intro and then have them edit of the cost, so it's really important. I definitely recommend to record your intro last Azadeh. That May Sound of Your Beginning Teacher. That's it. This has been a little bit of a long video, but I hope you guys enjoyed it and you learn something. We've talked about video editing, talking head, having clear audio, good lighting, not distracted videos and, of course, slides. We've talked about so much stuff. I hope you learned lots. Of course, you can always follow me on all social media at John Brahma, and please check out my seal share classes. That is skill share dot com slash john Brahm it. If you want to know more about building a class, of course, there's lots of great classes on sale share, so just search filming, editing, lighting, things like that. You'll find lots of classes that go way more in depth than I have, and you'll be able to learn lots. Okay, that's it. Thank you so much for watching this video. And I look forward to seeing your class.