 Hello, lots of people have asked me, how did you make those videos? So in this first episode of Behind the Screens, I'm going to talk about basic interaction and I'll show you how I did this trick with the Chrome icon. So in most of my videos, there's some kind of interaction between the video screen and the real-life version of me and actually this isn't too hard to do. I think anyone with a camera and a screen could probably do this themselves. So I'll demonstrate how. So first of all, you need to write a script. You'll need to decide exactly what you're going to say. Then practice it a few times to get a sense of the timing. Second, film yourself doing the video portion of the script. And you need to make sure to leave enough time to respond back and forth. Okay, so I'm going to go film that part. Okay, so I like to film half of the script with a slightly different location and even sometimes a slightly different character. So I've used this hat, for example, to represent a different character. Okay, so now what I'm going to do is say half of the lines from the script. I have a question for you. How did the hipster burn his mouth? He ate the pizza before it was cool. Who's there? Little old lady who? Okay, those are old jokes. Here, I need to give you my notebook with some new jokes in it. Here you go. You're welcome. Bye for now. Okay, then the next step is just to play the video and do the interaction. So I got to get set up here. I'm going to hide this back there, stay there. And then I'm going to play the video. And I like to try to play the video as quickly as possible so I learn the keys, the keystrokes so that students don't see that it's a video playing. So here's the video. So hopefully I'll remember the lines. We'll see. I have a question for you. Okay. How did the hipster burn his mouth? I don't know. How? He ate the pizza before it was cool. Okay, my turn. Knock knock. Who's there? Little old lady. Little old lady who? I didn't know that you knew how to yodel. Okay, those are old jokes. Here, I need to give you my notebook with some new jokes in it. Oh great, thanks. That's it. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Bye for now. Okay, so that went pretty well. I didn't actually practice that a whole lot of times, but I made it easy on myself by making the interaction fairly straightforward. Okay, next here are a couple of tips. First of all, you don't have to do all kinds of fancy editing. I do sometimes, but you don't have to. In this example, I just shot the video and played it back straight as is. I think more important than fancy special effects is to have an interesting idea, a story, a good script, with maybe even some kind of tension or conflict between the characters. Second, it helps if you do a lot of practice, especially if you're going to be performing the real part before a live audience. If you're recording it like I'm doing for this demo, it's much easier because I just try again if I mess up. In fact, this is take three. I will tell you, for me, that's the most stressful part of doing these pranks for my class, knowing that I only get one chance to get it right, or maybe two if I'm teaching two sections that semester. Before the April Fool's prank that I did earlier this month, I practiced it between like 30 and 40 times in the classroom before showing it to my students. I was actually there the night before from 8.30 till 12.15. One thing that helps if you're doing it live is to give the in-video character more of the harder lines to remember because you can do multiple takes to get it right. Then in the real life version, you're just sort of following the lead and responding to what's already pre-recorded. That makes it a lot easier to memorize, but still, you'll need to memorize and practice and practice and practice. Also, if you can line up the sizes and positions of things, that makes it look better. Maybe you noticed that I was looking off to the side in the video recording. I'm looking at the other person so that it makes it look like the line, the eye line, matches up. So matching eye lines is really important. And also, I tried to make the notebook about the same size on the screen as in real life, and that will depend on the size and location of the screen. And the best way to get it right is to just do some screen tests and do some rough drafts. Okay, so those are the basics that I think anyone could do because you're just recording something and playing it back on a screen. If you want to try something slightly more complicated and you know how to do some basic video editing, just take a screenshot of your desktop with the YouTube window open like this, then make a new layer in your editing software and put your video into that window to make it look like you're playing a video like this. I have a question for you. How did Hipster... Wait a minute, am I stuck in this small window now? I want the whole screen. You could even play the video on your phone like this. Oh great, now I'm stuck in this little tiny phone now. Another thing you can do with that video is to use it in a Zoom meeting and play it full screen for everybody. So if you want to do that, what you could do is share your screen and then make sure that the computer sound is shared also so they can hear it, then play the video and share it full screen, and then it looks like your character is there in the Zoom meeting with you. And that's actually what I did for my latest video where I pretended to Zoom bomb my class on my birthday. Same concept of what I just showed you. So basically write a script, film half of the dialogue, and then play the video. But instead of playing the video on a screen or something, you're playing it through a Zoom meeting. So take a look at that video if you want to see how that turned out. Now the tricky thing about that is getting it recorded. So doing that itself is not super hard, but then to make it so I could put it on YouTube I had, I was recording the Zoom meeting. I had Camtasia running so I could record the screen itself. I had the camera, a separate camera because I wanted a better camera, and then I was wearing a lapel mic, so that was kind of complicated, but I think it turned out well. Okay, so lastly, I promised I would show you or tell you how I did this part of the April Fools video where the chrome icon comes flying off the wall. So basically, this video is essentially the same basic idea of what I've been showing you this whole, this whole time. There's a video playing over the projector. In this case, the background is mostly black, so it's meant to look like there's the character just there on the whiteboard. But really, this is what the video looks like by itself. But then this is what it looks like when it's playing in the classroom on the whiteboard. Okay, so the paper icon is just taped to the board, the whiteboard. And then it's connected with a string. Actually, it wasn't quite a string, but a white dental floss. And then I just grabbed that string and yanked it off the wall at the right time. Now that took a lot of practice actually, but it wasn't as bad as it looks because you can kind of follow the arc of the movement. You can see my hand coming, and then I just grabbed it off the whiteboard at exactly the right time. The same kind of thing I did when I grabbed the lightsaber out from behind the board. You can kind of see the lightsaber coming, then I just follow the action and make it look like a smooth action. So, but again, those type of things take practice, but makes it look fun. Okay, some final thoughts. I would love to see if you guys have some ideas. If you try this out and you post it somewhere in the comments, let me know and send me a link so I can see what you did. I'm really interested to see if anybody else tries these kinds of things. Also get out there, be creative and don't worry about it being perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect. I mean, even in this video, I meant to show this side of my little blue book because the other side has my phone number on it. Didn't mean to do that, but actually, at this point, it doesn't matter. I've given my phone number out to 5,000 students over the years and Google knows my phone number too. So actually, if you want to call me, I might answer, but yeah, it's not as bad as what I did in my hand sanitizer challenge video. Go watch the middle of that if you want to see what I did there. Anyhow, so if you have any questions, let me know. I'm curious to see what you're doing, like I said before, and this video is long enough so I'll end it here. But thanks for watching. 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