Lights, camera, action!—Behind the scenes of our first online class 🎥
That’s right. Practical Service Design is launching our very first online class, “Intro to Practical Service Blueprinting.” To celebrate our pre-enrollment launch, we wanted to share a behind-the-scenes peek at what’s gone into the making of our first online course.
The backstory 🕰️
During the fall of 2015, Megan and I were preparing to run a workshop at the Adaptive Path Service Experience Conference in November. We had been iterating on this evolutionary descendent service blueprint format that would be taught in the workshop. In the true Practical Service Design spirit, we thought to ourselves, “Why not do more? Go beyond what is expected,” and so we paired the workshop with the launch of our Practical Service Blueprinting ebook, our website, and the Service Design Slack community. Little did we know what to expect with this “grand experiment.”
“Go get the guide!” 📚
Why would we do this? Because people seemed to need it, and there really wasn’t much out there in terms of practical documentation on how to run a blueprinting session. We felt like we had hit on something new, something worth sharing, worth developing with others. And what better way to building community than by sharing our practice through writing an ebook (or two).
Since that workshop in November of 2015, the ebook has been downloaded over 14,000 times—that’s about 27 times a day. More than we could ever have imagined.
We’ve seen it printed out in people’s cubicles, taped to walls during sessions, and been given feedback from all over the world that it’s been instrumental in helping people get their hands dirty and conduct these workshops that build the real, actionable insights.
Now, almost 18 months later, we are less than a month away from the official launch of the online course!
So here’s the behind-the-scenes peek at our process for going from zero to full production.
Get your story straight! 📝
If you’re going to tell a story, it’s best to know where you want to end so you know where you’re trying to go. Thankfully, Practical Service Design has its own in-house illustrator who does all our drawings — Megan.
Planning out what you want with just a “general” idea of what you want to say turned out to be a slight misstep. The moment the record button is pressed, suddenly those stick figures and notes of what you were so clever about at the kitchen table seem woefully inadequate. Luckily, we both spent many years doing improv comedy. (Not really.)
Eventually, we’ll learn to 10x the amount of prep writing we do, but for this class, like we preach again and again, it’s a working ranch and the ranch don’t stop for nothin or no one! 🐴
We’re scrappy, not crappy 🤔
See, the thing about doing video is that it’s all about lighting and sound. Since we were doing green screen video as well, we needed space.
One small problem. We live in teeny tiny places in Silicon Valley. Finding a room to film with enough space to set up a screen, 4 huge lights, and get a camera far enough away from us was going to be a problem.
Fortunately, we found a solution! My laundry room and half-garage was juuuust big enough to hang the screen, and put up the lights. BUT it wasn’t big enough to get the camera a sufficient distance away. What to do?
Lucky for us, we could put the tripod with the camera outside of the room and into the hallway bathroom and shoot from there! There was literally no room to get in and out of the room. I am shocked we never tripped and wrecked everything.
Lights, camera, action! 🎬
As part of the fun, we’d gone ahead and bought all the silly things you need to set up a scrappy studio — including a clapper. The clapper was the most fun of it all. And, it turns out, pretty dang important once you get to the editing stages. And don’t be fooled, clapping the clapper is loud.
Also — I have no idea why I look so dour. In between camera takes, I just get a neutral face. Obviously, Megan does not. This is our first take as you can see. PSD TV, roll 1, take 1, camera 1.
Actors, stand on your marks… annnnnd ACTION.
This is way harder than it looks 😫
I am sure making live, green screen videos sounds hard. Doing it is even harder. Setting up all the gear is fun and doesn’t take a lot of time. Saying the right stuff, that’s a different story altogether.
What we learned about ourselves is that Megan can just start talking right on queue, and I instantly go blank. This doesn’t mean that either one of us screws up less, it just means we swear a lot more!
All in all, we shot about 12 hours of footage for what ended up as about 1.5 hours of final video content. 🎬
And I am pretty sure it’s the most fun we’ve had in our lives! Blooper, sailor-swearing, and Megan starting each segment with “So…” reel coming soon 😂.
To the editing suite! 🖥️
I don’t think we’ve ever debated as much as we did about how we sort of screwed up the green screen color grading and had to go back and fix it (which we did).
You get 2 designers together where one is backseat driving Photoshop or Final Cut and watch out! 🔥 You might need some ice and ibuprofen!
Class is in session (almost!!!! 😆)
After these months of writing, filming, editing—so much editing—we’re ready to open the doors to the classroom today with pre-enrollment for the course which will start May 30th (2o17). Ready? Check out the promo video and head over to our Teachable School and get enrolled in the class — do it before May 29th and get 25% off with the promo code LETSDOIT. This is what you’ve been waiting for! 👍
So, from Mr. Flowers and Mrs. Miller, we hope you enjoy the class. It was bucketloads of fun to film, and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Oh, and here’s the actual promo ⬇️
But before you go…
You should give this article a ❤️ , follow Erik Flowers and Megan Erin Miller on Medium, and on Twitter @erik_flowers and @meganerinmiller!
