How to create whiteboard video

[Member]

hi,

I am wondering how people make videos (filming and editing) of them drawing on a whiteboard (kind of like Draw my Life videos). I heard people have tripods directly above the whiteboard when filming. After do they just extract the audio and make the video play two times faster?

 

Any suggestions and ideas are appreciated!

[T.Vengeance]

 

If you pause at 3min30 sec, you get a snippit of how minute physics does it.

[Member]

 

If you pause at 3min30 sec, you get a snippit of how minute physics does it.

Cool, lol bit hard to see his setup. Thanks

[T.Vengeance]

Cool, lol bit hard to see his setup. Thanks

I would say have some even bright lighting, maybe a soft box, and up the exposure. Use a tripod and you're good to go.

[Member]

I would say have some even bright lighting, maybe a soft box, and up the exposure. Use a tripod and you're good to go.

Ah, yes that's a great idea! Do you also know how to add and align subtitles to the video when I have already prerecorded the audio? (Premiere Pro)

[Dredgy]

Have done a few of these commercially, and we never use a real whiteboard, though I've seen it done, but it's a "too much can go wrong" kind of thing, and my staff aren't great at drawing, so trying to get them to do it right in one take is hard. If you can consistently draw well, then just point a camera at your desk and shine some bright lights on it.

 

What we do is, of course, computer animation. It's a really simple animation technique.

 

1. First we storyboard the thing. Usually in Powerpoint or by hand. Preliminary voice over is done so we know rough timings

2. Then we draw all the pictures (we use Illustrator cause..vectors). 

3. Import the vectors into Flash. And erase it frame by frame. Allows us to be really precise in the order we want things drawn.

4. Reverse the frames so that the scene draws itself as opposed to erasing.

5. Superimpose a hand on a new layer. Depending on budget, we use either just a stock photo, or record someone's hand against a greenscreen holding a marker for about 15 seconds and have them twitch a finger every now and then so it looks like the hand is alive.

6. Export to video, and speed up/slow down in post and join each scene together.

 

The animation process takes about 30 minutes per scene, so not as fast as drawing, but the results look better and we can get much more complex "drawings" and neatly colour things in and the like. Drawing takes us about 18 hours per 50 scenes.

[T.Vengeance]

Ah, yes that's a great idea! Do you also know how to add and align subtitles to the video when I have already prerecorded the audio? (Premiere Pro)

Nah I'm sorry, that's beyond my scope.