Explaining research to the general public is a challenge; the work is complex but important for the public to understand the impact. The University of California Office of the President uses video to not only detail the research but to entertain. As a result, they’ve won two UCDA Design Awards for their fun and informative video series. We talked to Jessica Wheelock, Director of Multimedia, about this video series.
How many people are involved in the production of a video like this?
The two of us are the core Fig. 1 team (background research, filming, scriptwriting, editing, motion graphics). We work with two amazing writers on our team who give us feedback on the scripts and help us hone our story ideas. For more complex animations, we work with a talented animation team called Together. Most of us have been working in higher ed for about a decade.
How many videos does your team make a year?
Each year, we make around five episodes of the Fig. 1 video series and roughly 50 videos for the UC system.
It appears that all this work was done in-house. Talk about the challenge of putting these together, along with other demands on your time.
It is challenging! Typically, we have 5-10 videos in production at a time—all at different stages. Video production takes time, and there are frequent stops and starts in the process, so having a few things going at once means that when one project gets held up, you can easily hop to another. But tracking all the projects can feel like having a lot of plates spinning at once.
Over the years, we’ve learned how to work more efficiently. We created motion graphics templates, animated textures, and graphics libraries, so we’re not starting from scratch on each video.
These two videos are part of a series called Fig 1. How did the team come up with the concept? Was there a creative brief from leadership that led to this series?
Our communications team is always looking for ways to highlight the impact that UC has on the state of California and the world. Across the UC system, there is so much amazing research being done—but often, academic work is covered in a really dry or jargony way.
There wasn’t a specific creative brief from leadership to create this series, but we saw an opportunity to talk about UC’s impact using a more playful, conversational format that better utilizes YouTube as a platform.
We proposed the idea in 2014, and leadership gave us the space to create a few episodes as a proof of concept for the series. Once we had those, it was easy for everyone to get the appeal of this approach.
This video series is fun, with whimsical illustrations. This is a different approach from the expert video we usually see from other institutions. How were you able to convince leadership that a more lighthearted approach to serious topics such as a pandemic or asteroids would be impactful?
When we started brainstorming the vaccine video, we were already doing a ton of COVID communications for UC. We knew that our audiences were beginning to hit a wall with the topic. If we were going to talk about COVID, we needed to 1) add something different to the conversation and 2) tell the story in a super compelling way.
One of the benefits of doing a video series like this is that the tone and style are already established—leadership isn’t surprised by our approach because they’ve seen us do it before and trust our work.
Judge Matt Kurtz said, “I love the creativity in this video. It has great writing combined with great graphics and animation. They were able to weave together professor comments with narration to convey information in an entertaining way while showcasing faculty excellence.” Getting teams to collaborate can be a challenge. What is your advice to bring teams together successfully?
Video production is highly collaborative. The process often involves discussion and debate: what exactly makes this story interesting? Is this soundbite compelling? Does this imagery look right? Being able to critique and discuss work with an open mind is key.
We regularly tap the larger comms team to review our work with fresh eyes and invite feedback at key points in the process (script and storyboard review, rough cut of the video). Because the topics we cover are interesting and the work is creative, people like to jump in and help with these videos.
The UC experts we interview are also collaborators and weigh in on the script and rough cut of their video to make sure that we’re depicting things accurately.
Judge DJ Judd said, “This video sought to distill a complex topic down to a bite-sized video, and they really nailed it.” How do your writers and designers work together to make high-level research easily digested by a distracted public?
When we begin a project, we like to tease out what makes a topic interesting. Why would a person click play on this video?
We try to bring visuals into the scriptwriting process as soon as possible—even if it’s just writing out what imagery we imagine will be used. Good visuals can help you cut down on what needs to be said—or it can change the way you word things in the script. Because we’re both scriptwriters and video directors, we’re usually pretty attuned to imagery and making sure that whenever possible, we follow the “show, don’t tell” approach. In general, we’re trying to avoid stock or generic-looking footage whenever possible.
We recently started doing script read-throughs together as a team. Actually reading a script out loud to others will immediately tell you when the script is getting boring, or you need to explain something in a more exciting way. It also makes it easier to phrase things more conversationally.
How long would it take from topic to publication to create a video?
The production timeline on these can vary—we often squeeze them in between other requests that have more pressing deadlines.
Because of this, we typically pick evergreen topics, so there’s flexibility with timing. The fastest video we created this year was done in a month (but it meant we all had to focus 100% on it to hit the deadline).
How have the videos been received?
We’ve gotten good feedback on the series!
UC faculty are usually excited to participate in the project since it’s a unique and compelling format. Also, our videos have gotten media coverage from outlets like the Washington Post, NY Magazine, the LA Times, Slate, Gizmodo, and Fast Company. The series has also been used in K-12 curricula, especially during the pandemic.
What do you do to stay inspired?
We like to keep an eye on YouTube and what other creators are doing there. Some channels that come to mind would be Climate Town and UNHhhh.
These shows are obviously a bit more out there than we can be with our work for UC, but it’s exciting to see what they’re doing. A lot of the humor on these channels is visual or made through stylistic editing choices. They also show how you can make a seemingly dry topic super interesting and funny.
Jessica Wheelock is the Director of Multimedia at the University of California’s systemwide office (Office of the President). Her work for UC has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox and Buzzfeed.
Zak Long is a filmmaker and Senior Multimedia Producer at University of California Office of the President. His work has been featured on Vox.com, NY Times, at Australia’s Queensland Museum and NY’s Anthology Film Archives.
Christine Prado is the past president of the UCDA Board of Directors and a senior art director at Clemson University. Come join her for a run at the UCDA Design Conference in Atlanta in 2023.
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