Video production best practices

Combining strong storytelling with a few technical tweaks will help you create clean, engaging and professional videos.

Is video the right medium?

Video excels at visual explanations and emotional storytelling (whether comedic, inspiring or serious). If your content is extremely dense or detail-heavy, consider a written format instead.

Pre-production and planning

• Define the audience. Tailor your tone and complexity to your viewers. Broad audiences require shorter, more direct content.
• Structure content in chunks. Break longer topics into bite-sized 5- to 7-minute segments, each focused on one clear takeaway.
• Prep and test. Run through your points once, then record a quick 30-second test clip to check your lighting and sound before filming the real thing.

Location and setting the stage

• Pick an engaging spot. Choose spaces with depth over flat walls, but avoid visual clutter that distracts from your subject.
• Respect campus rules. Always secure department permission before filming in restricted areas like active classrooms, research labs, animal housing facilities or spaces where intellectual property is created.
• Tidy the space. Clear away background mess and ensure the area is well-lit so you don't look like a shadow in a void.

Audio and lighting

• Ditch built-in mics. Camera and laptop mics sit too far away, creating thin, echoey sound. Use a cheap clip-on (lavalier), tabletop USB, or headset mic placed as close to the speaker as possible without entering the frame.
• Tame ambient noise. Turn off humming appliances and close windows to reduce traffic sound—quiet background audio also ensures auto-captioning tools work accurately.
• Position your light. Place soft, main lighting directly behind the camera pointing toward your face. Avoid harsh overhead lights, glaring lamps or unshaded windows with shifting sunlight.

Framing and visual style

• Camera at eye level. Prop up your phone or laptop on books so you are looking directly into the lens. It creates an authentic, face-to-face connection.
• Build depth. Use lighting, composition, and varied angles to make shots visually dynamic. Mix in diagrams, graphics or text to keep viewers hooked.
• Attention to detail. Avoid clothes with tight, busy patterns that glitch on screen. Skip apparel or packaging with logos from competing institutions or brands unless part of an official partnership.

Slide deck design

• Use widescreen. Set slide dimensions to 16:9 to avoid black bars on the sides of the video.
• Max text readability. Keep fonts large (at least 18pt for general slides, 48pt for direct 1080p exports) and maintain high contrast (e.g., dark text on a light background). If a slide looks crowded, split it across multiple slides.
• Use high-res assets. Stick to sharp, proportioned images and cut out unnecessary slide transitions or animations.

Accessibility, diversity and on-camera delivery

• Caption everything. Public videos must include captions to meet legal and institutional accessibility standards. Transcripts and audio descriptions should be added where appropriate.
• Reflect our community. Accurately represent the diverse backgrounds, cultures and experiences of Augustana’s campus community.
• Be human. You don't need to act like a news anchor. If you stumble over a word, pause, laugh it off, correct yourself, and keep going—it makes you far more relatable.