Media Toolkit: Goal and Context
In everything you are going to do in life, preparation is very important. Good preparation always pays off later in the process. This certainly applies to making a media production such as a knowledge clip, instructional video or podcast. The preparation consists of what you are going to present, the professional part, and how you are going to present it. The professional part is outside the scope of this toolkit, we assume that you are an expert in your field. The pre-production of video or other media is about how you are going to tell the story.
For example, it concerns a choice of the format of your production, the design or the use of sources. But to a large extent, it is also about deleting superfluous information and breaking it down into smaller chunks.
Before working on the content of the video, you need to consider three elements:
- Target audience
- Goal of the video
- Context: what way will the video be used?
- Determining your audience
While determining a goal or a purpose, it is important to think about the target audience because they are who you will be communicating with and making the video for. If you have a specific audience in mind, the goal will be clearer and you will be able to interact with the viewer on a more personal and engaging level. Distinguishing your audience and determining your goal have a reciprocal impact on one another – the clearer you determine one, the more definite the other one will become.
- Determining goal
First, in order to start with the pre-production of the video, coming up with a goal for the video is the key to everything, as all the next steps of production will be centered around it and adapted to achieve it. To make this a little clearer – think about the goal as the desired outcome – what you want to accomplish.
To choose your goal/purpose, you can take inspiration from these:
1) to persuade;
2) to entertain;
3) to explain;
4) to inspire;
5) to inform;
6) to encourage critical thinking.
To avoid the argument of your video coming across as unclear/all-over-the-place, it is best to choose no more than 2 goals – one primary goal and one secondary sub-goal. The primary goal will be overarching and all of your video's elements will be created and combined to correspond to this. The secondary goal will be, well, secondary – of lesser importance, but it will deepen the impact of your story and broaden its scope. For example, your primary goal could be explaining evolution to veterinary students and your secondary goal could be presenting the subject interestingly and memorably. To achieve both of these goals and make them work synergistically, you have to come up with a way to combine them. In the example about evolution in veterinary medicine, that would work by, firstly, explaining all the important facts, concepts and pieces of information detailedly and secondly, after each of the main arguments/points, telling a related, interesting story to prove how the point presents itself in real life, to solidify the point and cement it into the students' memory. Think about if your goal aligns with the target audience you have in mind – if you are reaching out to your professors about the findings of an important study, maybe your goal won’t have as much to do with entertaining them but rather with explaining and informing.
- Be aware of the Context
The context of a video consists of the platform or environment where the video will be published and the way your target audience will generally view the video. If your video will be part of a course with an Learning Management System like Canvas, usually the course will also provide additional learning materials. Then you don't need to repeat the content of these materials in your clip, you can refer to them instead. If your video will be the main learning material on a separate platform like Vimeo or Youtube, you might need to explain more in detail. On the other hand, if you want to draw potential students to your institute, a format Shorts or Reels or Tiktok format is more appropriate.
Once you established the goal and the target audience of your clip, you can proceed with the following steps: