Alright, it is time to create your class resources. Now what these might be is they might be slides that you're gonna talk over the top of, okay. Some PowerPoint slides or, um, it might, it'll be the time to create your dialogue, either fully written out that you're gonna read out, or for me, like I just, I should make sure I got bullet points underneath each kind of outline topic. And you'll also be creating your, like, exercise files here or your, um, let's say it's a bit more of a tactile class, like, uh, I dunno, baking or, um, watercolor painting. You'll kind of create those now so that you can practice them and kind of get them ready for the course and know where you're gonna talk about. So let's talk about them a little bit more.
Um, so slides are really good for if it's your first course and you're like, man, do I have to do the talking head thing like this? I wouldn't, I didn't for the first year of mine. 'cause it's, it's really nerve wracking. It's really hard. It takes a long time and it's hard to do without cuts. So I'm getting better at it, but I'm still, I waffle a lot.
You can tell. But I find this is quite natural and I, I like it as a, as the experience for the student. But, um, for your first courses, you don't have to just talk over the slides with a microphone. They don't even have to see your face. Okay? So, so create those slides.
Dialogue. I talk just to rough bullet points rather than, um, like say a teleprompter. So if you do do live talking head stuff, you might just, you might find that it's quite hard to do without any, um, like for me, I, I'm just kind of naturally trying to do this, but you might find it's a lot more professional or works a lot easier for you to read from a teleprompter. Teleprompters are pretty cool. They're, you can make on yourself with an iPad, Google homemade teleprompter. I didn't find it very useful for me.
It was good. It kind of takes the nerves away a little bit 'cause you can just read out and you sound a whole lot better. But I find reading from a teleprompter is, if you're really, really nervous, it's gonna raise your game to here. But if you are okay, like I am at talking on camera, it's gonna kinda lower you down to this baseline. You know, take all the kind of, I don't know, organic and personal and, uh, connection you can have with a student down to this kind of like median. So if you are really stressed and sweating, read from teleprompter, but after maybe a couple of courses, you might try and do it a bit more naturally and like they never get done in one take.
Like if I am doing this talking head stuff, this is okay 'cause it's a little bit more of a dialogue. But if it's the intro, you should see how many takes I have to do to kind of head all my like, hi, my name is Dan and I'm a Adobe certified instructor. And then I'll kind of, it takes a long time. So don't, if you are worried and you're like, man, it takes me a whole day to do a short video, that's me too. Okay. Um, these ones a little bit easier because I'm talking, there's no expectation of a succinct video.
You would probably wish it was, it was a bit shorter, but I'm okay to ramble. Um, so, uh, make sure you've got a dialogue. I don't read from it. I just have bullet points to talk from. Get your slides ready and your exercise files. Now your exercise files for me is quite useful.
So the whole process of it is really, really helpful in making a really nice smooth course. What I mean by that is that, let's say I'm doing a Photoshop course, okay? And let's say I get to the bit, I'm gonna, I have to make exercise files right? For us to make. So I go off, I find images that we're gonna use, and then I go through my outline and I go, okay, outline, uh, we need to talk about retouching here. So I'm gonna find a good example and I'm gonna start kind of doing it myself before I make other people do it.
And that does a couple things. One is it helps me kind of put down the bullet points of like, oh, make sure I tell 'em this. Oh, make sure I don't forget that bit. And I add that to my like, uh, outline, remember the big messy one from earlier on? Okay. So, um, it has like the little notations in there for me to make sure I cover.
It also helps me like, like it's kind of like a crazy person. But what I do is when I'm doing it, I'm talking in my head to my fictional audience. Okay. And I'm saying, I'm just, I'm imagining how I would, uh, you know, like discuss it during the course. So I'm talking to myself in my head and I get to, it's, it's really good 'cause I get to points where I'm like, huh, how am I gonna discuss that here without having first kind of acknowledged it in earlier on the course or something like that. Or maybe like I just get to a video, I'm like, man, this is too high core for where I feel we're at in the course.
It looked good when I was drawing the outline, but in the flow of the course, it's not working. So what I'll do is I'll go in and say, all right, I'll either move it around and go, you just need to be later. This whole section, it's gonna go down two pegs so that we're, the class is a bit more knowledgeable and fluent in the program before we get to that. Or let's say that it is, um, uh, fluent in the program, let's say I just gotta go back and like maybe introduce it a bit earlier. Okay. Maybe a smaller version of that thing, that technique that I need to explain.
I just kind of drop it in. I like, okay, I'll go back to here, update this little exercise a bit to, to talk about it a little bit so it's not such a big kind of overwhelming surprise later on. I find that really useful and I find my courses flow so much better when I've, I've got that kind of, I've done that crazy person talk in my head. So exercise files, slides, you might be, uh, doing the thing that you plan to do if you're doing a bit more of a theoretical course, say it's business, uh, it's a bit more of a yeah, a theory based. You might just be doing the slides here Okay. And maybe the dialogue.
Um, but yeah, it's time to get everything ready before you start recording. And just so you know, the timeframes that I give myself, uh, I find, let's say that I did a 50 video course just recently. It's a big, big long course you might doing anything that big, but that 50 videos, um, I, I like, if I was planning it again now, I'd say, okay, I need about four days of getting the, the content ready but kind of running it out, adjusting my thing. I generally do it in three days, but about four days is kind of what it takes me. And then recording is probably gonna take me about a week and a half Solid. Okay, well solid working days.
So 5, 6, 7, maybe eight days of recording to get all that done. I'm getting better at it. It'll probably take me a lot longer in the early days. But your, if it's your first course, you're gonna be doing this on the weekends and the evenings. So don't pick a 50 video course for your first one. Pick a 10 video course.
Okay. Something small that you can do and you can get out in a month or two. And as you know, you can just do that forever. I, I've gone full time with it and so I get to pour all my time into doing it. But I guess it's just interesting to know how long sometimes this kind of prep takes compared to the recording and that prep is so much useful because it makes the flow of the actual recording so much nicer. Alright, that my friends is gonna be it for yeah.
Preparing your course material. Next video. We're gonna start the recording. Alright, see you there.