During my recent speaking trip to the NDC London conference, I was also invited to record a Play by Play course for Pluralsight. A Play by Play course is a short film course that is in a conversational style. This involves having one person who is the subject matter expert for the course, and a 2nd person who is the facilitator for the course. It is this persons job to introduce the course and help draw information out of the subject matter expert by asking questions. This conversational style should make it easier for the learner to get a good gist of the subject in a short space of time. These types of courses are not meant to be super in-depth, but an introduction to a subject, or focusing on one area of a larger subject.
My partner in crime for this course was Lars Klint, who is another Pluralsight author. Lars has done a few of these courses before, so I knew I was in good hands. The course we was recording was about enterprise data security using Azure KeyVault. Essentially the course was about encryption key management using hardware security modules, or abstracted hardware security modules like Azure KeyVault.
We started the planning for this course in December where we put together the proposal that split the course down into modules. Each of these modules then had a content plan so we knew what the overall narrative would be from start to finish. Once this was approved I then split this out in to a slide deck where we have bullet points for each modules. I had this on my screen whilst we were recording. This acted as a prompt for me and Lars. Whilst this prompt would have been recorded on my laptop, none of this will be seen as it will be edited out.
Stephen Haunts recording a Pluralsight : Play by Play Course
When I first walked into the room on the day of recording, I will admit that it felt a little intimidating seeing all the lights, 3 large cameras and 3 camera operators, but luckily Lars and Troy Hunt were recording a course first, so they were happy for me to sit in and watch. I am glad I did this as it meant I could see what was involved, including how best to recover if you make a mistake. The technique here is to remember what you last said, pause and carry on with the same intonation in your voice to help make it a clean edit point for the editor. Every now and again we would speak out editor notes to the camera, but of course this will all be edited out of the final course.
