Episode 287
Why Video Still Feels Hard (and How Small Teams Make It Work)
Most small teams want to do more video. The hard part is doing it every week, without the crew, the hours, or the budget to make it happen.
In this revisited episode, Matt sits down with Megan Torrance, Founder and CEO of Torrance Learning, to explore what it takes to make video work as a small team, and why the system she built years ago still holds up today.
Megan’s team rebuilt their studio so one person could walk in, flip a few switches, load up a teleprompter, and start recording.
That setup is now the engine behind Megan’s marketing videos and her stand-in client course (and the occasional goofy internal update, of course). It’s also why her team can go from ‘a client needs this course updated’ to published in a week.
In the conversation, Megan also gets into why a quick video beats a memo or email for tone and authenticity, the shot lists she uses to keep editing under control, and how Camtasia’s review workflow keeps feedback on the timeline instead of in email threads.
Learning points from the episode include:
- 00:00 – 01:09 Introduction
- 01:09 – 01:31 Megan’s background and Torrance Learning
- 01:31 – 02:46 Outgrowing the four-person shoot
- 02:46 – 03:29 Building a one-person studio with green tape
- 03:29 – 04:20 The videos the new setup unlocks
- 04:20 – 05:26 Why a quick video beats a memo, email, or Slack message
- 05:26 – 06:11 Shot lists, single takes, and keeping post-production manageable
- 06:11 – 06:50 Megan’s preferred tools: Camtasia’s review workflow
- 06:50 – 09:09 From a week-long course update to more authentic marketing video
- 09:09 – 09:58 Outro
Important links and mentions:
- Connect with Megan Torrance on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megantorrance/
- Visit Torrance Learning: https://www.torrancelearning.com/
- Learn more about Camtasia: https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/
- Listen to Megan’s first appearance on The Visual Lounge in episode 219: https://the-visual-lounge.captivate.fm/episode/making-video-production-doable-as-a-small-business
Transcript
And because we have this set up, I'm not kidding, we can shoot. Let's
Speaker:go from need to finish production and produce in
Speaker:the platform in a week. Good morning,
Speaker:good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from.
Speaker:Today we're going to be revisiting an episode with Megan Torrance. You
Speaker:know, since we recorded this episode, a lot has changed in
Speaker:video over the past couple years, namely new tools.
Speaker:AI has been a like a tidal wave, changing so many things.
Speaker:We've got some faster workflows and I would say there's probably even
Speaker:more access to video tools than ever. But what
Speaker:hasn't changed is important. And that's part of what makes
Speaker:video kind of hard. It's deciding what to make,
Speaker:how to make it doable, and how to stay consistent as a small
Speaker:team. So if you're a small team, this might be relevant. If you're an individual
Speaker:contributor, that's still all relevant as well. So here's
Speaker:why I wanted to revisit this episode because I think this conversation still
Speaker:holds up. As you listen, maybe don't focus on the
Speaker:specific tools, but listen for the decisions, the constraints,
Speaker:the mindset beyond the
Speaker:mindset behind making video actually work for your
Speaker:organization as a creator and for all the things you want
Speaker:to accomplish. With that said, let's dive into our conversation with
Speaker:Megan Torrance. Today we're going to be talking with Megan
Speaker:Torrance about this idea that as a small business
Speaker:owner, how she's empowered by the ability to easily make videos.
Speaker:Megan, welcome to the Visual Lounge. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. So
Speaker:Megan, real quick, give us a little background about yourself. So I am the founder
Speaker:and CEO of Torrance Learning. And we are a mostly
Speaker:corporate learning design and development company. So we do
Speaker:strategy, content, design and development, a ton of video, and then learning platforms
Speaker:and stuff. Okay, so let's, we're gonna go back in time a little bit. Tell
Speaker:us about the need that you had for video, particularly during the
Speaker:pandemic. What happened there? Okay. Okay. So a couple of things happened. Well, I mean,
Speaker:a lot of things happened. Right? A lot of things. So a lot of things
Speaker:happen. And we were using video, we were creating an off the shelf video product
Speaker:at the time and, and that was great. And then
Speaker:we had a lot of instructor led courses and face to face stuff.
Speaker:And in the pandemic, I was the only one coming to the office. So
Speaker:previously when we recorded video, we had. It was whoever
Speaker:was in front of the camera. We had one person behind the camera. Sometimes we
Speaker:had an additional sound person and then we had script check, right? And so we
Speaker:had a lot of people in an enclosed space,
Speaker:which suddenly became a super, super bad idea. So
Speaker:at the same time with the pandemic, all of a sudden all of my face
Speaker:to face glasses needed to go online and
Speaker:we had a little bit of time to kill. Not a lot of time to
Speaker:kill, but some. So what we did was. This is awesome. So our team set
Speaker:up a whole video situation in which
Speaker:it only required one person in the room, the person in front of the camera.
Speaker:So I could go in and these little, little pieces of
Speaker:green tape around the room went like, turn on this, plug this, do
Speaker:this. And you know, one switch would fire up the amp and the lights
Speaker:and all these things and. And then I would just load up my teleprompter and
Speaker:rock and roll. And that's been such an amazing
Speaker:tool. And we've taken that places we never thought we would. So
Speaker:I'm curious with that because obviously there's some work to get that set up. But
Speaker:what the. Out from an outcome perspective here now you've got this ability that you
Speaker:don't. You're not requiring two to four people to help you.
Speaker:And what kind of videos are you creating on a regular basis with that setup?
Speaker:So now, now that it's easy and I just push four
Speaker:buttons, I can walk in and I can record video anytime I want. Right.
Speaker:So I'm doing almost all of my marketing videos are in
Speaker:that setup. And it's preset with a big white blank
Speaker:slide so you can stick anything you want. So it's super, super flexible.
Speaker:It also means that we have a little bit of license and
Speaker:creativity. So if we have a, you know, a client course and they need
Speaker:a video and we just need somebody to make a stand in video, or
Speaker:we can do that, or sometimes we do goofy stuff
Speaker:just because we can. Well, so,
Speaker:okay, let's talk about that for a second. Because obviously
Speaker:there's this flexibility that you have. There's this capability that you've opened up that,
Speaker:you know, because you don't need those people. But look, as a small business
Speaker:owner, you've got to be super aware of all the time that goes into video
Speaker:and all the time that can be spent. And then here you're saying
Speaker:a little fun, goofy stuff, right? Like, I'm sure there's some
Speaker:CEO of a small business out there saying, no, we can't, we don't have
Speaker:time for that. So why is that important to you? Well, so it's
Speaker:it's, it's partly important because being
Speaker:authentic and real is super important. And
Speaker:I can write a memo that most people will ignore. Memo, email,
Speaker:Right. Yeah. Century. Am I in? But. Right. And,
Speaker:and it's hard to convey a message
Speaker:in email to get the right tone right. Slack is a little bit too
Speaker:casual and then that kind of disappears too. And a video lets
Speaker:people go back and refer to things. It lets people see your emotion and
Speaker:your tone and that's really helpful. Now the, the
Speaker:trick is, right, how do you do that at
Speaker:scale and, or with
Speaker:frequency and not make it be a ton of extra effort? Right.
Speaker:So we try as hard as we can to make short videos,
Speaker:single take videos, and low post production
Speaker:videos. I'm keenly aware of the amount of time it
Speaker:takes to cut out every single one of my flubs. So we have a few
Speaker:things that we do, a shot list that I keep track of that I send
Speaker:to the team. Like ignore, ignore, ignore. Oh my gosh. Totally don't ever even listen
Speaker:to that one. Use this one. It's the right one. So those kinds of things
Speaker:that help focus the team's time. So from a production side,
Speaker:you know, you're going in, you're recording and then are you also
Speaker:editing or your team's doing mostly the editing? My team is doing most of the
Speaker:editing. Is there anything that you've been able to pick up on, help with that
Speaker:scale? Obviously you talked to your shot list, right? Here's the things that worked, here's
Speaker:the things that didn't work. Is there anything else that you found that to be
Speaker:really helpful there for your team to kind of speed through that, you know,
Speaker:So a couple of things. One is we're using the Camtasia,
Speaker:the review tool, right. And so that allows all of us, and we have a
Speaker:process by which, you know, here's the shot. Grab this one.
Speaker:Before we clean it up, we put it in and we like, you know, chop
Speaker:here, add this. This is a great place for that silly outtake that you did.
Speaker:Whatever, right? And that lets us get
Speaker:an initial take, an edit round, a second second round of
Speaker:video, an edit round. Then we're adding closed captioning and things like that and the,
Speaker:you know, color correction and sound. You're doing all the rough stuff, right?
Speaker:Yes. Awesome. Let me ask you this because you've been, you've
Speaker:been able to invest in this way and it's. To me, it's always clear, clearly
Speaker:an investment, even if it was easy, even if it didn't cost A lot from
Speaker:an outcome standpoint, again, looking at. From a. As a
Speaker:leader of a small business, you're worried about the outcomes. How is. How has
Speaker:these videos that you've been able to do at building up a little bit more
Speaker:scale, how has that impacted things? Because you talked about, you're doing, obviously, course videos,
Speaker:you're doing marketing videos. You're having some fun with it, you know, connecting with,
Speaker:kind of making it human. What. What would you say that that's.
Speaker:How has it changed your business or helped it? That's a great question. So one
Speaker:of them is speed. So, for example, we have. We
Speaker:have these course videos out there. They're on Open Sesame, they're on the Cornerstone platform.
Speaker:And there are times when certain things will be out of
Speaker:date or a client. Right. Or the language around things has changed. Right. So
Speaker:in the last five years, the whole language around LGBTQ has changed. And so
Speaker:we've had to update things or we've had
Speaker:to add onto things, or somebody said, hey, this version of this course is kind
Speaker:of lightweight. Can you beef it up to hit this particular need that a client
Speaker:has? And because we have this setup, I'm not kidding, we can
Speaker:shoot rates go from need to finish production and
Speaker:produced in the platform in a week. And that
Speaker:allows us to move so fast because we have this
Speaker:efficient system. It allows me to pump out
Speaker:marketing videos pretty quickly, which is great. And they're a
Speaker:little bit better, you know. Yeah. I can hop in front of my Zoom and
Speaker:hit this recorded cloud and that's great. But
Speaker:it's not as polished. Right. Everybody knows it's me in front of Zoom and it
Speaker:doesn't feel as professional. And then
Speaker:where we're shooting just quick video, internal video or
Speaker:small targeted group, that's where we're bringing in that.
Speaker:That authenticity and a little bit of fun. Right. All the other stuff is pretty
Speaker:lock and docked and not terribly. It's kind dry, right?
Speaker:It's kind of dry. Yes. Right. And people have said, hey,
Speaker:you and your plain copy, free or copy space
Speaker:background. It looks a little bit boring, but it's fast and
Speaker:efficient. But when we can use all that free copy space to have
Speaker:fun or we keep. We keep track of
Speaker:not all of, but a lot of the really fun outtakes. We keep them because
Speaker:they become useful. Yeah. Well, Megan, this has been awesome and
Speaker:I love that you're taking this as a leader and focusing on it because obviously
Speaker:it takes work to get that set up to be so anyone can walk in
Speaker:and use the studio. We've done the same thing in our office where we've got
Speaker:a setup that ideally people just plug in a computer, turn
Speaker:on the camera and a setup that
Speaker:is way better, way better than their laptop camera and
Speaker:microphone. So I love that you're focusing on and you can see those benefits
Speaker:from the video. So if someone want to connect with you, where should they reach
Speaker:out? Good place to find me is at our website, torrancelearning.com and
Speaker:Torrance is T O R R A N C E or I'm on
Speaker:LinkedIn. And it's also another really good place to play and there's not a lot
Speaker:of Megan. Torrance is there. Perfect. Well, thank you, Megan. Thank you. All right, you
Speaker:guys heard from Megan. Look, you can do a once easy setup. You can use
Speaker:video in lots of different ways, whether you're a small business, big business, you're an
Speaker:independent contributor, you're leading the team, video has power for whatever you're doing.
Speaker:All we ask you at the visual lounge is you take a little time to
Speaker:level up every single day.
