We are
Reason Digital

We started by identifying the things we wanted statistics about - e.g. how does the Internet affect

• fundraising
• campaigning
• community building

Then we sought out reports, in this case with a UK bias, which addressed these topics, using a combination of Google power searching, existing bookmarks, recommendations from industry gurus and relevant Delicious tags.

Our staff & students collaborated on a storyboard & script using Google Docs so that we could decide what we were going to include and what not to include. As an aside, we've also considered making a 2-minute edited version of the video to focus on individual themes.

Once we'd decided on a script, our web/graphic designer put the infographic together in Adobe Illustrator, used Adobe After Effects to animate the illustrations and edited the sound in Final Cut Pro X (after buying a suitable track from a royalty-free audio website). Transitions in the animation were synced to specific points in the soundtrack so that the animations moved in rhythm to the beats of the background music, so there was some maths involved in calculating exact timing and matching the precise frames.

The completed video was exported and uploaded to both YouTube and Vimeo, to take advantage of the unique demographic of each service's audience and to allow sharing through multiple providers, but embedded in the page from a Vimeo Plus account to take advantage of its API and reporting tools.

To get technical for a moment, the web page was put together using standard HTML & CSS from templates generated by an Open Source Content Management System which also manages the rest of our website. The dynamic page elements such as the "sources" and "useful links" boxes were changed using a combination of jQuery, jQueryUI, SWF object and the Vimeo API, so that chapters in the video triggered certain actions, such as displaying the relevant source report.

We set up Google Analytics to track page views, which points of the video people lose interest and how many times the video was shared to social media using AddThis. We also set up custom filters to report how many visits came from email, social media and natural search - figures which we expect to change over time, but will give us an insight into which methods give the best engagement for promoting future projects.

We also integrated a signup form into Mailchimp using their API, segmented so that we can send specialised content and follow-up emails only to people who signed up after viewing the video.

There were MANY staff days involved in this process, I can't overstate how labour-intensive it was, but I do feel that we produced a useful, informative video which is of real benefit to people in the sector, and which we can reuse in talks, workshops, conferences and some of our promotional activites.

We intend to update the video annually, with new and updated facts, and with links to new blog posts and reports, so we've designed it in such a way that will make it less labour-intensive next time.

I hope that gives you some insight into the process of putting the video together.