This guide, "The Beginner's Guide to Making a Training Video," authored by Dan Keckan, CEO at Cinecraft Productions, offers a comprehensive walkthrough for producing effective training videos. The book emphasizes that creating a good training video requires a structured process and good instructional design practices, rather than simply recording with a smartphone.

The guide is divided into four main parts:

• Learning Strategy: This initial phase involves developing a creative brief or learning strategy, which acts as a blueprint for the entire project. It focuses on identifying the business problem, target audience, measurable learning objectives, and how the story will be told.
• Pre-Production: This phase covers all the tasks before shooting, including determining production roles, finalizing the budget, holding a kick-off meeting, creating a project timeline, writing a detailed script, selecting talent, creating a shot list, scouting locations, and creating a call sheet. The importance of clear visual direction in the script and understanding different shot types (wide, medium, close-up) is highlighted.
• Production: This phase is where the assets (video, photos, voice-over, music, animation) are created. Key tips for professional video shoots include respecting the location, having makeup, props, and wardrobe ready, collaborating with the videographer, ensuring professional lighting (3-point lighting is recommended), monitoring audio quality (using shotgun or lavalier microphones), and verifying that the camera is recording. The "Rule of Thirds" for good composition is also introduced.
• Post-Production: This final phase involves assembling all the created assets into a final training video. It includes meeting with the editor, understanding editing terminology (e.g., lower thirds, jump cut, audio mixing, color correction), managing the editing workflow, and conducting review cycles.

The guide also discusses different types of training videos, such as demonstrative modeling (how-to videos), video-based simulations, and awareness videos, and advises on selecting the best type for specific learning needs. It offers scriptwriting tips, emphasizing a conversational tone and focusing on "need-to-know" information.

Finally, the book covers distribution and evaluation of the training video, suggesting common output formats (MP4, AVI, MOV), resolution (16x9), bit rate, and frame rate. It stresses the importance of using analytics tools (like Google Analytics or LMS data) to track performance improvement and business metrics after deployment.

In conclusion, the guide distills the entire process into seven key points: identify the business outcome, articulate learning objectives, draft a script, record sound and visuals professionally, follow branding and compliance, communicate with the editor, and follow up on learner and business metrics.