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Quick tip: if you ever want to find some good posts on a given domain, search for the domain on reddit and hacker news, then order by score:
(Unfortunately in this case not all the stuff is by RH.)
[Link] Animated Video - The Useful Idea of Truth (Part 1/3)
I have taken this well received post by Eliezer, and remade the first third of it into a short and quickly paced youtube video here: http://youtu.be/L2dNANRIALs
The goals of this post are re-introducing the lessons explored in the original (for anyone not yet familiar with them), as well as asking the question of whether this format is actually suited for the lessons LessWrong tries to teach. What are your thoughts?
The /domain/ use of Reddit is not something I'd ever heard of before. It seems like a very nice tool, and I'm glad you've shared it.
Or present each sentence as a whole when the speaker starts saying it. (Reading is more "chunky" than listening; a single fixation of the eyes may take in multiple words. Or conceivably only part of a really long word. So presenting exactly one word at a time is rather weird.)
That's fantastic advice, and it's made me realize a lesson in gradually adapting my design decisions.
My original plans included (mostly) kinetic typography with the occasional visual aid. The elaborate style used for presenting the text was the main mechanic for capturing attention and differentiating it from an audiobook. As work was being done, however, I started adding more visualizations, and making the visualizations more compelling, more the point of focus, and otherwise moving into animating scenarios than animating words. The text, to not distract from what was now the focus of the video, has been becoming much more closed captioning than than anything else, and I hadn't realized that until now.
I may or may not incorporate a more "chunky" presentation of words in this video (mostly because the thought of going back through what I have already and changing it is a daunting task, and negative-reinforcement for ever completing this thing at all), but I'm happy to say it's something that now exists in my possible design space, and will definitely be a consideration for future videos.
My first impression is that the text looks very cramped - it would probably be very difficult to read from far away.
The final product will be 720x1280, so hopefully that isn't a significant problem. I'll try and keep wider kerning/spacing in mind as I move forward, though. Thank you for the feedback!
In response to
Open thread, Sept. 1-7, 2014
My work on converting The Useful Idea of Truth into a video is going well. I didn't successfully anticipate the time that would be necessary to finish, but things are getting done at an acceptable pace. The best thing I can say, for sure, is that the overall style and presentation of the work has come a nice way forward since the start of this project, especially after working in some of the suggestions and impressions I've gotten from people.
(Included here is a short GIF of one of the recent portions that I'm particularly fond of, so additional criticism and suggestions for improvement are especially welcome.)
In response to
Open thread, 25-31 August 2014
Ignore this. It is a test of embedding images in LessWrong's comments.
In response to
Open thread, 25-31 August 2014
My comment in the previous thread.
I'd like to share a finished portion of my "Useful Idea of Truth" video for minor feedback, if people are interested in seeing it. The Sally-Anne task explained.
Let me know what you like, what you don't, and if you think these videos will be worth the time I put into them.
Agreed, these would be more shareable than lw posts.
I thought you were being a little too fancy with the kinetic style text. The added difficulty in reading it compared to something more linear and clean/minimal was small but enough to make it harder to read it and still watch the illustrations at the same time. That might just be my taste, I am the one asking about attention disorders downthread after all, and I don't want to take away from the fact that it's cool you're actually taking time to do something when it's far more common to just fling ideas out there (which is fine too).
I'm a little surprised I haven't gotten more complaints like that, actually. Anything to refine the look, feel, and overall usability of what I make is great to hear, so keep up the complaining! The final product will, however, be a video with a voice saying everything the kinetic text does, so hopefully the difficulty of reading is mitigated by the ability to listen instead/as well. Should that not be the case, it's very easy for me to do less elaborate text in future videos.
In response to
Open thread, 18-24 August 2014
As I understand the situation, converting the main Sequences into a long series of short, well presented online videos would be awesome and a valuable resource (examples of the imagined format of such videos include the Youtube channels CGP Grey and CrashCourse) . I'm currently working on turning a Less Wrong post (The 1st 3rd of The Useful Idea of Truth) into one such video, and had a thought. Is it within the interests of either MIRI or CFAR to fund the production of video versions of Less Wrong posts? It's something I'm interested in starting dialogue about, as I'm significantly constrained by my existing position, and employment would be a huge help in getting better videos done faster.
Edit: Because I love teasers and hype, and I want to get some evidence out there that I do know what I'm doing, Here's a little taste of what I've got done already, in soundless HTML5 form. Just the 1st 14 seconds of the section of the video that explains the Sally-Anne Task.
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Awesome!
Getting these ideas wider presentation is a good thing.
One stylistic nitpick: I know the visual style you're going for requires the words to appear incrementally in the video, in time with the spoken presentation. But do they really have to appear syllable by syllable in some cases? Things like "Al-fred-Tar-ski" comes across to me as if you're talking down to the viewer, which I don't think is your intention.
I agree with you. If you pay attention, you'll notice the overall presentation of the text changes dramatically as the video goes forward. This correlates to the lessons I learned in real time while making it, and the earlier video is only like the way it is because I didn't feel like going back and changing things was an important enough of an improvement to warrant the effort.