…And how to get the most out of watching tutorials.
This post is an introductory summary of what goes on in my head and what goes on in the heads of others (I think) as we generate tutorials.
If you take a look at the Creative Cow After Effects tutorial database, you will find literally hundreds of tutorials to choose from–and I’m sure many times that when it comes to tutorials for other programs. Some are written, some are audio-only, some are video tutorials–of these, some are scripted and some are not–and some are podcasts. A google search for “After Effects tutorials” yields millions of results.
[Almost] all of them are driven by the same basic idea: to share my knowledge with others and in the process gain a deeper understanding of the material myself.
Creating a tutorial requires research on my part. I have to play around with the effect, get it looking just right, streamline the process, find ways to improve it, and finally record a tutorial about it (or write a blog post!). Of all the ways I have learned After Effects, be it through books, DVD’s, forums, or even watching tutorials, it is through teaching on my own (in seminars and online tutorials) that I have gained the deepest understanding of what’s actually going on, even in the simplest of processes. Tell me Andrew Kramer doesn’t learn anything (and have fun) discovering for himself how to make people’s heads explode or create demon face warps! The Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas writes:
When students teach, the thin-ness of their knowledge is exposed to themselves and their instructors. Students learn differently as teachers than they do as students. As teachers, students develop a sense of responsibility, which provides motivation to learn. Students [have] an opportunity to re-learn [and] to re-visit ideas from new perspectives with new questions and new goals.
The same can be said of learning After Effects, visual effects, motion graphics and compositing as can be said about learning in any academic field. That, I believe, is one of the two primary reasons why people create tutorials. By teaching how to use After Effects (or whatever it is), they learn how to use it better themselves.
The second is out of an honest drive to help other people. We have learned these skills, and now we want to pass them on to others. The key word here is skills.
We’re not just teaching an effect. Honestly, how many times can you use the Sin City Effect or track Mystic Text onto a wall? If you were ever to use just about any of Andrew Kramer’s effects tutorials, people would instantly recognize them as what they are, simply because they’re all so popular (people in the FX world, that is…)! Many people copy recognizable tutorials and put them in their demo reels as their own. John Dickinson described a situation just like this in an interview he had with Andrew Kramer. Again, the point is not just to teach an effect (and that’s not casting judgment on any of Andrew Kramer’s tutorials–every single one of them is excellent). The point is to teach technique and problem solving skills.
If I watch a tutorial, I try to focus on what the underlying technique is, not what the surface-level effect is. The effect I will likely never be able to use, but the technique is something I can probably use for a long time and on a myriad of different projects!
To get the most out of tutorials do what I wrote above. Focus on what the technique is! How is the author (teacher) using tools to get a certain effect? How is he/she playing around with the parameters to get the look? What’s the technique? Again, in most cases, the specific effect doesn’t matter, but the problem solving skills do.
Aharon Rabinowitz seems to agree:
As trainers, we’re not in the business of teaching people how to be talented. We’re in the business of teaching technique, or how to get the job done. You know why? Because you can’t teach talent. Talented people use technique to enhance their ability to express themselves artistically. Non-talented people use technique to express themselves technically.
That quote is on a slightly different topic, but the same principles apply. Read part of that again: “Talented people use technique to enhance their ability to express themselves artistically.” It’s the technique that’s important, and, in regard to my post, specific effects are not.
With all that said, my next tutorial is going to be about a very specific look/effect that you will almost never be able to use. But hopefully you will have read this post and will realize that that isn’t important. You will be clever and follow the technique of the tutorial, not the effect. We will look at some problem solving strategies to help us learn how to do something invaluable: create original work and unique looks.
Stay tuned.
