The Stubborn Old Gardeners Format

Overall

  • The subject matter is always gardening instruction. Not promoting plant sale, not recruiting master gardeners, and not describing CAMGA activities. Horticultural how-to instruction. Always.
  • Always a custom thumbnail with MG’s face and some green and growing plant or bloom
  • Unless absolutely no option, all scenes are outside. Exception only when the subject matter demands it, as in a video about house plants
  • Talent always wears red apron (we have a supply of these)
  • Single talent always wears lavalier microphone wired to Zoom H2n recorder
  • If more than one speaker in a scene, fashion H2n into a “boom” microphone or hand-held mike. Boom mike held just outside the frame; hand-held is on camera and visible to audience.
  • Unless the circumstances demand it, master gardeners do not wear any hat or headgear
  • All videos have English captions. We actively encourage and fully cooperate with those willing to add foreign language captions.

Open

  • Fast fade up from black to talent, looking at camera. Talent delivers initial thesis statement of 10 seconds or less
  • Stubborn Old Gardeners intro with title of this video over picture of talent working again and looking down

Body of video

  • Target length of video is three minutes or less, never to exceed four
  • First shot of Master Gardener after video title should include 4-second left-justified super of the master gardener’s name on the first line and the word “Master Gardener” on the second line, as in “Cheri Bedford | Master Gardener.” No other title (that is, no Advanced Master Gardener, no President of CAMGA – just “Master Gardener”)
  • Generous use of close-up shots to illustrate technique or discovery
  • Stubborn Old Gardeners videos don’t use music. We did this at first but later realized it contributed nothing to our teaching function
  • Avoid on-camera zoom at all times. Pan, tilt, and move camera when necessary and seamless to follow action
  • No more than 30 seconds of outside talent. Stubborn Old Gardeners embraces Master Gardeners as authoritative
  • It’s fine to use more than one master gardener in the same video, and it’s fine to have interchange between them. Just make sure it’s natural and doesn’t seem too scripted

End of video

  • Stubborn Old Gardeners close with super slide and tagline. Final tagline changes with each video.
  • Fade to Black
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