- March 23rd, 2012.
(upbeat music)
I was going to school in Utah.
I was like a junior in college
studying international relations,
and I was looking for an internship.
Hey, there Iz.
We're just filming here.
I was on the State Department's website.
The State Department is like the foreign ministry
here in the United States.
And they had an intro video, like a promotional video,
explaining their internship program
and it was very poorly done.
So in a weird moment of, I don't even know what got into me,
I sent these people an email and I said.
Well, I said some pretty mean things.
"I noticed the promo video you guys are using
is extremely poorly done.
I would like to make a video that
is more attractive and helpful."
What!
Man, 2012, me, was a weird me.
"Lemme know if you would like me
to make something and submit it.
I just think that this program could be more attractive
if the information was presented
in a more effective way,"
is how I put it.
Hold on a second, this is 2012.
(dramatic sounds)
Okay.
I didn't know very much about video in 2012.
I wasn't making very good videos.
I was making stuff like this,
and like this,
and it was just not very good.
In addition, I didn't know how to do motion graphics.
I wanted to learn how to do it, but I didn't know how.
And yet here I am promising to make a promotional video
which was very likely going to be all animation,
and I had no animation skills.
That's not true actually, to my credit,
I had one animation under my belt and it looked like this.
That's an owl and a circle around the owl and it,
and then it falls and then it goes down,
it just down.
That was my one portfolio piece.
Okay.
So that's me in 2012, and yet here I am proposing
to the State Department that I'm going to make them
a promotional video that is quote attractive and helpful.
Okay.
Cool.
So, what happens next?
They responded enthusiastically and said yes.
If you could make us a video for free
we would gladly take your video and put it on our site.
In this moment, something happened in my brain.
I chalk this up as one of the inflection points in my life.
It's something that would continue to happen
throughout my career and that would
take my animation skills from this,
to this.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna call this process,
this thing that happened, a speed boost.
Just like in Mario Kart, when you're like cruising along
and you see those flashy arrows
on the ground and you like hit them
and it speed boost you forward.
(car speeding sound)
It's like a hack.
It's like something that gives you more speed
than you naturally have.
After I got that email back from the State Department,
I began to devour tutorials.
I began to just focus on this video all day and all night.
I began to learn so much faster
than I'd ever learned before.
I call this, what was happening to me,
excited accountability.
So after three weeks of intense, excited accountability
I made this video, my first real motion graphic project.
Unless you count the owl, which was technically my first
and it's pretty dear to my heart.
Love that owl.
Let's face it, when it comes to internships
with the State Department not all college students
can afford to travel to Washington DC or overseas.
Okay.
I mean, it's not like great.
I went from knowing nothing truly
to knowing a ton about motion graphics
and having gotten my hands dirty for the first time.
And that was facilitated
through this excited accountability.
Soon BSFS will begin the micro volunteering program.
What's that ask?
Here's a problem, when you want to learn something new,
you become passionate about it.
If you wanna learn to bake bread suddenly
you have a super high tolerance for reading
about yeast fermentation.
If you wanna learn photography
suddenly you're able to sit down and learn
about shutter speed and aperture,
these fairly boring principles.
But now you suddenly have
the attention span of like a genius.
Two weeks goes by and suddenly that passion,
that tolerance for boring stuff becomes thinner and thinner,
and you eventually pear out.
This was me in 2012.
I had made it through a few weeks of learning this stuff
when my motivational fuel started to burn up.
I started to feel less and less inclined
to actually sit through the tutorials.
Then I wrote that email, I got that response
and this happened (car speeding)
My motivation was back.
My tank was full.
I was going fast.
I had accountability.
I was excited.
And suddenly my ability to persist through this kinda
difficult process of learning increased like tenfold.
(dramatic music)
So this is easier said than done.
And a lot of people ask me like, how do you actually go
about learning this stuff?
Yeah, you've got the speed boost.
Yeah, you have like the excited motivation,
but like what do you actually do to learn this
if you don't have film school
or some sort of structure to learn?
The answer to me and kind of the key
to my career when it comes to learning
this stuff has been the internet.
- [Reporter] On your mark, get set.
♪ We're riding on the internet. ♪
- I have a really soft spot in my heart
for learning online, and because of that,
I reached out to Skillshare to sponsor this video.
Because Skillshare is one of the sites
that I've used over the years to learn
and refine my visual storytelling skills.
Skillshare is like this giant repository of tutorials.
It's like 10 bucks a month, and you get access
to like 25,000 tutorials.
If you wanna learn animation like I did in 2012,
there are tons, tons of tutorials on the site
that will teach you all different aspects of animation.
There's one specifically called animated infographics
and data visualization which was kind of the style
that I was doing in that, in 2012.
It's really good, like quality teaching.
So, if you're kind of in a place right now
where you want to learn something new,
whether it's animation or a million other skills,
Skillshare has got like tons of different topics.
Then go click the link, and if you are one
of the first 500, you will get two months for free.
Meaning, you don't have to pay.
And then after that it's 10 bucks a month.
Go start learning stuff.
(upbeat music)
Skillshare doesn't have any influence over this video
or what I say or anything, but they did want to partner
with me on this video because this is something
that I truly 100% believe in
and want other people to experience as well.
(clock ticking)
(owl hooting)
(inaudible) don't need to travel abroad.
Okay, so am I recommending that everyone reach out
to the State Department and offer to redo their promo video?
No.
This is an example that illustrates a point
of putting yourself in a situation
of excited accountability.
First, let's talk about what you need
to make the situation work.
It's right there within excited accountability.
First you need to be excited.
Whatever situation you put yourself in,
that's going to teach you these skills.
You have to like be interested in it.
You have to align with whatever the message is
or whatever the project is.
That sort of passion and excitement about the project
is going to be a key part of the fuel.
The other aspect of this, the other side of it
is the accountability part.
There needs to be a good amount of pressure.
Not like the anxiety, like fear based pressure.
Like, that's actually like a speed bump, not a speed boost.
I mean the type of pressure that like you want to deliver
because you want to impress.
And if you don't deliver, you'll feel a little bit like.
That sort of pressure needs to be there
'cause that's gonna propel you forward as well.
A good balance of excitement and accountability
or pressure together will make a situation that is primed
for you to learn and to have the speed boost.
So lemme give you some examples that aren't State Department
maybe you want to learn how to cook.
So instead of just like telling yourself,
"Okay, I wanna learn how to cook."
You can invite a friend or some friends over
for a dinner party and you are gonna be the one to cook,
and you tell them that.
If you were interested in the cuisine or the dish
that you're cooking and you feel
a little bit of pressure because people
are coming over to your house,
suddenly you've just created a situation
of excited accountability.
All right, so let's step up the stakes one more notch
to a professional level.
Let's say you have some video skills,
but they're not in the place that you can actually go pitch
like a brand or an organization or a news outlet
to make video for them.
You don't have those skills yet,
but you want to acquire them.
In this case, I suggest going to a nonprofit
or a group that doesn't have
a ton of marketing budget and say,
"Hey, I will make a video for you."
And you develop a kind of a pseudo professional relationship
even though money's not changing hands,
and it's not that professional,
the stakes are not so high that if you don't deliver,
you're like reneging on a contract.
But they're high enough that you want to deliver.
And suddenly you'll be in that
excited accountability situation,
and here comes the speed boost.(cartoon car speeding)
The last example I wanna give you
is another one that comes from my experience.
Now we're talking summer of 2015.
(dramatic music)
Thanks to this excited accountability process,
I had done it several times
with a bunch of different organizations.
I had learned quite a bit of skills
and I was able to get a legitimate job in motion graphics.
Eventually that led me to getting a job at Vox,
where I was doing motion graphics and animation.
I wanted to take my skills to the next level.
And specifically I really wanted to get
into doing documentaries.
I had never done documentaries.
I had never made a legitimate like documentary
out in the field, but I wanted to learn.
So I went to my boss, at Vox, and I said,
"Hey, what if I went out and made an explainer
like we do here but I did it in the field,
pointing my camera at things, getting interviews,
and then animating on top of that."
At that time Vox was a startup.
And Joe, my boss, was like,
"Could you write it, and film it,
and edit it, and animated all on your own?"
And if so, like go for it.
And I was like, "Okay."
So I pitched this Cuba story and I was given
some great support from the people at Vox
to be able to have, do this experiment.
But the message was very clear.
"You can do this, but it needs to be good."
Meaning if we're gonna invest in this new format
that's a little bit costlier to have you go travel to Cuba,
then it has to be like worth the resources.
In the summer of 2015, that familiar feeling came upon me.
(cartoon car speeding)
I remember I was sitting in a hotel in Miami
the night before I was flying to Cuba.
There was $2,000 in cash sitting on the bed,
because in Cuba they don't take bank cards
you have to like literally bring a ton of cash,
which is terrifying.
And I'm sitting there with this mandate of,
if this isn't good it's not going to happen again,
like 100% responsibility on the situation
that I've put myself in.
Excited.
Yes, I was definitely excited.
I mean, look at that face.
That's an excited me, but also accountable,
pressure, responsibility.
Both of those things were happening to me
at the most extreme levels
that they had ever happened to me in my life.
And there's something that I can't even explain
that's just like spilling out of me.
I've now done this process a bunch of times,
but this was like the most intense.
So that night I did what I had been doing
for weeks up until that moment which is downloading videos,
videos that I really loved from like Vimeo and YouTube,
downloading them and them up in QuickTime
and watching them frame by frame and writing down,
"Oh, that edit was really fast,
and it went from this angle to that angle.
Oh the guy moved his camera kind of like this.
That was really interesting, I'm gonna do that in Cuba."
Like a giant list of exactly what I was gonna do
to up my skills.
Because I was in this highly motivated,
highly responsible, and accountable situation
that learning was sinking in.
I was learning in a whole new way.
At the time I watched a Skillshare course
about creative transitions, like how
to move your camera around in these kinds of creative ways
to build out transitions in your videos.
And like I was devouring this tutorial, like knowing
that I was gonna have to use this stuff
in this situation that I'd put myself in.
I learned so much.
I was so ready to go to Cuba and perform.
(upbeat music)
In the end I made three videos and there were the
best videos that I'd ever made in my life.
That was another inflection point for me, that Cuba trip.
I feel grateful to Vox for giving me that opportunity.
Joe, my boss was very, very like open
to those types of experiments.
And so I'm incredibly grateful to Vox for that
but I'm also grateful for what happens to the human brain
when you feel that excited accountability.
You can really really learn a lot
without the need of school.
So thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video,
but also thanks to Skillshare for just being around,
for being a repository of high quality learning
on the internet for 10 bucks a month
so that all of us can access it.
Again if you want to try Skillshare out
for two months for free, you can click the link
down in the description and just see
if it like is interesting to you.
Good teaching and good learning, visual learning
like you see on Skillshare is a way to kind of
help pave that process and make it a little bit easier.
So, I hope this is helpful.
I would love to hear your feedback about this process
and what we talked about today.
And yeah, I got to go back to editing borders
because there's just so much borders to edit.
Okay.
Bye.
(upbeat music)