What Troy McClure Can Teach You About Creating Awesome Screencasts

Troy McClure has made some exceptional instructional films in his day. You might remember him from such educational films as The Half-Assed Guide to Foundation Repair and Alice’s Adventures through the Windshield Glass. So with all his instructional video experience, you might be wondering…

What can Troy McClure teach me about creating awesome Screencasts?

Let’s first watch this educational film from Troy McClure, Meat and You: Partners in Freedom:

Eliminate confusion points and address common mistakes

It is maddening watching a screencast when something confusing is shown, and not addressed by the author of the screencast. You watch a 5 minute screencast and have this huge question at the end “well, what was that button you pressed”, or “why did you choose that option,” and that can kill an otherwise great screencast. David Anderson also points out that by rolling with mistakes in your screencast, and using the “Yes, and…” principle to your screencasts you can address common mistakes or confusing points.

In the previous video Troy does an excellent job of clearing up any points of confusion in this educational film. First he lets us know that a “killing floor” isn’t actually a floor, it “is more of a steel grating that allows material to sluice through so it can be collected and exported.” He later tells us that people who think its wrong to eat meat aren’t crazy, they are “just ignorant” because they haven’t heard of the “Food Chain”.

By eliminating points of confusion and addressing common mistakes you will make your viewers much happier and better informed.

Another of my favorite screencasters (Donnie Hoyle) does this frequently too. In this demo on Photoshop (at the 1:25 mark) he points out that you shouldn’t use the eraser tool to eliminate a background.

Add some personality

Because your Screenr screencast can contain audio, it gives you an awesome opportunity to add some life, humor, and personality to your screencast.

Let’s watch the next clip of Troy from the Self Help video, Adjusting Your Self-O-Stat with Brad Goodman, and look at how his personality comes through in the video.

Troy adds personality by over simplifying everything.

In the clip Brad draws a circle on the board and tells Troy, “this circle, is you” and Troy exclaims, “My god, it is like you have known me all my life!” Troy adds personality to the clip by ridiculously simplifying.

So, over simplifying is probably not the best idea for screencasts, it is better to cover and eliminate points of confusion, but viewing a screencast with some personality is always more interesting than some dry, script-read screencast.

Donnie has also done a great job of creating his series of wicked screencasts that really show off some of his personality that are worth checking out.

Troy adds personality by giving natural, hilarious, branded intros

Every instructional film Troy does begins, “Hi, I am Troy McClure! You may remember me from such educational films as…” and then follows it by stating some hilarious other film he has appeared in. Some of his more memorable educational films are:

• Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly
• Locker Room Towel Fights: The Blinding of Larry Driscoll

The reason this works so well is I know really quickly that: this guy made this other hilarious film, and it was awesome, and hey, I’ll want to check out this one too. If you check out the screencast I did on Dokeos I tried to do something similar (minus the hilarity). It didn’t really work out that well though because the intro was too rehearsed and too robotic, in other words, it came across with NO personality. Troy comes across naturally in his introductions.

There is a lot to learn from Troy McClure

Troy McClure is able to to create awesome educational films by eliminating and addressing points of confusion, and adding some personality.

Now go out there and create some awesome screencasts that Troy McClure would be proud of.

Special thanks to the guys over at http://www.snpp.com for all their awesome info on The Simpsons. Couldn’t have written this post without you.