The Telly Awards are one of the video industry’s most esteemed honors. Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards recognize outstanding achievements in video content production within a wide range of industries, including film and television production, online video, advertising, and more.

It’s an honor to be recognized alongside so many renowned brands, studios, and agencies in the industry. Some of our fellow Telly winners include Cut + Run, Netflix Disney Parks, Media.Monks, Paramount, National Geographic Society, Sesame Workshop, and many others.

All our award-winning videos were created using the Vyond platform. And three of these winning videos are available as templates you can use to create your own videos. Vyond empowers anyone, regardless of their level of expertise, to produce captivating and award-worthy videos.

Here’s a quick recap of the videos that received recognition at the 2023 Telly Awards:

Vyond Producers Hub Promo (Get to Know the Producers):

Silver Telly Winner in Branded Content – Promotional

• Video Producer: Prakriti Rai, Vyond
• Sr. Manager, Creative & Brand: Shahrzade Ehya, Vyond

Explore the Producers Hub

Spotting Ageism in the Workplace

Bronze Telly Winner in Branded Content – D&I

• Video Producer: Sofala Knapton, Vyond
• Sr. Manager, Creative & Brand: Shahrzade Ehya, Vyond

Use this template

Speech Enhancer

Silver Telly Winner in Branded Content – How-To/DIY

• Director of Design & Video Lab: Emily Chau, Vyond
• Video Producer: Kevin Kartono, Vyond
• Senior Copywriter and Voiceover: Isobel McKenzie, Vyond
• Voiceover: Michelle Pardini

Color Contrast for Web Accessibility

Bronze Telly Winner in Non-Broadcast – Diversity & Inclusion

• Video Producer: Prakriti Rai, Vyond
• Voiceover: Kyle Doan, Vyond
• Sr. Manager, Creative & Brand: Shahrzade Ehya, Vyond

Use this template

Taylor Tinkers

Silver Telly Winner in Social Video – Series: Products & Services

• Video Producer: Taylor Morgan (Independent Filmmaker)
• Sr. Manager, Creative & Brand: Shahrzade Ehya, Vyond

Black History Month (2022)

Silver Telly Winner in Social Video – Education & Discovery

• Video Producer: Sofala Knapton, Vyond
• Sr. Manager, Creative & Brand: Shahrzade Ehya, Vyond

Use this template

Accessible and powerful award-winning video creation

With the Vyond platform, anyone can create captivating media—no video production experience required. Vyond’s intuitive and user-friendly interface empowers you to bring your ideas to life and tell compelling stories through animated video.

Try Vyond for yourself with a free trial: you’ll get two weeks to explore Vyond’s full range of features and unleash your creativity. Start my 14-day free trial

Try Vyond for Free

The post Vyond Wins Big (Again) at the 2023 Telly Awards appeared first on Vyond.

Existing and emerging text-to-video AI tools are making it easier than ever to create video content. And they’re only getting better. Here’s a look at the types of AI tools that exist now and what’s coming soon, the leading players, and the benefits of text-to-video generators.

What is text-to-video AI software?

A few years ago, software advertising itself as “AI-powered” and capable of transforming text to video entered the market, promising faster and easier outputs. These offerings generally fall into two categories:

The first are video makers that match keywords in a text prompt you provide to a random assortment of stock photos, music, and video clips that are tagged with similar keywords. The result: videos–usually geared for social media—that can feel stylistically inconsistent and generic.

The second are platforms that allow you to create videos narrated by a selection of human-like avatars that will say whatever text you provide. The result: “talking head” content that, despite advances in the technology, still comes off as stiff and less than genuine.

However, as of 2023, a new, far more powerful category of AI video creation tools is emerging. Unlike keyword matchers and avatar creators, this software is powered by generative AI (think ChatGPT and DALL-E 2) that has the potential to help companies create high-quality video content that’s both original and easily edited.

Let’s take a look at how these exciting AI-powered text-to-video makers work; which are available now and which are coming soon; and how they promise to change the way you make professional-grade videos.

Learn more about AI powered video

Leading AI text-to-video generators

Emerging text-to-video AI tools are being developed by both well-regarded brands adding generative AI functionality to their platforms and new companies working to bring their first product to market. Here are some of the main players. 

Vyond Go 

Even before the launch of Vyond Go in June 2023, Vyond’s animated video creation software was loaded with AI-powered features like Instant Video Translation, Photo to Character, Visual Content Search, and Speech Enhancement that help users automate time-consuming tasks and create content more quickly.

With the release of Vyond Go, the company became the first in the video creation industry to offer an AI-based script and video creator, capable of creating a script and high quality, editable video content, based on a text prompt, within seconds.

Once a first draft has populated, users can quickly polish the video within Vyond Go using a simple text-based editor, or take it into Vyond Studio for fine-tuning.

How Vyond Go Works

1. Enter a prompt or drop in content you want it to respond to.

Vyond Go creates video scripts with the help of ChatGPT, which is integrated with the platform. ChatGPT draws upon its vast Internet-based learning model to generate a script based on your prompt. 

Or, if you include a sample of information in your prompt you want it to incorporate, it will generate content based primarily on that sample. 

Learn more about ChatGPT video scripting from Vyond’s CEO

2. Choose the vibe, format, and location you want for your video

The Vyond Go platform allows you to choose from a multitude of locations (like Home, Abstract Background, Open Office), vibes (like formal, informative, casual, or playful), formats (like announcements, rants, and overviews), and layouts (like conversation or talking head). 

3. Edit the video with Quick Edit—or refine it in Vyond Studio

After typing in your prompt and making your other selections, Vyond Go delivers a script and a starter video in seconds. You can then adjust text and voice-over content within Vyond Go. Or by clicking on the edit icon, you can fine-tune it within Vyond’s standard video creation platform, Vyond Studio–for example, swapping out characters, changing backgrounds, and instantly translating the video into 70+ languages.

Pros:

• Vyond Go is the only product like this on the market, and it’s available as of June 28, 2023. 
• The script and video output created with a text prompt is editable and in a unified style
• All the AI tech exists right in the Vyond platform; there’s no need to use multiple tools to generate or edit content

Cons: 

• Vyond Go doesn’t yet have the ability to generate brand-new animated content based on a text prompt–but that functionality is coming soon
• Thus far, you can use Vyond Go to create content in Vyond’s Business-friendly style, but not their Contemporary or Whiteboard styles

Watch Vyond Go’s Launch Webinar

Adobe Firefly

For more than five years, Adobe has been integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology across its platform to automate tasks and boost creativity–technology they call Adobe Sensei. 

In April 2023, Adobe entered the generative AI market with the launch of the beta version of Adobe Firefly, its new suite of creative generative AI models. As of June 2023, their offerings include the ability to generate original images, color variations, and other visual effects with a text prompt—elements producers can use to create videos. But soon Adobe hopes to also offer video producers the ability to make edits to already-recorded video, like changing color schemes, time of day, and even the seasons with a simple text prompt.

Pros: 

• Like Vyond, Adobe Firefly offers a variety of AI and generative AI functionality all in a single, already popular content creation and editing platform.

Cons: 

• Though the goal of Firefly is to make design projects simpler, Adobe products are still targeted towards designers. So non-designers may still face a learning curve. 

Text-to-video AI tech still in R&D

A handful of tech companies are developing models that will soon make it possible for companies to create high-resolution video clips of scenes based on text prompts. While they’ve not yet brought a product to market as of June 2023, the research papers and sneak peeks they’re providing online make clear the huge potential for this technology. 

Nvidia, a longtime leader in AI computing, is sharing its research on generating high-resolution video clips with latent diffusion models. Their website features samples of short, funny video clips they’ve been able to generate from text prompts, including ones of a polar bear playing a bass, a lion surfing, and a koala playing the piano.

Meta is previewing their Make-a-Video tool, which aims to create short video clips from both text-based prompts and static image prompts. 

Newcomers like Runway.ml and Opus.ai are also sharing their research, and providing glimpses into what may be available in the near future. 

Pros: 

• Once this class of text-to-video AI technology is more refined and user-friendly, it will be possible to create high-quality video content more easily than ever before. 

Cons: 

• None of these companies are yet offering a viable product. 
• Most of the video clips these tools can create thus far are very short, lower-resolution GIF-length clips. As is, these outputs aren’t likely to be useful to companies looking for video content that fits their brand style. 

Business reasons for using generative AI text-to-video tools

Faster video production 

Generative AI text-to-video makers make it possible to create business-friendly, first-draft video content faster than ever before. Specifically:  

• L&D teams tasked with creating a high volume of training video content can turn around requests in less than half the time they’re used to
• HR teams can use text-to-video tools to ensure they’re communicating effectively about policies or business changes in a timely manner
• Sales departments can use generative AI text-to-video tools to keep up with the demand for creating highly personalized, tailored versions of general sales video content to share with prospects 
• Marketing teams can use generative AI text-to-video tools to respond immediately to urgent news or trends with right-time, right-place video content 

Cheaper, more accessible video production 

With these text-to-video AI tools in place, companies will be able to dramatically reduce their reliance on expensive video production vendors, and make it possible for anyone who has a good idea to create engaging video content, not just the design and video production teams on staff. 

More imaginative content 

Very soon, this technology will make it possible for an infinite number of creative ideas to be realized in seconds, simply by typing in a text prompt. 

The future of text-to-video AI tools for business

This cutting-edge tech category is undeniably exciting. But what will ultimately determine the commercial success of these text-to-video AI tools is their ability to create business-friendly content that’s relevant, editable, and brand-compliant. 

As of June 2023, only a few companies have brought such a product to market. But in the months and years to come, as the technology evolves and improves and the market provides feedback about its needs, more is sure to follow. 

And video creation as we know it will never be the same. 

To take Vyond Go for a spin: sign up for a free 14-day trial today. 

Try Vyond for Free

The post The Best Text-to-Video AI Software for Creating Professional Videos appeared first on Vyond.

Last week, the Vyond team took the ATD23 conference by storm in San Diego. We joined a diverse community of over 13,000 e-learning professionals and gave visitors a preview of our new spring release features, including our soon-to-be-released AI-based script and video creator, Vyond Go. More than 9,500 professionals from 80+ countries rely on ATD’s annual conference to learn about trends and best practices, discover new tools and solutions at the largest EXPO for training and development practitioners, and share ideas with peers who are committed to helping create a world that works better. 

Keynote speakers included Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant; Vyond’s sponsored speaker, the strategic advisor Priya Parker; and Tony and Grammy Award winning artist Leslie Odom Jr. 

During her keynote, Ms. Parker hosted a dynamic event grounded in concepts about meaningful group experiences found in her book, The Art of Gathering. In this insightful, highly interactive event, Priya Parker broke down the anatomy of what makes for transformative gatherings and encouraged attendees to use some of her strategies to connect with others in real time during the session. 

Vyond highlights

CEO Gary Lipowitz talks about Applied AI for the Enterprise

Gary Lipkowitz, Vyond’s CEO, took to the ATD23 stage to deliver a presentation called Applied AI for the Enterprise: Relevance, Brand Compliance, and Safety that explained how companies can use AI to create content that’s relevant, brand compliant, and secure.

Vyond unveils its Spring 2023 Release, including Vyond Go

Thousands of attendees stopped by our booth to see what’s new with Vyond, and get a glimpse of our new AI-based script and video creator, Vyond Go in action. The response was enthusiastic, to say the least—and got us even more excited to officially launch Vyond Go at the end of June. 

Beyond Vyond Go, we showed off new Spring Release features like Global Search, new industry-specific content, Bulk Audio Edit, Closed Captioning, Instant Preview, and more.

Good times at Petco Park

Vyond team members joined conference attendees on the field at the Padres stadium Petco Park, where they enjoyed hot dogs and 80s classics from Los Angeles arena rock band, Wayward Sons.

VIP Cocktail Reception

On Monday night, over 100 guests enjoyed Vyond’s invite-only VIP Cocktail Reception, complete with live music and custom cocktails.

After some heartfelt words of thanks to our customers, we toasted Vyond’s latest AI capabilities. And congratulations to our raffle winner – enjoy the iPad Pro. Can’t wait to see everyone in New Orleans for ATD24!

The post Vyond Unveils Vyond Go at ATD ICE 2023 appeared first on Vyond.

G2 compares the best business software and services based on user ratings and social data, and utilizes collective, authentic knowledge – incorporating peer-to-peer, customer-driven reviews – to help buyers find the right solutions for their business needs. Users rated Vyond highly across numerous categories as part of G2’s Winter 2023 awards, bestowing us with the following honors:

• #1 in Results, Implementation, and Usability – the top spot in three Animation categories and awards for “Best Results,” “Best Usability,” “Most Implementable,” “Fastest Implementation,” and “Users Most Likely to Recommend”
• Five (5) Enterprise category awards – including “Leader” awards, as well as “Best Support” and “High Performer” honors
• Ten (10) Overall “Leader” awards – including the “Leader” award for Animation, Content Creation, Video Editing, and Presentation; as well as “Momentum Leader” for Animation, Presentation, and Video Editing

Vyond was also an overall winner in the “Users Love Us” category. Our CEO Gary Lipkowitz said, “These latest G2 awards illustrate how our relentless focus on customer success makes Vyond even more relevant and compelling in today’s economic climate. We’ve done well because Vyond helps customers meet their learning and development objectives with AI-powered video that engages and educates while remaining cost-efficient. Our team is absolutely thrilled with these latest awards from G2 because they’re real customer rankings. I want to thank our customers and partners for their support as we continue to define the video-based learning sector.”

More details on our recent G2 awards can be found on our awards web page. 

The post Vyond Named Best Video Creation Software by Customers on G2: 35 New Awards in Total appeared first on Vyond.

At Vyond, we offer more than 200 fully-scripted animated video templates (and counting) to help L&D, HR, and Internal Comms teams not only solve this problem but have fun doing it. 

So if you’re looking for a more effective way to deliver your most critical employee messaging in the coming year, consider signing up for Vyond and using this collection of the 10 video templates for employee communications our customers downloaded the most in 2022. 

#1. The Employee Benefits Overview

During onboarding and open enrollment, share the highlights of (and changes to) your full benefits package in a fresh, entertaining way. 

• Features a diverse group of representative employees
• Includes sections that explain PTO, medical, dental, 401k, stock options, and a variety of other benefits
• As with all our videos, it’s useful as is–or a good starting point for creating something new

#2.  The Quiz Game Show 

Want to make your next video more interactive and effective? Almost 1,500 customers did just that by using this engaging quiz show video template for a variety of training purposes.

• Create any content categories you want
• Includes sections for both right and wrong answers
• Easy to customize with your company branding

#3.  Introducing Your Team

Introduce your team to a new hire, a newly acquired department, or an external vendor with this upbeat video template. 

• Features a clever approach to describing your team members’ responsibilities and personalities
• Includes a script for members of a creative agency as an example (account manager, photographer, writer, graphic designer, marketing manager, and accountant), but you can modify the roles and characters as needed

#4.  Impact Report End of Year Video / Annual Report 

This upbeat, highly-visual video template is a great way to succinctly summarize your organization’s most meaningful achievements over the past year, without the need for a narrator. Use it on its own, or as a teaser for a more in-depth version of your annual report. 

• Created with a combination of our whiteboard style and animated photographic elements
• Features a mix of animated stats and graphs, and multiple options for transitions between sections 

#5.  Season’s Greetings (from a Distance)

Wish your remote employees or your company partners and vendors a happy holiday season with this short, slightly irreverent video. And if you’d like to send something more targeted at this time of year, also consider using: 

Our Happy New Year template
Our Happy Chrismukkah template
Or our Noche Buena template

#6. Video to Replace PowerPoint Presentations 

Need to internally sell an idea or make a business case to your leadership team? Surprise your audience by creating an engaging video pitch instead of the PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation they’re accustomed to.  

• Built as a sales pitch deck, but you can use this structure as the basis for all variety of presentations
• Includes animated elements that compare features, demonstrate ROI, and engagingly present bonus features

#7. Ping, Ring, or Email 

Considering the growing number of remote workers, and the varying communication preferences of different generations of workers, it’s wise to establish some company protocols for when to use email, a collaboration tool like Slack, or pick up your smartphone and make a call. 

This video offers up some best practices in a light, approachable way. 

#8.  Equality vs. Equity Explainer 

Our customers used this very short video last year to help explain the important differences between equality and equity, and explain concepts like allyship. 

• Uses a powerful visual metaphor to make the point
• Perfect for including in a longer presentation related to DEIB principles

#9.  What is Intersectionality? 

HR and L&D pros in particular found this short video explainer useful in their diversity training initiatives. 

• Includes audio of a female narrator reading a short, well-researched script on the subject, which you can adjust or re-record if you’d prefer someone from your company to do the narration

#10.  Supporting Employee Wellness at the End of the Year

“It’s good to remember that the season of cheer can sometimes be the season of stress.” So begins this video offering tips on how employees can practice self-care during the holidays. 

• Features a whiteboard-style illustration style
• Includes sections for pointing employees to helpful resources

Want to play around with Vyond Studio and make your own content, free for two weeks? Sign up for our trial to get access to 200+ fully scripted templates, 200+ starter templates, and more than 2,300 scene templates. 

The post The 10 Most Popular Vyond Video Templates for Company Communications in 2022 appeared first on Vyond.

Bucking prevailing tech industry trends, we achieved strong customer growth across key enterprise use cases, including learning and development, sales enablement, and internal communications. Solid execution across all company functions also enabled us to increase our customer base, grow our headcount, and expand our geographic footprint while continuing to focus on customer satisfaction.

Vyond’s ability to help companies create content that actually “sticks” helped us add 400,000 new users to our community this year, illustrating the value of video creation software as a cost-efficient and highly effective communication tool in today’s business environment. 

We’ve grown in key vertical markets like banking and finance, and expanded our seat license numbers in numerous high-growth sectors, including healthcare, biotech and pharmaceuticals, as well as with software and internet companies. Vyond’s channel program also continues to expand, and we recently achieved a strategic win with partner Omniplex to place Vyond in the UK Government’s G-Cloud procurement platform. 

Some additional highlights from Vyond’s outstanding year:

• Off-the-Charts Customer Satisfaction Scores

  Our customer satisfaction (CSAT) metrics, which have been at an industry-leading 94% over the past five years, rose even further in 2022. Thanks to diligent customer listening and outstanding responsiveness, we exceeded our own lofty internal goals, with customer satisfaction scores averaging between 97 and 99%. What’s more, we achieved a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 63 (the industry average is around 30) with customers describing Vyond’s platform as “fast,” “easy-to-use,” “flexible,” “customizable,” and “fun,” and raving about our customer support. 

• New Locations, New People

  During a year in which many tech companies reduced their workforce, we increased our total headcount by close to 40%. This spring, Vyond welcomed new Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Van Diamandakis, who is overseeing the company’s new Chicago office, located in the Fulton Market tech hub. The company’s regional expansion into the Midwest will include more than 25 new hires in sales, marketing, and customer success. Vyond also created a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Vyond Company Limited, based in Thailand, to serve as an anchor for Vyond’s Asia Pacific (APAC) expansion, which is being spearheaded by CTO Matt Harney. 

• Vyond Studio Enhancements

  This fall, we introduced the newest version of  Vyond Studio – extending the relevance, speed, and power of our flagship solution. We integrated several customer-driven product enhancements, including AI-powered capabilities enabling up to 10x speed and efficiency improvements, graphics enhancements, and more – keeping Vyond at the forefront of video creation technology for the enterprise.

“I would like to congratulate our team for an outstanding year in 2022, and thank our customers for their trust in our people and our product,” says Vyond CEO Gary Lipkowitz. “With an incredible track record of customer growth, as well as headcount and geographic expansion, this has been a year to remember. A keen focus on customer needs and delivery of outstanding customer service has put us on a path to sustainable growth in 2023 and beyond – and we couldn’t be more excited about Vyond’s future prospects.”

Check out this short video about some of our milestones this year.

To learn more about Vyond’s 2022 successes, see the press release. Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2023 and Vyond. 

The post Vyond Celebrates Ninth Consecutive Year of Growth appeared first on Vyond.

As a longtime user of Vyond’s video animation software, Rance decided it would be fun and instructive if he created a movie that both highlighted many of the storytelling effects Vyond’s software makes possible–and shared his most useful strategies for integrating storytelling into common L&D eLearning formats. 

To bring his big idea to life, Rance joined forces with Taylor Morgan, an expert video producer here at Vyond. The end result was a one-of-a-kind masterclass experience called The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories that multiple participants have told us was one of the most memorable and effective presentations they’d ever seen.

Watch the Storytelling Masterclass

We highly recommend you watch the whole thing (maybe during a lunch break, or on your phone during your commute). But in the meantime, here are a few selected takeaways from Rance Greene’s masterclass:

1. Storytelling in instructional design is proven to boost engagement and retention

The London School of Economics found that when an audience is presented with information using a story, they retain 65% of the information. Take the story away, and they’ll remember a mere 5%. 

As Rance elaborated in his presentation, two of the reasons stories engage us are because they encourage critical thinking and help demonstrate the relationship between isolated facts, in a way that helps us to remember them for a long time.

“Stories are hugely important in our lives – shouldn’t they be important in eLearning too?” – Rance Greene

 

2. To create stories that motivate your audience, get to know them a little first

Bridging the gap between story and action are two essential elements: conflict and relatable characters. But for these elements to work convincingly and effectively, you need an in-depth understanding of your learners (the audience) to effectively elicit their empathy and sympathy for the characters in the story. 

To get to know your audience, Rance suggests meeting with a few representative members of that audience and asking questions like: 

1. What do you value?
2. What are your current circumstances at work?
3. How are you reacting to those circumstances?
4. What do you fear?
5. What do you do in your spare time?

3. Help subject matter experts get beyond “being aware”

Helping learners be aware of–and understand–important ideas is not automatically going to yield action on their part. This is often where subject matter experts start, but you can help them get beyond “understanding,” “being aware of,” or “avoiding,” and drill down to observable actions. 

Instruction is implemented by your learners in real-world situations. So the story for instruction you design should be centered around driving changes in behavior (which are observable). 

For example, if you’re creating a manager course meant to increase empathy and understanding between managers and their employees, don’t stop at telling them to “be aware of employee situations” or “understand where your employee is coming from” and call it a day. 

Ask the subject matter expert, “What does someone who understands where their employee is coming from actually do?” Help the subject matter expert unearth observable actions, like “Schedule a meeting,” “Ask the employee what’s working well for them and what’s challenging for them,” and “Listen to their side of the story.” Record these observable actions and construct an action list. These are the actions learners should be able to practice within the course and continue to do after the course. 

Watch the Storytelling Masterclass

We hope these takeaways from Rance Greene’s Masterclass are helpful in developing highly engaging and effective L&D courses. Also, If you watched the masterclass, were inspired by the video’s imaginative production (created with Vyond!), and want to learn more about Rance and Taylor’s creative process, check out this behind-the-scenes story of the making of The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories.

To see how using Vyond can help you meet your communications goals, sign up for our 14-day free trial.

For more inspiration and step-by-step video production guides, check out the Vyond Producers Hub.

The post Three Takeaways from Rance Greene’s Vyond Masterclass for L&D Instructional Designers appeared first on Vyond.

Before he was a full-time author and speaker, Rance was an L&D practitioner himself–and it was in his role as compliance training director at Blue Cross and Blue Shield that he became a big fan of Vyond’s animated video creation software. When we asked Rance to create and present a Vyond Masterclass earlier this year, he decided he wanted to take a fresh approach that would highlight all the great things Vyond Studio can do, especially when paired with Adobe Premiere Pro: “I prefer not to be a talking head, I like interacting with people, so I decided to create a movie instead.”

With the help of Taylor Morgan, one of our expert video producers, Rance created the 30-minute-long The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories – a video masterclass that incorporates live-action footage, all varieties of animation, music, and more—and showcases his most powerful ideas about incorporating story elements into eLearning.

Watch the Storytelling Masterclass

The response to The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories was incredible, garnering rave reviews from the 2,000+ people who attended. Since many attendees asked for a peek behind the curtain, we asked Rance and Taylor if they’d provide a breakdown of their collaboration, from start to finish. And being helpful guys, they said yes.

Brainstorming the Concept

For Rance, any story used for training needs two important elements: strong conflict and relatable characters. To illustrate this point he decided to ground the video in a fun, over-the-top story that imagined a future world in which bad eLearning content had caused stories everywhere to go missing…and the only person who could bring them back was you, the viewer. 

As for relatable characters, he decided to feature three different Rance characters: Rance 1, his real, live-action self; Rance 2, a business-friendly guy with a stubbled jawline who added some light-hearted comic relief; and Rance 3, a serious news anchor type.

“I wanted to show the different styles Vyond was capable of and introduce a little comedy. Also, practically speaking,” Rance added, “there just wasn’t the time to involve anyone else with the voiceover work.”

Together, this intrepid trio would investigate the story-less world of eLearning and hunt down answers on how to solve the problem. And Taylor’s technical wizardry on Vyond and Adobe Premiere Pro would combine all three characters’ journeys to seamlessly interact with one another on screen.

Shooting the Live-Action Video

After Rance had the big idea in place, he started writing the script and created a basic storyboard. To make sure viewers would stay invested in the story, he incorporated a lot of dialogue between the three Rance characters and ensured the action of the story took place in a variety of locations, both real and virtual.

When it came time to film live-action footage, Rance enlisted his family, friends, and students to serve as actors. Impressively, he was able to capture everything he needed with only an iPhone, a tripod, and the help of his wife, who stood behind the camera holding cue cards for him to read. For the footage of other live-action characters, Rance used his iPhone with a gimble and stitched the short video takes together using iMovie.

Throughout the recording process, Rance also took care to ensure the footage he shot and the audio he created for his animated selves would be easy to work with in post-production:

“I filmed the characters one at a time, so I didn’t need to worry about switching between Rance, the serious news anchor-type guy, and the funny business-friendly one. I said my lines for live-action Rance 1, then in my head, I said Rance 2’s lines and reacted. The challenging part was making sure there was no delay between the spoken lines.”

Putting All the Pieces Together

Once all the raw footage and audio for “The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories” was compiled, and Rance had finished creating the animations in Vyond, he handed the baton to Taylor, who added a few extra animation elements, edited the audio and attached it to match his characters, finessed the timing a bit, and added music and sound effects as needed.

“I marked on my script where I wanted two characters on the screen at once and Taylor worked to make a seamless back-and-forth,” Rance says.

First Taylor combined the audio from the animated sections with the recordings of live-action Rance, creating a single, easier-to-manage audio track. Taylor then exported this file into Vyond where he added the animations so they matched that audio.

“Almost all the Vyond videos I make, I’ll make the audio first, then start building the scenes. I’ll edit the audio in Premiere, and export it as one single-track file that has the timing I want. That way, when I bring it into Vyond, it’s just one file and I can build scenes and move them around and it doesn’t change the timing of the audio. It makes everything a lot tidier.” – Taylor Morgan

 

In only a few instances did Taylor have to slow down live-action Rance’s footage to leave enough time for his alter egos to say their lines in between his own. “Taylor stitched the videos together beautifully. He made the animation and the live-action videos seamless”, said Rance. 

The Finished Project

While it’s unlikely most L&D content producers will routinely find themselves making a video of this length and complexity, Rance and Taylor hope their video will inspire them (and video creators of all kinds) to try a few new techniques, and think outside the box in how they present information.

Rance estimates he spent 90 hours total perfecting the dialogue, shooting scenes, and editing clips–and Taylor estimates that he spent about 40 hours editing and producing the final product. But to put this effort in perspective, Taylor estimates that if he were doing editing for a 30-minute live-action video, the process would have taken almost 10 times as long. And Rance says he hasn’t found anything else that would have allowed him to make something this creative, in as short an amount of time as Vyond did. 

“I’ve been a Vyond fan for a long time, and as far as I’m concerned, it just keeps getting better,” Rance said. “It’s efficient, it’s easy to use, and, most importantly, when I need to bring one of my stories to life, Vyond is the tool I reach for most often.”

Join the 2,000+ attendees who watched and loved Rance’s Masterclass, The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories by clicking on the link below.

Watch the Storytelling Masterclass

To see how using Vyond can help you meet your communications goals, sign up for our 14-day free trial.

Or for more inspiration and step-by-step video production guides, check out the Vyond Producers Hub.

		Rance Greene  Rance’s background is in theater, film, and choreography. But it was while working in New York City that his passion for storytelling flourished. “I’m from the North Carolina mountains, teaching inner-city kids from the Bronx and Spanish Harlem. I needed help establishing trust with them. Stories were our connecting point.” Years later, Rance first stumbled across Vyond when it was still called GoAnimate. He instantly became a fan–and has created L&D content with Vyond’s easy-to-use tools for years.  Rance’s training solutions have been recognized by ATD, The eLearning Guild, Training Magazine, and The Telly Awards. He is also the best-selling author of Instructional Story Design, an invaluable reference tool for learning how to craft effective, story-based corporate training courses, complete with downloadable templates and practice activities.
		Taylor Morgan  Taylor has nearly 12 years of experience in video and sound production. From a young age, he’s always loved stories: “I grew up during a time before the Internet. I was in the Boy Scouts camping a lot and the evening entertainment would always revolve around stories. For years I did live-action video production, so Vyond was my first introduction to storytelling using animated characters–which was a whole new ballgame and something I’ve loved doing ever since.”

The post The Mysterious Disappearance of Stories: How Rance Greene and Vyond’s Taylor Morgan Put It All Together appeared first on Vyond.

We’re excited to announce the opening of our new Vyond Chicago office, located in the Windy City’s dynamic tech hub, Fulton Market. Our new location at 159 North Sangamon Street will accelerate our regional growth, with over 20 new hires planned in sales, marketing, and customer success. The expansion brings us in close proximity to our growing customer base of more than 50 local organizations.

Leading our new office will be recently-appointed Chief Marketing Officer Van Diamandakis, a tech industry veteran who previously led marketing and sales at WANdisco, Persado, Sage, Joyent, and Riverbed Technology, among others.

“The Midwest and the Chicagoland area represent a huge market opportunity for Vyond because we provide a solution that makes business-critical content stick,” commented Diamandakis. “Whether that content is for eLearning, HR, internal comms, or sales and marketing, Vyond’s intelligent, AI-driven video creation solution helps enterprises deliver compelling video that drives engagement and retention. As a Chicago native, I’m excited to lead the team that will not only support and grow our business in the region but will also integrate Vyond’s brand into the local business community.”

Board member Kevin Willer, partner at Chicago Ventures and a personal investor in Vyond, thinks that Vyond’s new presence in the Midwest will reap significant rewards.

“Chicago is one of the world’s most dynamic and exciting cities for business,” said Willer. “Our region is home to numerous enterprise companies that truly need Vyond to accelerate their video-based learning programs for training, education, and employee development. We are expecting great things in terms of growth, and our firm is looking forward to collaborating with Vyond as their solution is embraced by customers throughout the Midwest.” 

The Vyond Chicago office opens on December 5, 2022.

The post Vyond Opens Chicago Office appeared first on Vyond.

DevLearn is where folks in the L&D field get to discuss the business-critical issues facing our industry right now, and the awesome technologies and products being developed to solve them. Featuring 150+ sessions spread over two days, attendees could take their pick from a diverse range of topics including: Contextual Microlearning, Gamify Your Course Design Process, and The Art of Storytelling.

“The export option for review is my fave. Can’t wait for you to add layers so overlaid objects are easier to manage. Keep the features coming!” 

^{Ray Handley, Senior Learning Designer at Downer New Zealand}

 

Keynote speakers included renowned physicist Michio Kaku, brain scientist Cori Lathan, Kevin Bethune, author of reimagining design, and chemistry professor, Dr. Kate Biberdorf.

During her explosive keynote, Vyond’s sponsored speaker, Kate the Chemist, put on some entertaining experiments to help explain the importance of representing diversity in education. Our growing library of relatable and customizable characters is key to the success of Vyond’s video templates – improving employees’ ability to learn through connecting with animated characters.

“[Vyond is the] Best 2D animation tool” 

^{Abdul Rafay, Creative Designer at Landster}

 

Discussions around the evolution of e-learning were high on the agenda, with presentations like The Future of the Mind, The Power of Transformative Design, Technology Trends That Will Enhance Human Performance, and Blowing Up Stereotypes in Learning.

CEO Gary Lipowitz talks Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and content creation 

Gary Lipkowitz, Vyond’s CEO, took to the DevLearn stage to discuss: AI and the Race for Intelligent Content Creation, touching on how supercomputers could “surpass the abilities of any human”, and how “The Singularity” concept points to a day when AI could teach us, humans, instead. 

He demonstrated bringing digital personas to life in animated videos with VyondAI – the stuff of science fiction. Utilizing the smartest AI and ML capabilities and time-saving technologies, he detailed how the technology allows you to create high-quality, relatable “real-life” videos.

Attendees of Gary’s talk came away fully versed in Photo to Character, Instant Video Translation, AI Prop Generation, and other ways to build amazing animated videos for different customer types. A lucky few also bagged the much-coveted Vyond hoodie. Don’t worry if you missed Gary at DevLearn though, our fall release blog will bring you up to date. (But no more hoodies left, unfortunately!) 

“Vyond was something that everyone was talking about.” 

^{Ronny Lohuis, Senior Consultant at The Courseware Company}

Vyond’s stand-out show

We loved sharing our learning technologies with other DevLearners, and showcasing Vyond’s game-changing video creation products. As well as VyondAI, there was also plenty of buzz around the Import/Export copy feature and Instant Translation – real-time savers for today’s busy professionals. 

“[Vyond’s stand] on the exhibit floor generated so much enthusiasm.” 

^{Ronny Lohuis, Senior Consultant at The Courseware Company}

“That’s a good-looking booth!” 

^{Adam Perry Vice President of Product Marketing at Folloze}
 

Fall Release Launch Party

On Wednesday night, a select number of guests enjoyed Vyond’s invite-only Fall Release launch party, complete with live music and custom cocktails.

After some heartfelt words of thanks to our customers, we toasted Vyond’s latest capabilities with a Vyond Gimlet. And congratulations to our raffle winner – enjoy the Oculus VR headset. Can’t wait to see everyone at DevLearn ‘23!

Vyond is the enterprise-grade agile video creation software that’s reinventing business communications. Helping your organization to quickly create relevant, engaging videos at scale without making a costly production out of it.

If you’re wondering whether Vyond can help your business, start making videos today with our 14-day free trial.

The post Vyond showcases their new tools and technologies at DevLearn 2022 appeared first on Vyond.