Stay Curious
HOW WE MET
My relationship with Discovery began when one of the team members for their newly acquired education product, Mystery Science, shared my videos in their company slack channel. As lucky as it sounds, this wasn’t a random occurrence. It was a matter of time. I purposefully tipped the scales by applying strategies I’d been begging people to apply to their endeavors for years. I found what worked for me through an iterative creative process, I published it consistently and I valued the quality of my viewership over the size because I knew if my videos were good, the right people would eventually see them.
After it sold to Discovery, the creator and original host of the Mystery Science show decided he wanted to step away from the camera and focus on other things, so they took the opportunity to introduce fresh faces. I was brought on with two other people, both of whom had double digit thousand followers which was a lot compared to my less than 3k at the time. But my videos were well done, I was leaning into my strengths and interests, and highlighting the most positive aspects of my personality - such as my humor.
HOW WE WORK TOGETHER
Skills: Writing, story strategy, on camera script delivery, voice over script delivery
The Mystery Science team spent a lot of time getting to know me. They watched all my videos and asked questions about my life and interests. This gives them a basis to understand what stories to pair pair me with. The video is far more engaging when a person is talking about something they are genuinely excited about and not just something they are presenting because they think their audience will be excited about it. That real interest in the topic is authenticity and authenticity is powerful.
“We’re thinking of doing an episode on landslides and are you interested?”
I’m always interested. Here’s where my expertise comes in to move the episode forward.
We walk through their outline and they tell me how they’re planning to approach the episode. Each episode starts with a kids asking a question so the videos are always a mix of story and explanation. The story comes first so we have to start somewhere engaging. It’s important that the story creates a framework from which the young viewing audience can use to understand the more complex explanation to come. The possibilities are limitless so you have to be very creative to figure out an approach. My edits can be small like “this sentence isn’t making sense to me.” or large like suggesting a completely different way to jump into the explanation all together. After we settle on the approach, they flesh out the full script and I edit for my natural speaking tone and comedic style. I also suggest visuals and animations that would increase the effectiveness or immersiveness of the episode.
I deliver three takes of the script on camera for their video series or three takes of a voice over script for the more in-depth, guided lessons and activities.
I deliver the files and move on to the next script. We typically produce multiple videos a month.
Through this collaborative method, we have published videos that have amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. The Mystery Science curriculum - which is made of those videos and guided activities - is used by over 50% of schools in the country and I’ve been working with them for almost 3 years..
Here are some of my favorite Mystery Science Videos
