The most-watched explainers online are rarely elaborate. A speaker talks to camera for twenty minutes, and the edit does a handful of things very well: captions that land on every word, a line that fills the screen when the point is made, a list that builds as it is spoken, a question left on screen long enough to think about. The speaker never leaves the shot for long.
A lecture is the same shape. It is one person explaining something to camera. So we built Podcast, a layout that edits a lecture the way those talks are edited, with the lecturer in their own shot from start to finish. It comes in four themes, each a complete look: Spotlight, Keynote, Aura and Studio.
Spotlight: the lecturer’s own words, on screen
Spotlight is the look of the long-form studio podcast: a dark room, warm light, and the speaker’s own words set beside them in big, mixed type. The clips below come from an undergraduate lecture on the history of human resource management, recorded on a green screen. On the left is the camera file as recorded. On the right is the same moment in Spotlight. Every moment was placed by the engine, from the lecture’s plan and the words the lecturer actually said.
1. The opening: words stacked beside the speaker
Where the lecture plan marks a point, the sentence the lecturer is saying becomes a stack of type on the empty side of the frame. Each word arrives on its own syllable, dim at first and then lit. The lines mix a heavy sans, a classic serif, spaced capitals and a tall condensed face, and the word the line is about is set in highlighter yellow.
“Hello and welcome back to Human Resource Management. So far in this module, we have asked what HRM is … Today, we ask a different and rather fascinating question …”
“Human Resource Management” in yellow; “so far in this” in small italics over a giant “module”; then the next sentence builds word by word.
The stacks change shape so the eye does not tire of them. Most are lines of two or three words; some drop the lead-in to small italics above one giant word; now and then a stack swings in from an angle and settles level.
2. Good to know: a definition, or a line worth keeping
Two kinds of moment get a “Good to know” card, and only two: a definition the lecturer gives, and a statement worth writing down. The card rises from the bottom of the frame, the label marked in highlighter and the line beside it, and it arrives as the lecturer says it.
“… the workers’ collective answer to the factory system, bargaining together for better wages, shorter hours and safer conditions that no single worker could ever …”
“The trade union movement”, defined on the card as the lecturer defines it.
“… proving a full century before the famous experiments that treating people well and making money are not opposites.”
“Treating people well and making money are not opposites”, on the card as the sentence lands.
3. A question for the viewer, as a message
A question the lecturer wants students to hold in their heads arrives the way a question arrives on a phone: a message bubble, three typing dots, then the words.
“Keep one question in your head throughout: what problem did each stage solve, and what new problem …”
The typing dots, then “What problem did each stage solve — and what new problem did it leave behind?”
4. A list, written into a notebook
When the lecturer works through a list, a spiral notebook page slides in from the edge. Its title is marked in highlighter, and each point is written onto the ruled lines as it is spoken.
“… a thin man in a dhoti standing at the iron gate of a Bombay cotton mill … a mill hand … He was hired each morning by a jobber …”
“The First Generation, at a Mill Gate”: a thin man in a dhoti, a mill hand, hired each morning, each written as it is said.
5. An instruction: Action step
When the lecturer tells students to do something — read this before next time, attempt these questions — the instruction arrives on the same low card, this time labelled “Action step” and marked in blue, one card per task.
“Before the next lecture, read topic 6 of the module 1 e-book … and attempt its check-your-understanding questions …”
Action step: “Read topic six of the module one e-book”, then “Attempt the check-your-understanding questions”.
Three more themes
The other three themes edit the same kind of lecture with running captions and designed moments of their own. These clips come from a postgraduate management lecture recorded in an ordinary classroom.
Keynote: the opening
Keynote is warm and documentary. The topic opens on a cream title card, its title typed out in a blue serif behind a blinking cursor, and then the lecturer is back with captions in a wide, geometric type, low on the left, each word arriving as it is said.
“Now we come to the most important part, that is the nature of managerial economics …”
A typed title card, then word-by-word captions in Keynote’s display type.
Studio: the point, and the list
Studio is bold and built for teaching. When the lecturer names the first characteristic, it fills the screen as a yellow headline. When she lists what the subject draws on, each item slides in from the edge of the frame as a teal chip, on the word that introduces it.
“Here, the first is applied science. Managerial economics applies economic theory and tools … statistical and mathematical tools …”
“An applied science” as a headline, then “Economic theory” and “Statistical tools” arrive as chips.
Aura: the rest of the list, and a definition
Aura is calm and soft. Its list items are frosted pills, each with its own colour dot, and its captions are spaced capitals with the word being spoken set in bold. When the lecturer defines a term, it appears in a frosted box: the term above, its meaning beneath.
“… to real business situations. Real business situation like loss, fire …”
The third item joins the list; then “Real business situations” is defined in a frosted box.
One moment, three themes
The themes are not colour swaps. Each one draws the same moments its own way. Here is the same second of the classroom lecture, “an applied science”, in Keynote, Aura and Studio.
| Moment | Spotlight | Keynote | Aura | Studio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words on screen | The lecturer’s own sentences, stacked in mixed type | Wide captions, low left | Spaced capitals, spoken word bold | Centred captions, spoken word lit |
| Opening | A first stack, no title card | Cream paper, serif title typed out | Pink and lilac glow, colour dots | Deep teal, huge condensed title |
| Emphasis | A giant yellow word under small italics | Large white type | Glowing capitals | Yellow 3D headline |
| List | A spiral notebook page, written as spoken | Cream tags | Frosted pills | Teal chips from the edge |
| Definition or statement worth keeping | Good to know card | Cream card, serif | Frosted box | Teal glass box |
| Instruction to students | Action step card | Cream card | Frosted box | Teal glass box |
| Question | A typed message bubble | Cream card | Frosted box | Teal glass box, key word in mint |
| A figure | A yellow number counting up | Orange ring | Cyan ring | Mint ring |
How the engine decides
Start from the lecture’s own plan. The plan that would drive an animated lecture — the title, chapter points, lists, definitions, questions and figures, each anchored to the words that introduce it — becomes the Podcast moments: title card, emphasis lines, lists, boxes and rings.
Put the spoken words on screen. The recogniser’s timings, corrected against the lecturer’s script, place every word. Keynote, Aura and Studio caption each phrase; Spotlight turns the sentence at each marked point into a stack, and the deck’s own word in it is the one lit yellow.
One moment at a time. A later moment lands on its own words, so an earlier one gives way to it. Nothing interrupts a full-screen card, and the captions step aside for headlines, questions and cards.
Keep the lecturer in the shot. Only an opening title card ever covers the lecturer, and Spotlight has none. Everything else sits over the shot, and the camera punches in on single sentences in quiet stretches, as an editor would.
Dress it in one theme. Spotlight, Keynote, Aura or Studio, chosen per course. Podcast is optional: a course uses it only when it asks for it.
What it does not do
Edit the lecture as a talk
- Caption every word, in the theme’s own type
- Put titles, points, lists and definitions on screen as they are said
- Keep the lecturer in their own shot almost all the time
- Set a green-screen lecturer in a studio, in Spotlight
- Run the same cleanup, Quick Checks and welcome and closing cards as every lecture
Invent a podcast that was not recorded
- Add a second speaker or a host
- Add stock footage between the lecturer’s sentences
- Put anything on screen the lecture plan does not say
- Change a word of what the lecturer said
What it came to
| Measure | Spotlight lecture (27 min 45 s) | Classroom lecture (2 min 12 s) |
|---|---|---|
| Stacks or emphasis lines | 74 stacks | 3 emphasis lines |
| Lists built item by item | 16 notebook pages, 4 dotted paths | 3 |
| Definitions, statements, instructions and questions | 10 Good to know cards (3 definitions, 7 statements), 2 Action steps, 1 question | 2 boxes |
| Time the lecturer is off screen | none | 3.6 s, the title card |
| Time to render | about 1.7 minutes per minute of lecture | about 1.5 minutes per 46 seconds |
A lecture does not need a studio to feel like the talks students choose to watch. It needs captions that keep up, and the right thing on screen at the right word.
Podcast sits beside the engine’s other layouts. For a lecture recorded without a green screen and edited around the lecturer where they stand, see No green screen? The lecture can still look produced; for the board a lecturer would have turned to, see Classroom Board.
Send us one lecture and tell us which theme you want — Spotlight, Keynote, Aura or Studio — and we will send it back edited as a Podcast. Send a lecture →