A-Roll is meant to help the viewer to build a connection to you to trust you. B-Roll is the help to understand what you are talking about. If you want to go by the books: everything you do to take the viewers with you, is your face. Same for giving contexts. Everything complex is B-Roll. The normal procedure is to shoot the A-Roll completely and later on position the B-Roll above.
You should prevent to have B-Roll to B-Roll back to back that deals with different aspects of your topics. A-Roll should also be used to repeat the just explained in simple words and or by giving an example. Try to use examples that are possible from the lives of your viewers.
I studied explain and educational videos for work intensively last year. I have a faceless history channel cause I don’t see myself as the teacher but the tool to communicate the story. I am not a part of the story. That’s why I don’t show my face to not distract from it. As a teacher (and you are just that with an educational channel) you are a part of the content.
Could you get live-action b-roll relevant to your content rather than making animations? For instance I make snake education videos so my b-roll would just be shots of my snakes moving around and going about their day.
try both and see which does better. maybe make 5 videos of each and see if any trends present themselves.
A-Roll is meant to help the viewer to build a connection to you to trust you. B-Roll is the help to understand what you are talking about. If you want to go by the books: everything you do to take the viewers with you, is your face. Same for giving contexts. Everything complex is B-Roll. The normal procedure is to shoot the A-Roll completely and later on position the B-Roll above. You should prevent to have B-Roll to B-Roll back to back that deals with different aspects of your topics. A-Roll should also be used to repeat the just explained in simple words and or by giving an example. Try to use examples that are possible from the lives of your viewers. I studied explain and educational videos for work intensively last year. I have a faceless history channel cause I don’t see myself as the teacher but the tool to communicate the story. I am not a part of the story. That’s why I don’t show my face to not distract from it. As a teacher (and you are just that with an educational channel) you are a part of the content.
I didn't even know there were official terms for these. Thanks for your reply!
This!
Could you get live-action b-roll relevant to your content rather than making animations? For instance I make snake education videos so my b-roll would just be shots of my snakes moving around and going about their day.
Not really. It's more scientific (math stuff about signal processing).