- March 23rd, 2012. (upbeat music) I was going to school in Utah. I was like a junior in college studying international relations, and I was looking for an internship. Hey, there Iz. We're just filming here. I was on the State Department's website. The State Department is
like the foreign ministry here in the United States. And they had an intro video,
like a promotional video, explaining their internship program and it was very poorly done. So in a weird moment of, I don't
even know what got into me, I sent these people an email and I said. Well, I said some pretty mean things. "I noticed the promo
video you guys are using is extremely poorly done. I would like to make a video that is more attractive and helpful." What! Man, 2012, me, was a weird me. "Lemme know if you would like me to make something and submit it. I just think that this program
could be more attractive if the information was presented in a more effective way," is how I put it. Hold on a second, this is 2012. (dramatic sounds) Okay. I didn't know very much
about video in 2012. I wasn't making very good videos. I was making stuff like this, and like this, and it was just not very good. In addition, I didn't know
how to do motion graphics. I wanted to learn how to do
it, but I didn't know how. And yet here I am promising
to make a promotional video which was very likely
going to be all animation, and I had no animation skills. That's not true actually, to my credit, I had one animation under my
belt and it looked like this. That's an owl and a circle
around the owl and it, and then it falls and then it goes down, it just down. That was my one portfolio piece. Okay. So that's me in 2012, and
yet here I am proposing to the State Department
that I'm going to make them a promotional video that is
quote attractive and helpful. Okay. Cool. So, what happens next? They responded
enthusiastically and said yes. If you could make us a video for free we would gladly take your
video and put it on our site. In this moment, something
happened in my brain. I chalk this up as one of the
inflection points in my life. It's something that
would continue to happen throughout my career and that would take my animation skills from this, to this. (upbeat music) I'm gonna call this process, this thing that happened, a speed boost. Just like in Mario Kart, when
you're like cruising along and you see those flashy arrows on the ground and you like hit them and it speed boost you forward. (car speeding sound) It's like a hack. It's like something that
gives you more speed than you naturally have. After I got that email back
from the State Department, I began to devour tutorials. I began to just focus on this
video all day and all night. I began to learn so much faster than I'd ever learned before. I call this, what was happening to me, excited accountability. So after three weeks of
intense, excited accountability I made this video, my first
real motion graphic project. Unless you count the owl,
which was technically my first and it's pretty dear to my heart. Love that owl. Let's face it, when it
comes to internships with the State Department
not all college students can afford to travel to
Washington DC or overseas. Okay. I mean, it's not like great. I went from knowing nothing truly to knowing a ton about motion graphics and having gotten my hands
dirty for the first time. And that was facilitated through this excited accountability. Soon BSFS will begin the
micro volunteering program. What's that ask? Here's a problem, when you
want to learn something new, you become passionate about it. If you wanna learn to bake bread suddenly you have a super high
tolerance for reading about yeast fermentation. If you wanna learn photography suddenly you're able to sit down and learn about shutter speed and aperture, these fairly boring principles. But now you suddenly have the attention span of like a genius. Two weeks goes by and
suddenly that passion, that tolerance for boring stuff
becomes thinner and thinner, and you eventually pear out. This was me in 2012. I had made it through a few
weeks of learning this stuff when my motivational
fuel started to burn up. I started to feel less and less inclined to actually sit through the tutorials. Then I wrote that email,
I got that response and this happened (car speeding) My motivation was back. My tank was full. I was going fast. I had accountability. I was excited. And suddenly my ability to
persist through this kinda difficult process of learning
increased like tenfold. (dramatic music) So this is easier said than done. And a lot of people ask me
like, how do you actually go about learning this stuff? Yeah, you've got the speed boost. Yeah, you have like
the excited motivation, but like what do you
actually do to learn this if you don't have film school or some sort of structure to learn? The answer to me and kind of the key to my career when it comes to learning this stuff has been the internet. - [Reporter] On your mark, get set. ♪ We're riding on the internet. ♪ - I have a really soft spot in my heart for learning online, and because of that, I reached out to Skillshare
to sponsor this video. Because Skillshare is one of the sites that I've used over the years to learn and refine my visual storytelling skills. Skillshare is like this giant
repository of tutorials. It's like 10 bucks a
month, and you get access to like 25,000 tutorials. If you wanna learn animation
like I did in 2012, there are tons, tons of
tutorials on the site that will teach you all
different aspects of animation. There's one specifically
called animated infographics and data visualization
which was kind of the style that I was doing in that, in 2012. It's really good, like quality teaching. So, if you're kind of in a place right now where you want to learn something new, whether it's animation or
a million other skills, Skillshare has got like
tons of different topics. Then go click the link, and if you are one of the first 500, you will
get two months for free. Meaning, you don't have to pay. And then after that it's 10 bucks a month. Go start learning stuff. (upbeat music) Skillshare doesn't have any
influence over this video or what I say or anything,
but they did want to partner with me on this video
because this is something that I truly 100% believe in and want other people
to experience as well. (clock ticking) (owl hooting) (inaudible) don't need to travel abroad. Okay, so am I recommending
that everyone reach out to the State Department and
offer to redo their promo video? No. This is an example that
illustrates a point of putting yourself in a situation of excited accountability. First, let's talk about what you need to make the situation work. It's right there within
excited accountability. First you need to be excited. Whatever situation you put yourself in, that's going to teach you these skills. You have to like be interested in it. You have to align with
whatever the message is or whatever the project is. That sort of passion and
excitement about the project is going to be a key part of the fuel. The other aspect of this,
the other side of it is the accountability part. There needs to be a
good amount of pressure. Not like the anxiety,
like fear based pressure. Like, that's actually like a
speed bump, not a speed boost. I mean the type of pressure
that like you want to deliver because you want to impress. And if you don't deliver,
you'll feel a little bit like. That sort of pressure needs to be there 'cause that's gonna propel
you forward as well. A good balance of excitement
and accountability or pressure together will make
a situation that is primed for you to learn and to
have the speed boost. So lemme give you some examples
that aren't State Department maybe you want to learn how to cook. So instead of just like telling yourself, "Okay, I wanna learn how to cook." You can invite a friend
or some friends over for a dinner party and you
are gonna be the one to cook, and you tell them that. If you were interested in
the cuisine or the dish that you're cooking and you feel a little bit of pressure because people are coming over to your house, suddenly you've just created a situation of excited accountability. All right, so let's step up
the stakes one more notch to a professional level. Let's say you have some video skills, but they're not in the place
that you can actually go pitch like a brand or an
organization or a news outlet to make video for them. You don't have those skills yet, but you want to acquire them. In this case, I suggest
going to a nonprofit or a group that doesn't have a ton of marketing budget and say, "Hey, I will make a video for you." And you develop a kind of a
pseudo professional relationship even though money's not changing hands, and it's not that professional, the stakes are not so high
that if you don't deliver, you're like reneging on a contract. But they're high enough
that you want to deliver. And suddenly you'll be in that excited accountability situation, and here comes the speed
boost.(cartoon car speeding) The last example I wanna give you is another one that
comes from my experience. Now we're talking summer of 2015. (dramatic music) Thanks to this excited
accountability process, I had done it several times with a bunch of different organizations. I had learned quite a bit of skills and I was able to get a
legitimate job in motion graphics. Eventually that led me
to getting a job at Vox, where I was doing motion
graphics and animation. I wanted to take my
skills to the next level. And specifically I really wanted to get into doing documentaries. I had never done documentaries. I had never made a
legitimate like documentary out in the field, but I wanted to learn. So I went to my boss, at Vox, and I said, "Hey, what if I went out
and made an explainer like we do here but I did it in the field, pointing my camera at
things, getting interviews, and then animating on top of that." At that time Vox was a startup. And Joe, my boss, was like, "Could you write it, and film it, and edit it, and animated
all on your own?" And if so, like go for it. And I was like, "Okay." So I pitched this Cuba
story and I was given some great support from the people at Vox to be able to have, do this experiment. But the message was very clear. "You can do this, but
it needs to be good." Meaning if we're gonna
invest in this new format that's a little bit costlier
to have you go travel to Cuba, then it has to be like
worth the resources. In the summer of 2015, that
familiar feeling came upon me. (cartoon car speeding) I remember I was sitting
in a hotel in Miami the night before I was flying to Cuba. There was $2,000 in
cash sitting on the bed, because in Cuba they don't take bank cards you have to like literally
bring a ton of cash, which is terrifying. And I'm sitting there
with this mandate of, if this isn't good it's
not going to happen again, like 100% responsibility on the situation that I've put myself in. Excited. Yes, I was definitely excited. I mean, look at that face. That's an excited me,
but also accountable, pressure, responsibility. Both of those things were happening to me at the most extreme levels that they had ever
happened to me in my life. And there's something
that I can't even explain that's just like spilling out of me. I've now done this
process a bunch of times, but this was like the most intense. So that night I did what I had been doing for weeks up until that moment
which is downloading videos, videos that I really loved
from like Vimeo and YouTube, downloading them and them up in QuickTime and watching them frame
by frame and writing down, "Oh, that edit was really fast, and it went from this angle to that angle. Oh the guy moved his
camera kind of like this. That was really interesting,
I'm gonna do that in Cuba." Like a giant list of
exactly what I was gonna do to up my skills. Because I was in this highly motivated, highly responsible, and
accountable situation that learning was sinking in. I was learning in a whole new way. At the time I watched a Skillshare course about creative transitions, like how to move your camera around in
these kinds of creative ways to build out transitions in your videos. And like I was devouring
this tutorial, like knowing that I was gonna have to use this stuff in this situation that I'd put myself in. I learned so much. I was so ready to go to Cuba and perform. (upbeat music) In the end I made three
videos and there were the best videos that I'd ever made in my life. That was another inflection
point for me, that Cuba trip. I feel grateful to Vox for
giving me that opportunity. Joe, my boss was very, very like open to those types of experiments. And so I'm incredibly
grateful to Vox for that but I'm also grateful for what
happens to the human brain when you feel that excited accountability. You can really really learn a lot without the need of school. So thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video, but also thanks to Skillshare
for just being around, for being a repository
of high quality learning on the internet for 10 bucks a month so that all of us can access it. Again if you want to try Skillshare out for two months for free,
you can click the link down in the description and just see if it like is interesting to you. Good teaching and good
learning, visual learning like you see on Skillshare
is a way to kind of help pave that process and
make it a little bit easier. So, I hope this is helpful. I would love to hear your
feedback about this process and what we talked about today. And yeah, I got to go
back to editing borders because there's just so
much borders to edit. Okay. Bye. (upbeat music)
Couldn't sit more than 5~ minutes, it's a 14 minute ad basically