Behind the Scenes

How We Create Aleph with Beth Videos

We would love to see more people doing what we’re doing. And we know there are people out there with the ability to teach Greek or Hebrew (or perhaps other languages), but maybe they think that they can’t afford the equipment to make quality videos and post them for free. Others may think that it’s too complicated to learn how to film and edit video. So if you’re one of those people, we’re glad you’re here! This page is here to show you that it doesn’t take thousands of dollars and access to “professionals” to do what we’re doing. We want to share everything we’ve learned, all the exact tools we use, and how you can get started on a low budget.

If you’re interested in teaching the biblical languages, we want to encourage you to please make your videos available for free as public domain, with no paywalls. Read our Why Free? page for more information.

Getting into film and the world of YouTube can be intimidating, but it’s not as hard as you think if you know where to start.

Time & Planning Cost

When you start out, expect to spend a lot of time finding your rhythm. The important thing is to be systematic and consistent. The internet is filled with half-baked projects, great ideas that fizzled out, and the neglected ruins of good intentions. If you commit to doing this, follow through. And be systematic in your teaching. A complex conversation or monologue in a biblical language is cool, but it’s only helpful to those who are already really good at that language. The Body of Christ needs someone to slowly and systematically take them from zero to the stars.  Plan on making hundreds of videos over the course of years or decades. That’s the kind of valuable work the Kingdom needs.  
 
Beth spends around 20-30 hours per video: planning, scripting, filming, gathering the right assets (stock footage, etc), editing, and checking. Plan on doing that or more. Creating compelling content doesn’t happen fast and there are no shortcuts. 
 
One more important thing: don’t do this alone. Get a small group of people with PhDs or expertise in the language, and send the video drafts to them before you publish them. Have them check them over and give you suggestions and make corrections. Trust us, you will make mistakes. And you don’t want to find out about those mistakes after a thousand people have viewed it (been there, done that)! For Aleph with Beth, we count on a handful of volunteers (Hebrew teachers and scholars) besides us to check our videos. And still errors occasionally slip through! You can’t have too many eyes checking for those errors that will be invisible to you after hours of editing.

YouTube Fair Use Policy

Fair Use is a U.S. law that allows the reuse of copyright-protected material under certain circumstances without getting permission from the copyright owner (learn more here). YouTube simply would not exist if this was not possible. Essentially, if you’re not charging for your content, it’s for educational purposes, and the borrowed content is clearly part of your own unique creative work, then you can use movie clips and clips from other YouTube videos without a problem. This opens up thousands of options for creativity.

Where to Start Learning

We’ve learned a lot from a few YouTube channels about digital video and sound. A lot of their stuff isn’t applicable to what you’ll be doing, and is aimed more at filmmakers, but it never hurts to learn more about the trade and know what’s out there and what’s available. You might pick up a handy technique here and there:

Content

We’ve learned a lot on the journey, we’re always trying to grow and improve, and we hope that our Aleph with Beth videos can serve as an example of compelling, interesting, beautiful, high-quality content. That said, we want to share some practical tips and things we’ve noticed over the years that don’t work. In other words, here are some traps we plead with you to avoid:
 
1. Don’t hide behind the camera. Videos of just your computer screen and your mouse pointing at still images are BORING. They scream amateur, and tell the viewer that the person was too lazy to create something awesome. Boring, low quality stuff also unintentionally communicates that the biblical languages are not really worthy of our time, effort, and pursuit of excellence in teaching. Get in front of the camera and learn to be comfortable there. You need to use body language and expression to communicate comprehensible input. People want to learn from real human faces who joyfully teach what they love.
(Your video thumbnails should also usually include a face or two: people are drawn to human faces).
2. Don’t make lessons at random.  Random content isn’t helpful for most people. Make sure your lessons have a plan and trajectory and order. Guide people, and make your guidance as clear as possible. Keep everything together in one playlist, and put the lesson number on the thumbnails big and clear.
3. Don’t expect people to subscribe to your channel and encourage you if your videos don’t clearly evidence creativity, innovation, and hard work. The question you should ask yourself is: Would someone be distracted by my videos because they’re so interesting and compelling and rich? Would someone be drawn in to binge-watch my channel even if they weren’t planning on learning a biblical language? If the answer is no, then keep working on the quality and content.
4. Don’t mix a bunch of other languages into your channel. If your goal is language-teaching, then stick to one language per channel. Only the language nerds will want to subscribe to your channel if one day you post a Spanish lesson and the next day it’s a Greek video, followed by a Syriac expo the following week. Most people are focusing on just one language at a time, so they’ll find it helpful if you do too.
5. Don’t be so serious. A healthy sense of humor goes a long way to keep people with you and engaged. Don’t be afraid to be a little silly and let your personality show. Don’t look at the camera like a frightened deer. Don’t read off a script like a nervous robot. Natural learning can only happen with a teacher who looks and feels natural and comfortable.

6. Don’t forget the kids! Along the same lines as number five, this one is important. Kids can learn the biblical languages too. Keep children in mind as you design and develop your lesson videos. Ask yourself, Is this something an eight-year-old would be delighted to watch? Would it make them giggle? 
7. Don’t build your lessons around paradigms. This is the temptation for nerdy grammar-lovers. Resist it! Keep the learning process natural and organic. You might focus on a specific grammar point in a specific lesson, but you’ll have to work extra hard to keep it engaging. Move into storytelling as soon as possible, since that is what everyone finds most compelling.
8. Don’t neglect Stephen Krashen’s teaching on language acquisition. Listen to everything you can by him on YouTube. Internalize his principles and flesh them out in your teaching.
9. Don’t be too predictable. Surprise people, and that will delight them and keep them watching. Endeavor to stay fresh and out of the rut. Try new things and new lesson structures.
10. Don’t go too fast. The temptation for nerdy language lovers is to believe that everyone can keep up with them. Slow. Way. Down. Both in your speaking speed and in your pace for adding new information. People will thank you for it. Keep your weaker brothers and sisters in mind.
11. Don’t assume people learn new words as quickly as you. Use a lot of repetition even if you think it’s overkill. Believe us, people will appreciate it. This is hard for geniuses to do, but it’s essential. Also remember that when you’re planning, filming and editing a lesson, you’re hearing that word or phrase dozens of times until you’re sick of it, but your viewers are encountering it for the first time, and they need generous processing time for it to stick.
12. Don’t use the same images or clips too often or for too long. Variety, variety, variety! Along those same lines, don’t use cheesy, low-quality images! The internet is already flooded with “Christian” artwork that will make your eyes bleed. Keep things classy, beautiful, tasteful.
13. Don’t spend time explaining the grammar in English on camera. There are tons of other resources and YouTube channels out there already that are dedicated to talking about Greek or Hebrew in English. Instead of repeating information that someone could easily look up in a textbook or online, spend your precious time doing what hasn’t been done before. What we DON’T have (and really need) are simple, compelling materials showing the biblical languages in action for people to acquire these beautiful languages from square one! Most of your audience will start zoning out once you start explaining grammatical terms, and explanations in English interrupt the immersive learning experience. Also, if you don’t use English, but only the target language, you’ll make your videos accessible to millions more people worldwide who want to learn the biblical languages but may not understand English!

Lesson Planning

Planning engaging language lessons is more of an art than a science. We don’t have a formula we use over and over, but rather each lesson is crafted as we go, and as new ideas arise! However, there are some principles and tools that we’re constantly keeping in mind that you may find helpful:
 
1. Have a loose big-picture plan
 Write out a list or outline of vocabulary, topics and grammar points that need to be taught in a rough order from basic to complex. This will help you have a clear direction as you work toward the more complex structures you want to teach. You don’t have to flesh out your plans in minute detail at the beginning, and you don’t have to stick to what you write down now! It’s just a general direction, and your plans will probably change by the time you get there. My lesson sequence turned out quite different in reality than how I envisioned it in my first planning spreadsheet, and that’s fine! If you make detailed plans for each lesson far in advance, you’ll probably find that you have to significantly revise them later because your teaching path will change along the way as you encounter practical limitations of time and repetition that you couldn’t foresee.
 
2. Keep track of new vocabulary in each lesson
Keep a document with a running list of what new words and forms are introduced in each lesson. That way you can easily look back and double-check whether or not you’ve already introduced a word and it will remind you of vocab you haven’t reviewed in a long time to incorporate into your next lesson. (If you’re super detailed you can keep track of which old vocab words you’ve reviewed in each lesson too, but personally, I’m not that methodical).
 
3. Smooth path from simple to complex 
We want to take students from zero to competence on the smoothest path possible. Start by teaching the simplest forms: single words. Then gradually begin to combine those words into phrases and eventually sentences. Teach a new word by itself and then look for every possible opportunity to use it again in a slightly more complex way. You don’t want your video to be like a series of flashcards where you stay at the level of isolated vocab words. Nor should you introduce a few words and then suddenly jump up ten levels of complexity and expect people to follow you. They won’t.
An example of a slow progression from simple to complex combinations might be: 
 
Singular nouns
Adjectives
Singular nouns + adjectives
Plural nouns
Plural nouns + adjectives
Numbers
Nouns + numbers
Nouns + numbers + adjectives
 
The point is, always look for ways to up the complexity just one notch at a time. This keeps people intrigued and growing almost without noticing it. To do this, you’ll have to be strategic with your vocab choices early on: choose words that you can combine with lots of other known words in lots of different ways. For example, a concrete word like “basket” will give you far more combination opportunities than an abstract word like “peace.” You can say “big basket, small basket, two baskets, three big baskets, put the apple in the basket, the basket is on the table, the woman is holding a basket, the basket is on her head…” etc. but you can’t say “big peace, small peace… put the apple in the peace…” etc. 
 
4. Mix it up
Vocabulary study through the constant repetition of the same phrase or image is boring (anybody else struggle to be motivated to pick up those flashcards?). Vocabulary study becomes exciting when the students learn a new word and then encounter it over and over again, but each time in a new context. The students see that with this one new word, they’ve unlocked a large body of new phrases and combinations that they can now understand! So teach a new word and then mix it with review material in every way you can think of!
 
Be on the lookout constantly for:
  • new ways to remix old vocab
  • ways to combine new vocab with old vocab
  • ways to combine new vocab with old grammar structures
  • ways to combine old vocab with new grammar structures
Try to include a constant cycle of review vocabulary and structures combined with your new material, infusing your videos with comprehensibility.
 
5. Limit the number of new words per lesson
It may be tempting to pile on the vocab because we want students to grow quickly in their comprehension, but I don’t recommend trying to cram 20 or more new vocab words into one lesson. In my experience 10-12 is a pretty good maximum, and depending on the length of your video, less may be even better. This is especially true when teaching new verbs with many forms that need to be learned. The goal is true internalization of each word, so be patient and give yourself room for lots of repetition of each word in different contexts. You may find that you planned too much for one lesson and you have to cut material, save it for a future lesson, or split it into two lessons. That’s okay, it’s better to go slow than to cram. Remember that your students are hearing these words for the very first time.
 
6. Use stories and motivating content
Humans love stories, so the sooner you can start including simple stories, the more fun your lessons will be, for your students and for you! Also, one of the advantages of teaching a biblical language is that you and your students probably already have shared knowledge of a large body of stories and characters that you can use in your teaching! Just activate their memories of key Bible stories with a few keywords, and your students will already be tuned in to who you’re talking about and what is going on. So take advantage of all the shared Bible stories you have at your disposal! Also because most students are studying a biblical language in order to read the Bible, using lots of Bible material in your class is motivating and will help students feel they’re on the path to their goals.

Funding

We founded our own nonprofit, and we receive support through Zeffy. Here are some things we’ve learned about getting the funding you need to make your work sustainable.
 
1. Be yourself and be a joyful teacher. People love to give to sincere people who love what they’re doing and look like they love what they’re doing.
2. Be radically generous. Don’t monetize your videos with ads; just give them away. Make it as easy for people to use your videos as possible, and they will be inspired by your generosity to support you. Radically generous people end up receiving radical generosity. People will see right away if you just have an ulterior motive to “build a platform” for yourself or sell something, and that will kill any generosity that might have come your way.
3. Be responsive, down to earth, kind, and approachable. People love giving to people who are accessible and generous with their time and attention. 
 

Conclusion

We hope these details have been helpful and informative. We want to be cheerleaders for others who are willing to step out in faith and start something to complement what we’re doing (or surpass it!). Feel free to reach out to us here if you have further questions; we’re happy to help! Even if you don’t have enough money to invest in equipment right now, if you’re serious and passionate about your vision, you could do a kickstarter or gofundme campaign. Be encouraged to take a leap of faith and be part of changing the world in this way!

Let's get out there and create.

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