August Patreon Q & A

You asked, we answered! This month our Production Coordinator, Editorial Director, Producer and Executive Producer are answering a few of your questions. What questions do you have about Crash Course for us to answer next month? 

Do y'all work in like an office? Is there one building/studio where CC is filmed or multiple or do you just make videos in your basements?

Katie Brink, Production Coordinator: Our team works remotely all over the place! We have a core team that's scattered across the U.S., and our animation team, Thought Café, is based in Canada. We sometimes work with experts and freelancers internationally, too. Complexly does have studios in Indianapolis, IN, and Missoula, MT where we usually do our filming, but sometimes filming offsite is necessary, like during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Crash Course Geography was filmed in Alizé's living room in Miami, and Deboki actually painted her own home to look like the Missoula set for Crash Course Organic Chemistry when we had to make the switch to remote production in 2020. So it varies from series to series, but we're planning on shooting our next few series in Indianapolis once again.

Do you find yourselves using textbooks or online resources more heavily? Does that largely depend on the subject matter?

Meghan Modafferi, Editorial Director: We use a combination of textbooks, other books, scholarly resources, and journalistic resources! We also work with experts in the field, who come with their own source material and ideas. Often times, we start with a textbook to understand the way a subject is typically broken up into units with smaller topics. We try to organize our episodes in similar ways, so they are useful as study resources, etc., but we also focus a lot on filling in what's not typically included in textbooks — lesser known contributors to the field, common misconceptions, the stories of how we know what we know, all the things we don't yet know, etc.!

Heather Di Diego, Executive Producer: Adding to Meghan's great response to shout out to our wonderful consultants:  "Each Crash Course series has one or more subject matter experts who bring their knowledge and resources to the project too.  You can see some of our subject matter experts featured in the Office Hours series, which we published in April! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtP-27rLI2VIjVJ5bYHZajS1 

What courses do you want to do but haven't because either the logistics of production are too great or the ability to communicate a subject by video is limiting?

Hannah Bodenhausen, Producer : I really want to do a Crash Course math series! It's pretty much the only core subject that pretty much everyone has to study at some point that we haven't covered yet. Our format is so story driven, that with a subject like math it can be hard to find a narrative through-line that is compelling to viewers. Plus repetition and practice is necessary to most math learning, and we haven't quite cracked the code yet on how to support that for learners. But I'd love to try! I'm sure we can find a way to support learning math in an engaging way that doesn't sacrifice our style and approach.

Heather Di Diego, Executive Producer: Similar to Math, Language Learning is another subject area that we haven't tackled yet, because it requires a lot of practice and feedback. We haven't deeply explored assessment tools to connect to the video experience but it's something we hope to try one day!