About the studioBrighton Beach, Brooklyn — two desks, one door
Vandermeer & Hale exists because most expert knowledge dies in a slide deck. We interview, write, film, build and test it until a learner can do the thing — then hand you every file.
01 / 04 — Why we started
Every studio we worked in before this one had the same ritual. An expert — a nurse educator, a safety officer, a master electrician — would give a brilliant forty-minute talk, and a production team would turn it into a three-hour recording with a logo on it. Everybody agreed it was thorough. Nobody finished it.
We came to think the problem was structural. The people who write the script were never in the room with the people who film it, and neither was ever responsible for whether the file launched in the LMS on a Tuesday morning.
So we built the studio the other way round. One desk owns the learning and the words. One desk owns the camera, the build and the upload. Your expert talks to both, and the course is not delivered until we have watched it run, score and complete inside your system.
That is the whole idea. It is deliberately unglamorous, and it is the reason the courses we make get finished.
A course is finished when your learner can do the thing — not when the last video is exported.
02 / 04 — The short list of refusals
Rewrites after the shoot cost you a second shoot. We lock the page first.
If the skill takes twelve minutes to teach, the module is twelve minutes.
Launch, scoring and completion are checked in your system before handoff.
One fixed fee per course, confirmed in writing after the scoping call.
The SCORM package, project files, script and video masters are yours.
The script is written in their cadence and marked up by them before a camera rolls.
03 / 04 — Who you’ll be talking to
Desk 01 — The page
A former corporate trainer who got tired of writing objectives nobody read. Vandermeer interviews your expert, settles on the one sentence a learner must be able to act on, and drafts the script out loud before it ever reaches paper.
Desk 02 — The room
A camera operator and sound engineer by training, who still wraps cables over-under. Hale runs the shoot day, cuts the footage, builds the knowledge checks and branching scenarios, and is the person who uploads and tests your SCORM package.
04 / 04 — What to expect
The day most experts dread is the one they end up enjoying. Here is how ours runs, so nobody turns up surprised or under-caffeinated.
Hale arrives, sets light and sound. Your expert arrives to a quiet room and a printed, locked script.
Sound check and one rehearsal read. Vandermeer marks any phrase that stumbles; we fix it on the spot.
Talking-head takes, a module at a time, in short blocks with water and a break every forty-five minutes.
Lunch, away from the camera. Your expert reads nothing.
Screen-capture sessions: your software, your forms, your slides, narrated live.
Pickups for anything we flagged. Wrap, and a plain-language summary of what happens next.
The next step is a conversation
A scoping call is thirty minutes with both desks. You leave with a recommended scale, a timeline and a written fixed fee — from $5,280 for a single course.