The COVID-19 pandemic hit, and The Motley Fool folded up its video operations. No one in the office meant no one in our video studios turning out fresh content for YouTube. My boss saw an opportunity: What if the editorial department made its own videos to fill the gap?

A weird, creative, long-shot endeavor? Sign me up. With a total budget of around $200 — cheap greenscreen from the internet, plus a year’s subscription to All Turtles’s super-cool, bafflingly named mmhmm — I cannonballed into the deep end of video production.

There was … a learning curve. Gotta say that up front. But the videos got a little bit better each time around, as I researched, scripted, created images for, produced, presented, and edited one or more new videos every week. Using mmhmm let me switch camera angles and deploy graphics live and in camera, as I recorded each video (thus somewhat fulfilling my dreams of guest-hosting Last Week Tonight).

By the time the Fool at large got wise, and somewhat sensibly said, “Hey, why are you doing your own videos, Editorial, that’s confusing, please stop it,” I feel like our video output was approaching respectability.  Here’s a selection of videos I made toward the “less bad” end of that learning curve.