How to make an explainer video: from blank page to landing page
The explainer build in six steps: the 150-word script, the problem-turn-proof structure, scene design that shows instead of lists, voiceover, and the length trap.
An explainer video gets made in six steps, and the first two are writing, which is where its fate is decided. The tool landscape and pricing routes are covered in explainer video makers; this is the hands-on build for the team doing it themselves.
Step 1: write the 150-word script
One minute of comfortable voiceover is roughly 150 words; write to that budget from the start. Structure: the viewer's problem in their words (two sentences), your product as the turn (one), three capabilities (a sentence each), one proof point, one call to action. Read it aloud twice; every sentence that makes you breathe wrong gets shortened.
Step 2: mark what the screen shows
Go through the script and note, per sentence, what is on screen, the storyboard pass in its simplest form. The rule that separates explainers that explain: when the voice makes a claim, the screen shows THAT claim, the actual interface doing the thing, the number animating, the flow drawing itself. Stock footage of smiling teams is the screen saying nothing.
Step 3: design one scene fully, then clone its rules
Build the first scene to done: palette, type, how elements enter and leave. Every later scene inherits those decisions, which is how a self-made explainer stays coherent to the end instead of drifting, the consistency principle that separates finished-looking work from stamina-limited work.
Step 4: voiceover before fine timing
Record the voice (quiet room, close mic, slower than feels natural), THEN time the scenes to it. Animating first and squeezing the voice in after is the classic order mistake; the voice is the clock.
Step 5: sound design, lightly
Music under the voice at a level you barely notice, and a few accents on the biggest visual beats. Mute-test it: the on-screen text should carry the argument alone for the landing-page autoplay case.
Step 6: resist the second minute
At 90 seconds, cut capabilities, not pace. The explainer's job is the meeting, the signup, the next click, not completeness; the documentation can be long because the explainer was short.
Generation compresses steps 3 and 4: script and brand kit in, coherent scenes timed to a generated or uploaded voice out, each scene still editable. B2B explainers are core Motionpilot territory, and the waitlist below is where they open.