Reddit's general manager says other subreddits will get the video treatment soon too.
On Monday, Reddit launched its first web video series, a trio of episodes based on a subsection of the site called Explain Like I'm Five that explains complicated concepts by breaking them down to their basic components.
As with its namesake subreddit, the video series explains ideas like existentialism or the crisis in Syria or volatility in the stock market. Unlike the subreddit, the video series explains those things to actual 5-year-olds.
It is Reddit's first video series, but not the site's first foray into video production. As Reddit's general manager, Erik Martin, explained in a phone interview, back in the day (er, 2009) the site's trademark Q&As, Ask Me Anything, were filmed and posted online.
"We stopped doing video a couple of years ago because we didn't have to anymore," Martin explained. Reddit no longer has a problem convincing celebrities and politicians to respond to users in real time on the site — President Obama even did one last year. But it wasn't always like that: Video was once the incentive. "We used to have to do video because that was the only way we could convince them to do it."
An early AMA with Senator Ron Paul
This time around, they didn't have to do anything, so Martin and series creator Jared Neumark took their time deciding how to make Reddit video that was original — not just regurgitating what was already on the site.
"Obviously, Explain Like I'm Five [the subreddit] is not literal," Martin said, but he was curious if it could be. "Is it even remotely possible to explain existentialism or what's going on in Syria to a 5-year-old? What would happen if you tried?"
Once they settled on on the concept, Neumark (who is also responsible for the ""Kids Reenact" videos) sifted through the subreddit's most popular posts before settling on the first three topics: the crisis in Syria, the stock market, and existentialism.
"We shot them all in one day back in November. We had a bunch of cameras, so we wouldn't have to shoot it a bunch of times; we could actually get them learning the concept the first time," Neumark explained, also over the phone.
It turned out the lessons really did work — at least on the child actors. "We auditioned two of the kids a week before, and we used part of the scripts," Neumark recalled, "and one of the kids remembered the lesson and he kept trying to jump in and say what he knew already. We're were like, 'No! You're not supposed to know!'"
