How to make an explainer video: a step-by-step guide with real examples

What is an explainer video?

An explainer video is a short film that makes one idea clear to someone who does not know it yet. It might explain a product, a process or a concept: how a payment reaches another bank, how a heat pump warms a house, how a CRM fits under the AI app you already use. Most explainers are animated, because a drawing can show what a camera cannot, like money moving between banks or heat moving through a pipe.

What separates a good explainer from a slideshow with a voice is timing. Each picture arrives as the words name it and stays until the line has explained it. The viewer never has to choose between reading and listening.

How to make an explainer video, step by step

1. Choose one idea and one viewer. Write it as a sentence: “how a UPI payment moves between two banks, for people new to paying by phone”. If you need “and” to describe the idea, you have two films.
2. Pick the length from what has to be said. One concept fits in 45 to 90 seconds. A process with four or five actors needs more: our UPI explainer, which follows one payment through an app, two banks and a switch in the middle, runs 80 seconds.
3. Write the script for the ear. Short whole sentences, “you” and contractions, about 2 words per second of film. Open on the viewer’s question and give the answer in one plain line before the detail.
4. Give every line a picture. List the lines down one side and the picture each one needs down the other. Abstract words need a shape: a bank becomes a building, a network becomes a dial, a PIN becomes four dots beside a lock.
5. Choose a style that fits the topic. Clean motion graphics for products and data, an illustrated story for everyday science and money, a screen recording for click-by-click software. See types of explainer videos for the full list.
6. Add the voice, the music and captions. A calm voice for teaching, a brighter one for products. Music sits under the voice, not on top of it. Captions carry the film for people watching on mute.
7. Check it on mute and on a phone. If the story still makes sense with the sound off and on a small screen, it is ready. If a picture leaves before its line ends, slow it down.
8. Publish it in the size each channel needs. 16:9 for your site and YouTube, 9:16 for Reels and Shorts, 1:1 or 4:5 for feeds. Each size is a new layout, not a crop.

How many words fit each length?

A voice-over that stops early leaves the pictures to hold the film alone, and long silent holds are where viewers leave. A script that is too long gets rushed. The count that works is about 2 words for every second of film, counting the pauses between lines, after leaving about 3 seconds for the opening and the end card.

Film length	Spoken words
30 seconds	about 54
45 seconds	about 84
60 seconds	about 114
90 seconds	about 174
2 minutes	about 234
3 minutes	about 354

These are the targets Voom’s studio writes to. A natural narrator speaks a little faster than 2 words a second; the rest of the time goes to the short pauses that let each picture land.

A real example, line by line

Here is how the 80-second UPI explainer at the end of this page is built. It was made with Voom from a single prompt, for people new to paying by phone.

Time	What the voice says	What the picture does
0:00	“You tap Pay on your phone, and your money just… leaves. Where does it go?”	A boy taps Pay and coins fly off his phone
0:07	“Your app is only the front door. It doesn’t move the money itself.”	The app is drawn as a door, not a vault
0:17	“Before money moves, you enter the PIN only you know.”	A keypad fills in four dots beside a lock
0:24	“Your bank reads the request, then passes it up to NPCI.”	Your bank, then NPCI drawn as a dial between two banks
0:40	“Then your bank debits, and their bank credits.”	A debit and a credit meet on one sheet with a tick
0:57	“The confirmation comes back the same way, into your app.”	A blackboard redraws the whole route

Notice three things. The film opens on the viewer’s own question, not on a definition. Each actor in the payment gets one simple shape that stays the same all film, so the viewer can follow it from shot to shot. And the end restates the route in one picture, so the viewer leaves with the whole idea, not just its last step. You can see the film’s full breakdown on our fintech explainer video page.

The shape most good explainers share

Most explainers that work follow the same five beats, whatever the topic:

1. The question. The viewer’s own puzzle, in their words. “Where does the heat come from on a cold night?”
2. The answer, in one line. Before any detail. “It moves heat. It doesn’t make it.”
3. The steps. One per line, each with its picture, in the order they happen.
4. The recap. The whole idea in a few words the viewer can repeat. “Moved, not made.”
5. The next step. What to do now: try it, book a call, read more.

Our explainer video script guide turns these beats into a template with word counts for 30, 60 and 90 seconds, and shows three full scripts.

Common mistakes, and how to fix them

• Two ideas in one film. The viewer remembers neither. Fix: split it into two films and link them.
• The voice reads the headline. If the screen says “Real type” and the voice says “real type”, one of them is wasted. Fix: let the voice complete the picture rather than repeat it.
• Numbers without a source. In a finance or health explainer, one wrong figure costs the trust the film was made to build. Fix: use only figures you can point to, and put them in the brief exactly as they must appear.
• A long silent ending. The voice stops at 40 seconds of a 60-second film and the pictures hold. Fix: size the script to the length, or shorten the film.
• No next step. The film explains well and then just ends. Fix: close on one action, said and shown.

Making an explainer with Voom

Voom follows the same steps from a single prompt. Describe the idea and the viewer, add any facts that must appear and pick a length. Voom writes the script to the word count for that length, designs a look for the topic, gives every line its own picture, records the voice-over in one of 20 voices in more than 20 languages, writes an original score and adds captions if you want them.

Prompts that work well name the idea, the viewer and the mood:

• “Explain how a heat pump keeps a home warm in winter by moving heat instead of making it. Friendly and clear, for homeowners.”
• “Explain how a UPI payment moves money from one bank account to another in about two seconds, for people in India who are new to paying by phone.”
• “Explain what a credit score is and three habits that raise it, for first-time borrowers. Calm and encouraging.”

For topic pages with sample films, see SaaS explainer videos, fintech explainer videos and educational explainer videos. For more films with their timings, see explainer video examples.