Educational and tutorial videos have a specific problem: they are long, they are dense, and the person watching is trying to *learn* something while a talking head competes for their attention. Good B-roll is not decoration here — it is teaching. It shows the thing you are describing so the viewer's eyes and ears point at the same idea.
So instead of "add more B-roll," here are concrete B-roll ideas for educational and tutorial content, organized by the kind of moment you are in. I make these videos myself, so this is the list I actually reach for.
When you say a number or a statistic
Numbers spoken out loud slide right past people. Put them on screen and they stick.
- An animated stat — the figure counts up to "68%" as you say it.
- A bar chart comparing two or three values you are contrasting.
- A before/after with the numbers side by side.
The rule: if you say a number that matters, that number should be visible. This alone makes a lesson feel more rigorous.
When you list steps or a process
Tutorials are mostly sequences. "First you do this, then this, then this." That structure wants to be seen.
- Numbered steps appearing one at a time as you narrate each.
- A flow or pipeline showing how one stage feeds the next.
- A checklist that fills in as you complete each item.
Showing the steps as a list also helps the viewer track where they are in a long process — which reduces the "wait, what step are we on?" rewinds.
When you explain code or commands
If you teach anything technical, this is your bread and butter.
- A code scene with the snippet, syntax-highlighted, the relevant line emphasized.
- A terminal scene showing the command and its output.
- A diff highlighting exactly what changed between before and after.
The key is readability: big enough to read on a phone, on screen long enough to actually parse, with the important line called out rather than lost in a wall of text.
When you define a term or make a key point
The moments you most want to stick deserve a visual anchor.
- A lower-third naming the concept as you introduce it.
- A pulled quote or definition on a clean card.
- A label or callout pointing at the specific part you mean.
These are cheap to make and disproportionately effective — they turn a spoken aside into something the viewer remembers and can screenshot.
When you describe a concept with no data
Sometimes you are explaining an idea, an analogy, a mental model — nothing to chart and nothing real to film.
- An AI image of the metaphor you are using.
- A simple diagram showing the relationship between parts.
- A framework graphic laying out the model you are teaching.
This is where educational creators usually fall back on a random stock clip that adds nothing. A generated image of your actual metaphor teaches; a stranger at a laptop does not.
When you genuinely need the real world
Not everything should be a graphic.
- Stock footage of a real place, tool, or process you are referencing.
- Screen recordings of the actual software you are teaching.
- Your own footage — the workspace, the device, the physical thing.
Real footage earns its place when the real world *is* the point. The mistake is using it as filler when an animated scene would teach better.
The thing that ties it all together: consistency
Here is what separates a channel that looks professional from one that looks cobbled together: every one of these B-roll scenes should share the same colors, the same fonts, the same visual language. A lesson where the stat scene, the code scene, and the diagram all look like they belong to the same course feels trustworthy. One where each scene is a different template feels like clip art.
Define your look once and let every scene inherit it. This is the single highest-leverage habit for educational creators, and almost nobody does it — because doing it by hand, scene after scene, is exhausting.
Getting all of this without living in After Effects
Every idea above is a motion-design scene, and that is precisely why educational creators skip them: building each one manually takes an evening you do not have on a weekly schedule.
This is the problem Brollss solves. It transcribes your lesson, reads it beat by beat, and generates these exact scene types — stats, steps, code, quotes, diagrams, plus AI images and matched stock — from what you actually said, all in your brand colors and fonts. You review and swap what you do not love. It also cuts the filler words and silences from the same transcript, so the boring half of the edit is handled too.
We are at founding-access stage, and I am onboarding early educators and tutorial makers personally.
Request founding access, bring one lesson, and see your explanations turn into scenes that actually teach.