September 28, 2026

How AB Studios Makes Afterschool Enrichment Content

When a program director asks what makes AB Studios different, they usually expect us to say something about features or new tools. We have those too. But what really sets us apart is that we’re a film studio.

An actual one in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a stage, lights, a crew, and a team whose entire job is making content students get excited about, and your staff never has to plan. 

Our afterschool enrichment content is written by educators and produced in-house, covering STEM, SEL, and more. Here’s how it works.

How an Afterschool Video Session Gets Made

Our team comes from film, animation, sound design, and education. Every session follows the same path as a real production studio: concept, script, storyboard, video shoot, edit, and sound. 

What comes out is a student-facing short video that does the heavy lifting in getting students engaged and prepared for that day’s lesson. Plus, ready-to-run activity guides your staff can pick up and lead.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. For a recent back-to-school marketing video, we needed seven characters, including a pigeon, a bunny, and our AB Studios President, Brian, in a classroom, shot across multiple camera angles.

Sean and John, our Innovative Media Producer and Head of Studio, along with the support of our content and creative teams, built the classroom in 3D first, with desks at real heights and the camera at real eye level. 

Then we built a physical version at the studio and filmed our own team acting out every part. That footage became the shell our team animated the characters into.

Our content team, in other words, got turned into an animated character.

Brian, our president, was the only one we never replaced. As Sean puts it, “he’s the only real thing in a room full of cartoons.”

Watch the behind-the-scenes if you want to see how it came together.

Is All of it Animated?

No. Animation gets a lot of the attention, but plenty of our sessions don’t use it at all. For those, we fly professional actors into Charlotte, including some who have worked on Broadway. Other videos are simpler, like filming someone building a paper airplane step by step, so your staff can put the screen up and spend that time with students instead of explaining.

Either way, the video is short on purpose. It’s a starter, there to spark the idea and get students interested, with the rest of the session for building and testing.

Here’s a look at one of our courses, French Language & Culture, where we brought in Alexis,  a professional actress in NYC. 

The other benefit is on your side of the room. Your site coordinator doesn’t need to be a geologist to run a great lesson on rocks, or a pilot to teach paper aviation. Our video carries the subject. Your staff carries the room.

What We’re Testing For

Everything our team makes gets built with your program in mind. We ask ourselves:

• Can someone run this with no prep time?
• Does it work in a cafeteria or a gym that wasn’t built for hands-on projects?
• Will it hold a mixed-age group when nobody wants to sit still?

Students walking into your program have already been in school for hours. Our goal at the studio is to make after school the part of the day they look forward to, where they get to try something new, no matter who is leading the room.

Why it Matters for Your Program

There’s no shortage of content out there. What’s rare is content built for after school, by people who believe those hours matter as much as the school day does.

That belief is why we built AB Studios. After school has spent decades being treated as the leftover part of the day, and the content it gets has usually reflected that.

We’ve made 300+ video starters for out-of-school time programs, each paired with activity guides your staff can pick up and lead.

Ready to see if we’re a fit? Request a demo here