Category Archives: Reviews of Science Videos

I analyze my own and others’ science videos in order to better understand what makes a good (and bad) science video. We improve by constantly assessing our work and that of other practitioners. By identifying key criteria in science videos, I develop protocols that, if followed, will improve your science videography.

Use Video to Recruit Research Participants

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Quite a few researchers depend on volunteers—who participate as subjects of a study or who help in the collection of data. If you are a scientist or graduate student in need of volunteers, you may have found it difficult to find and recruit people to participate in your study. Perhaps you advertised your study online or in a local paper and got little response. Or maybe you posted information on a website that lists clinical trials (needing volunteers to serve as study subjects) or research projects (needing observers/recorders of plants, animals, and the environment). On such sites, a potential volunteer can search for a topic of interest and then sign up for one of the studies. Many of these sites, however, offer only brief text descriptions of the research project, which often do not provide much insight about what the volunteer can expect or why the research is being done.

A way to make your study stand out and attract suitable volunteers is to create a brief video showing prospective volunteers what they will experience, what they might learn by participating, and how their contribution will help advance science. The video can be posted on a video-sharing site where people searching for information about a topic are more likely to find it. The video can be linked to the project website where someone can find out more about it and perhaps volunteer to participate in the study.

For example, here is a video about a study that does a great job of not only explaining the significance of the work, it shows the sampling procedure that a volunteer subject would experience:

I’m not crazy about the title, but it seemed to attract a lot of attention. You can read more about the study (or maybe volunteer?) here. This study of facial mites is part of a larger effort called Your Wildlife, which features citizen science and science education projects focused on familiar landscapes—from our own skin to our backyards.

 

What Happens When a Squirrel Grabs Your GoPro?

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The GoPro camera can be used to capture unique footage such as aerial video filmed with a Quadcopter, time-lapse movie of clouds, and a slow-motion video of a hummingbird.

Here are a couple more examples of interesting videos shot with a GoPro.

Apparently, the videographer baited his GoPro with bread; the squirrel carried it up a tree to dine in safety, then dropped the camera when it finished eating (direct link to video uploaded by Viva Frei). I’m not necessarily recommending anyone try this with their camera….

And here is a video of baby owls, filmed by AS Goprod, a group of French GoPro enthusiasts (direct link):

GoPro in a Water Bubble

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Here’s something you can’t do with your GoPro on Earth: Suspend it within a floating bubble of water. Astronauts on the International Space Station created a large water bubble in the microgravity environment and then slipped a GoPro Hero camera inside to film from within the floating bubble. They were supposedly studying surface tension in microgravity, but produced a really neat video in the process. Take a look:

Using Time-Lapse Video To Demonstrate Mangrove Restoration Techniques in Mekong Delta

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I’ve been attending a conference this week (Turning the Tide on Mangrove Loss) and have been pleased to see so many presenters using video in their talks to show various aspects of their research. One effective video used time lapse photography to show the construction of “t-fences” in the Mekong Delta. T-fences are used to capture sediment and help build soil elevations sufficiently to support mangrove vegetation. Here is the video (link in case you cannot see the player window):

If you are interested in learning how to create a time lapse video, I’ve produced several tutorials and written posts about the topic:

Use Time Lapse to Reveal Unseen Biological Phenomena

How to Create a Time-Lapse Video with Your Smartphone

How to Create a Time-Lapse Video from Still Images

Time Lapse Tutorial for GoPro Hero 3+

Marmosets Find Instructional Video Useful

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OK, I know you’re sick of me yammering on about the value of video in science communication and what a great tool it is in teaching others how to perform a scientific technique. However, I could not resist pointing out a recent study that showed wild marmosets learning how to open a box to get a food reward—by, you guessed it, watching a methods video!

Tina Gunhold, a cognitive biology researcher at the University of Vienna, filmed captive marmosets retrieving a piece of food from a clear plastic box (representing an artificial fruit) and created a video featuring their techniques for gaining access to the food reward. She and coauthors then set up the box in the field (Brazil) along with a laptop showing the video of laboratory marmosets lifting a lid or opening a drawer to get at the food. The researchers then filmed wild marmosets (108 in all) who either saw the instructional video or served as controls (saw only a static image of a marmoset standing next to the box).

Only twelve of the wild marmosets were able to open the box and get the food. However, of this group, eleven had watched the instructional video and only one of the controls figured it out on her own. The choice of technique by the successful participants did not appear to be random but was predominately the method they saw in the video. Also, the instructional video group showed more attempts at manipulation of the box than did the control group. The researchers described their findings in the journal Biology Letters (Gunhold, T., Whiten, A. & Bugnyar, T. Biol. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0439 (2014)).

The video below shows one group of wild marmosets investigating the experimental setup and their response (Video Credit: Tina Gunhold) (if you cannot see the video player window on your device, you can watch the video here):

The authors conclude: “To our knowledge, this is the first study that used video demonstrations in the wild and demonstrated the potent force of social learning, even from unfamiliar conspecifics, under field conditions.”

Scientist videographers, take note.