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.

NASA Visualizers Win NSF-Science Magazine Video Contest

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“What safeguards our solar system is our star. The sun provides a shield stretching dynamicearthstillbeyond the last planet in its orbit..a force field that deflects these cosmic rays. But these solar winds can be dangerous, too. Especially during outbursts called coronal mass ejections. Want a vision of Earth gone wrong? Just look at what solar storms do to our sister planet, Venus.”

That is the opening narration (by actor Liam Neeson) of the NASA film, “Coronal Mass Ejection and Ocean/Wind Circulation”, that has won first place in a contest sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Science Magazine. What follows are outstanding animations of cosmic particles spreading across the solar system and sweeping around Venus and the Earth. The video goes on to explain how Earth has avoided the fate of Venus and then describes how most of the solar energy is deflected but what is absorbed is enough to drive our climate. The latter is illustrated by animations of wind and ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream. This video is an excerpt from a larger movie called the Dynamic Earth, which is being shown in planetariums around the world.

Watch the winning video (with Liam Neeson narration): http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11003

Watch the version submitted to contest on YouTube:

More about Dynamic Earth: http://www.dynamicearth.spitzcreativemedia.com

More about the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp

Image Credit: Still from “Dynamic Earth”, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11003

The NASA video and most of the videos that won Honorable Mention in this contest were created by skilled teams of animators and videographers. However, one of the Honorable Mentions was produced by a team of scientists led by Geoffrey Harlow, a biology student:

Science Field Courses That Emphasize Videography

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The video opens with a scene of a rainforest followed by footage of spiders and the aquatic ecologist who studies them. Christopher Holmes, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, explains that spiders are a lot like us, “They need to eat, build a house, and survive and reproduce.” He then uses the analogy of a human fisherman to explain spider ecology in greater detail.

Some students take field science courses as part of their training. Such courses often require students to conduct an independent research project and then write a report and/or give a presentation at the end of the course. With the advent of digital media, some of these courses are now encouraging or requiring students to create a video, a course blog, and/or a course podcast as part of a growing emphasis by educational organizations to teach communication skills to students.

Naturally, I think this is an excellent idea.

In the next video, Ralph Saporito, a Tropical Biologist, and Nick Batoro, Ph.D. candidate, describe some of the trials and tribulations that researchers and students encounter when doing fieldwork:

The above videos were co-sponsored by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), which offers a variety of field courses and study abroad opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Students taking Introduction to Tropical Biology (Winter 2014) created, with the assistance of Day’s Edge Productions, several excellent videos about their topic of interest and posted them on YouTube. You can go to the course website to watch all of them. Thanks to Andrés Santana, Graduate Education Department, OTS, for permission to embed two of the videos here.

OTS also offers a field course for science teachers, during which they design their own research project and produce their own videos to “bring their personal experiences in the rainforest to life for their students”.

Field courses like these are great opportunities for science students and educators to be exposed to videography and science communication. I’m pleased to see that organizations like OTS are taking the initiative to teach media skills along with learning about tropical ecosystems. I helped teach an OTS course in Panama many years ago, long before I took up videography. I can now think of many ways that video could have enhanced that course…from filming some of the organisms and their behavior…to producing student videos about their experiences.

If you are teaching a field course or any course with field trips or laboratory exercises, you might consider having students create a video as a course assignment (or as an alternative to a written report). They can easily accomplish this with a digital camera (that shoots video), an iPad, or a Smartphone.

 

Use Time Lapse To Reveal Unseen Biological Phenomena

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I’ve written previously about how useful time-lapse video can be in showing biological or physical phenomena that cannot be readily observed in real time. Most people are fascinated by time-lapse movies—a reaction the scientist videographer can use to advantage. I came across an article in the BBC News Magazine about “Underwater time-lapse shows secret life of a coral reef“.

You can see the video that accompanies the BBC article here. It includes a lot of amazing time-lapse footage of coral reefs. You can also get an idea of how the scientist (Dr. Pim Bongaerts of the University of Queensland) captured some of the footage in aquaria or in the field.

If you are interested in using time-lapse photography in your research or in a science video, check out my tutorials explaining how to shoot time lapse below:

How to create a time-lapse video with a smartphone

How to make a time-lapse video from still images

Do You Ever Wish You Could Just Shed Your Skin?

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Or watch a video showing how it’s done? In previous posts, I’ve talked about how time-lapse videos are compelling and also how to make them with your Smartphone. There are so many phenomena that cannot be appreciated except with time-lapse techniques. Here are two more examples of time-lapse movies, which are not only fun to watch but also contribute to a better understanding of the processes being filmed.

The first shows a crab molting. Apparently, it takes a few days for the entire process, which makes it a good candidate for the time-lapse approach.

The second video is of the patterns that sand bubbler crabs make. I really like this one. I’ve seen these patterns along sandy shorelines and knew they were caused by a burrowing organism, but the process is so slow that the casual observer rarely takes notice. I particularly like how the video creator has compiled a variety of views shot from different perspectives of the process.

I’m Not Interesting, But My Research Is

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wesIf you are a scientist or graduate student, it’s likely that you agree with the sentiment expressed in the title of this post. What’s also likely is that you are totally wrong.

What other people find most interesting and what will hold their attention is a story—what motivated you to study armadillo penises, how you tried to impress your graduate advisor and almost destroyed his lab, or that a biology laboratory has an intricate social dynamic that eclipses its research complexities.

You can hear those stories and others at The Story Collider, which is a collection of podcasts by scientists, science journalists, and other interesting people, who talk about how science has affected them. The effort was co-founded by Ben Lillie and Brian Wecht. Theirs is part of a larger effort to help scientists connect with a larger audience beyond their peers. I’ve talked about this topic previously because it is a key concept in making videos about science. When someone trained in science tries to explain science to others, they often make the mistake of focusing on facts, data, and statistics and forget that what grabs people’s attention and holds it is a story.

The take-home message you will get from listening to a few of these podcasts is that it’s possible to get those science facts across by telling a story about how your work made a difference in someone’s life—yours or someone else’s. Another thing these podcasts do that many science videos fail to do is they make scientists seem likeable, interesting, and even funny. That is an important accomplishment. People won’t listen to your message or watch your video if they don’t like you. Telling a story makes a scientist sound human.

We can’t always tell a personal story, of course. Sometimes it just won’t work for a particular video project. Also, some of us may be constrained by our organizations as to the format, formality, and content of our videos. However, storytelling techniques can help us craft better science videos. I’ll talk more about that in later posts. For now, try listening to a few podcasts at the Story Collider to better understand how stories can make a science message come alive.

In the TEDMED 2013 video I’m embedding below, you’ll hear from Ben Lillie (co-founder and Director) and Erin Barker (senior producer) of Story Collider who talk about storytelling and why it’s so important in getting across a message about science.