Tag Archives: instructional

Science Videos That Use Electronic White Boards

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Many of you may have seen the math lesson videos (e.g., by Khan Academy), which employ an electronic blackboard where the teacher works through a math problem, drawing onscreen, step by step (not sure what the Queen of England has to do with math, but whatever….).

Or you may have seen science videos that employed an electronic whiteboard, and the narrator draws text or images on screen while talking.  The video below illustrates this approach, which can be effective at getting a science concept across in an entertaining manner.

Why do videos done with electronic blackboards or whiteboards work so well?

They engage the viewer.  Seeing someone drawing or writing on screen makes the viewer feel as if there is more of a connection with the narrator, and the experience feels somewhat participatory.  It’s almost as if we are looking over their shoulder as they explain the material to us.

They have constant movement.  The continual movement of the electronic pen draws the eye and makes the viewer feel that something new is being revealed in a relatively rapid manner (which as we’ve discussed previously, is a key ingredient for a successful video).

They focus the viewer’s attention on the information being discussed.  When the narrator appears on screen, the viewer may be distracted from what is being described.  The viewer may be looking at how the person is dressed or their mannerisms, instead of the focus of the video.  With the electronic white/black board, there is nothing to distract from the information, at least visually.

They are different from the traditional video.  Not that many people have figured out how to do these or have decided they are worth the effort.  Consequently, those who use this approach have a better chance of creating something unique.

I find the experience of watching such videos strangely satisfying….but then, I was always an attentive student who hung on every word my teachers spoke.  The video narrator is anonymous (we can’t see them), yet the experience is very intimate, as if the narrator is talking only to us and showing us something really cool.

For the scientist videographer, doing a video with an electronic white board has several advantages, in addition to the one mentioned above about allowing you to create something different and that will stand out from other science videos.

One big advantage is the huge flexibility it provides in creating content for your video.  You don’t need to worry about finding a public domain image or footage of the earth, the moon, and the sun to talk about tides, for example.  Just draw three spheres on the white board and label them “earth” “moon”, and “sun”.  You don’t have to travel to a seashore to film the tide moving in and out of a bay; just draw a shoreline and waterline on your white board.  As the video above shows, it’s possible to illustrate a very complex topic drawing simple stick figures.  So if that is the level of your drawing ability; never fear; you can still use a white board.

Another advantage is not having to find people for your film or convince them to appear on camera.  Just draw a stick figure and label it.  The viewer will accept it, as we saw in a previous post (Bully Triangles and Terrified Circles).  If you have some talent at drawing (and many scientists do), then this technique can be really useful to you.  Those of you who are professors or instructors are already accustomed to drawing on a real blackboard, even drawing elaborate illustrations of organisms and other biological objects.  Engineers are especially capable of drawing diagrams, models, and other illustrations.

The electronic white board also allows you to remain off camera while narrating.  Some of you may be reluctant to appear on camera or have a fear of the camera.  Don’t let this stop you from participating in your own video.  With a bit of practice, you can learn to narrate while drawing, especially if you have a script at hand (although I’ve found that once you get started, you stop relying on notes and simply become immersed in explaining your material).  When you don’t appear on camera, you don’t have to worry about your appearance when creating your videos.  You can do a video in your pajamas if you want.

The biggest drawback to the electronic white/black board technique is that it takes a bit more planning and practice at drawing and narrating at the same time.  However, like everything else in videography, once you work out the method and apply it a couple of times, it becomes second nature.  You may also need some software (Photoshop, Screenflow) and an electronic drawing tablet to make this method work smoothly.

The electronic white/black board approach won’t work for all science videos, but is just another tool in the scientist videographer’s toolbox.  Even if your project can’t be done entirely with this approach, you might employ it to illustrate a specific concept within a larger video.

So exactly how do people create videos using a white/black board?  In an upcoming tutorial, I’ll show a relatively easy way to do this.

How to Use NASA Multimedia in Your Science Videos

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The US space agency, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is a great resource for a variety of images and footage of the earth and its atmosphere, as well as various processes affecting them.  For example, their multimedia gallery of videos contains footage showing ocean currents, hurricanes, solar flares, temperature anomalies, time-lapse images shot from the space station, phytoplankton blooms, and much more.

Here are a few examples of videos in the NASA multimedia gallery that the scientist videographer might find useful for a video project:

Perpetual Ocean:

Solar Flare:

Hurricane Isaac transiting the Gulf of Mexico:

South America Fire Observations:

You can download these videos and because they are in the public domain can take segments from them for your video projects. For example, you might want to talk about the Gulf Stream and how this relates to something you are studying. You can easily download the video “Perpetual Ocean” (above) from the NASA video gallery and using a movie editing program, you can extract the footage that includes the Gulf Stream. Or you might want to talk about impacts of hurricanes on coastal habitats. There are several animations of hurricanes and cyclones as well as footage shot by NASA’s hurricane hunters that can be downloaded and used. Once in your movie editing program, you can then add voiceover and/or text to connect it to your topic.

Below is an example from one of my video projects in which I used two NASA animations together with my own images, footage, and voiceover to introduce a video on sea-level rise and wetlands.

CSI Meets The Abyss

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What happens when you put a pig carcass at the bottom of the ocean?  If you’ve ever wondered, check out this video created by Jackson Chu.  As you may know, pigs are used in forensic research as models for humans and in this study are helping scientists understand what happens to bodies that end up in the ocean.  The video is a time-lapse of the consumption and decay of the pig over several days.

The video by Chu is mainly the raw footage with a minimal text description marking the passage of time.  With a little effort, it could have been turned into a really nice video explaining the process of decay and how the work will aid criminologists.

A time-lapse also can be created with graphics, as in this next video showing all 2,053 nuclear explosions since 1945 on a world map:

Not all time-lapse deals with destruction, death and decay.  Here is one that shows the changes of a single oak tree over the course of a year:

One of the most entertaining types of science video involves time-lapse.  If you study a process that lends itself to time-lapse photography, you might want to consider using this approach for one of your videos.  Besides providing important information about change, it makes for fascinating viewing.

Create an Interactive Map to Illustrate Your Study Sites

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Have you wondered how people create and embed interactive maps into their websites like the one below?  These are quite useful in showing not only where you have been sampling, for example, but to also link text descriptions and photographs of each location that pop up in a box when the placemarker is selected on the map (select the “view in a larger map” and click on one of the placemarkers for an example).


View Flood 2011 Sampling Sites in a larger map

In addition to enhancing your website, these interactive maps might be incorporated into a video to show the locations of sites that will be described or where footage was shot.  In this tutorial, I show how to create such a personalized map using Google Maps, which is free (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window):

Domino Theory

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As I’ve been trying to emphasize in past posts, visual story-telling using a good dramatic question can be a powerful way to spread sound science ideas to a diverse audience.  Here’s a video that is highly effective in getting across the concept of the “domino effect in nature”.  It was made by graduate student, Megan Callahan, who used simple props (dominoes) to create a compelling video:

The video was made during a workshop held by Randy Olson, scientist turned filmmaker (more about the workshop here).  Let’s apply my features of a good video and see how this one does:

1. The video is short.  Imagine a scientist getting across an abstract concept….by talking.  This video does it in one minute, with minimal talking.

2. The information is presented visually as well as verbally.  Yes.  Even without the beginning dialog between the two women, the point of the video is clear.

3. The video keeps adding information at a steady but rapid pace.  Yes.  In this case, the video uses falling dominoes in different habitats to move the story forward.

4. There is constant motion going on throughout the video. Yes, the falling dominoes and cuts from one scene to the next create the impression of constant motion.

5. Colors are intense and dramatic.  Not so obvious because the colors are those of nature.  The video could have used a few close-ups of the images on the dominoes with dramatic colors (of a butterfly or flower, for example).

6. The text is minimal; only what is essential to understanding the message.  Yes, a brief text segment at the end poses the key questions.

7. There is a dream-like quality about the video.  No.

8. The video elicits an emotional reaction in the viewer, largely driven by the music, which  is compelling and carefully keyed to the visual shifts.  The music (mostly bongos) adds to the feeling of movement or motion, which along with the sounds of the falling dominoes, creates a mood.

9. All visual and audio components are rendered to the highest quality possible.  Yes.

10. The video has people, animals, or cartoon characters that are doing something interesting, unusual, or surprising.  In this case, the falling dominoes with attached images representing species are a surprising element.

11. There is an element of suspense.  Yes.  Where will the dominoes end up?

12. There is no traditional beginning, middle, and end.  In this case, there is:  the opening scene with the two women, the falling dominoes, the ending text sequence.  However, it’s not really that obvious.

So this video clearly adheres to most of the elements I’ve identified as being important to creating an effective message.  Let me hasten to add that these are not the only features that characterize an effective video.  There may be some that break the rules (and these, I’m guessing, will be highly effective).  The point is that there are some common attributes that the scientist videographer can keep in mind when planning a video project.

Use your imagination, as Megan did, and create something memorable.  In this case, she took the name of the scientific idea (domino effect) and used it to develop a visual aid that reinforced the concept.  She went a step further and attached pictures of organisms to the dominoes, which drove home the point that each domino represented a species.  By putting the questioning woman’s picture on the last domino, Megan emphasized that humans are part of nature’s interconnectedness.

Many other scientific concepts lend themselves to such visual storytelling.  We just have to be creative in finding ways to tell those stories.

A final point about Megan’s video:  it did not require an expensive film crew, elaborate stage settings, exotic shooting locations, or a huge budget to create.  The students had NO prior experience with film making.  I’m not sure what equipment they used to capture the footage, but it would have been possible to shoot it with a smartphone.  The students did their own acting.  The only prop was a package of dominoes.  Their “shooting locations” for nature scenes were different habitats in their region, apparently close by and easily accessible.  This is a great example of how someone using minimal equipment and visual aids can create a compelling audiovisual message.