Scientists are increasingly using video to share their work with colleagues and the public, but struggle to make their information interesting and understandable. In the video review embedded below, I used the NASA/JPL-Caltech video, 7 Minutes of Terror, to discuss ways to improve science videos.
The NASA video provides several great examples of techniques to sustain viewer interest and to improve understanding and retention of technical information—in this case, it’s literally “rocket science”. I break down the NASA video to illustrate how the use of visuals, metaphors, non-technical language, and a 3-part story structure can help science video makers avoid boring their audience to death. Take a look:
If you find this review useful, please “like” my video on YouTube. Want more video reviews like this? Leave a comment here or on YouTube to let me know what you would like to see.
I recently discovered that my iBook, The Scientist Videographer, can now be viewed on an iPhone (with iOS 8.4 or later). Previously, it was only accessible on an iPad or Mac (running Mavericks or later). Curiously, iBooks authors were not notified about this change—at least I didn’t get any notice. Anyway, this is great because it means that my potential readership has increased substantially.
When you first open the iBooks app on your iPhone, you will see all of your previous iBook purchases made on an iPad or Mac. To view one, it must first be downloaded to the phone by tapping the book’s thumbnail. If you’ve never purchased an iBook before, you can open the iBook Store and make a selection.
If you’ve never seen an iBook that incorporates all of the interactive features provided by iBooks Author (scrolling text boxes, photo galleries, animated slideshows, videos, exercises), here is a quick run-through of The Scientist Videographer as seen on the iPhone:
I’ve given many presentations at international conferences as well as seminars at foreign research institutions and departments. One thing I learned from these experiences was that non-native English speakers appreciated it when I made an effort to aid their comprehension of my language. In addition to speaking slowly, I would add a single sentence on each slide that summarized what I was describing on that slide. This approach helps because people often can read English better than they understand the spoken language–especially if the speaker has a strong accent. I know that adding extra text to slides is often discouraged by presentation gurus, because the audience’s attention is split between reading the slide text and listening to what the speaker is saying. However, the advice not to add extra text to slides falls down when your audience is struggling to understand your spoken words. You have to balance the design of your slides with your audience’s needs.
That experience in giving presentations to international audiences made me acutely aware of how captions can increase an audience’s comprehension of my material. In this blog post, I’d like to talk a bit about why and how you should add captions to your videos.
When people first start making videos, they often focus on the audiovisual aspects of the project and don’t think much (if at all) about providing closed captioning text. It’s an extra step that many video makers avoid because it takes time and because they haven’t thought about the makeup of their potential audience. People typically think about closed captioning as mainly helping viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. However, there are probably many more people who simply can’t understand the language being spoken in the video but whose comprehension would be improved enormously by captions.
If you post your videos on a media-sharing site such as YouTube, your potential audience is the entire globe, where many people may not speak your language. For example, about half of the viewers of my videos on The Scientist Videographer YouTube channel reside in countries in which English is not the primary language. YouTube uses speech recognition technology to produce an automatic transcript for each uploaded video. It’s not perfect, but is pretty good; the few mistakes can be easily corrected. You can alternatively upload a text transcript, and YouTube will synchronize the text with the audio. Then, all a viewer needs do is click the “CC” button to turn on closed captioning.
Captions help viewers who struggle to understand your spoken language but can read it. Another reason to include captions is because YouTube provides the option to translate the captions into more than 60 languages; however, this works only if the video creator provides captions. This means that those viewers who don’t speak or read your language can also watch and understand your video. A final reason is that a text transcript contributes to Search Engine Optimization by providing information to Google and YouTube that allows more efficient indexing of your videos. By ensuring your videos are discoverable by search engines, you will reach a much larger audience.
Adding captions to your videos thus increases your global audience as well as the discoverability of your science videos.
So part of my workflow in making a video includes preparing a word-for-word transcript of everything audible in the video. Because I often develop a script prior to filming, I usually can use that text file and only have to revise it a bit to reflect minor changes in the final film. That transcript file is uploaded, along with the video, to my channel, and YouTube then automatically aligns the text with the audio. When the video plays and the viewer enables the closed captioning (cc button), the text then appears on screen and is timed to match the audio.
Creating and adding closed captions to a video is relatively easy and painless–if you know how. In the following video tutorial, I walk through the steps needed to add closed captions to a video:
This post is to let readers know about a contest to find the best video abstract describing marine research. The Ocean 180 Video Challenge, which is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is looking to enhance the communication skills of ocean scientists and to provide educational opportunities for students.
Contestants will submit a 3-minute video that summarizes recent, peer-reviewed research (published between January 1, 2010 – December 11, 2015). The video abstract should highlight the relevance, meaning, and implications of the research to persons outside their discipline.
Videos will be screened initially by a panel of scientists and communication experts, but the winners will be selected by 6th-8th graders from all over the globe. Ocean 180 expects that over 50,000 student judges will participate in this year’s Challenge. The top three video abstracts will receive cash prizes of $3,000 for first place, $2,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place.
The program is accepting entries until December 11, 2015 (11:59 pm PST). All entries must be submitted online at www.ocean180.org
Here is one of the winning videos from a previous Ocean 180 Challenge:
Ocean 180 has some tips for making a winning entry. If you need more help making your video abstract, check out my tutorials.
I recently taught a workshop on science videography at a science society conference and wanted to post a few Tweets to let society members know about it and to attract additional participants. My plan was to post daily Tweets during the week prior to the workshop. My problem was how to make my Tweets noticeable among the many other Tweets being posted by conference goers. So, instead of attaching photos to the Tweets, I decided to create a series of brief video bulletins to make my Tweets more eye-catching and to emphasize the topic of the workshop.
However, I did not want to spend a lot of time on this, as I had my hands full preparing for the workshop. After a bit of experimentation, I discovered that it was easy to take short (10 second) video clips and use the editing option in the iPhone camera app to add a bit of text describing the workshop. Then it was an easy task to compose a Tweet on my phone and attach the video bulletin, a different one each day. A bunch of people viewed the Tweets, and I attracted several additional participants for my workshop. See below for an example:
Someone who saw my Tweets asked me how I created them. So, this week I put together a tutorial to show how to quickly turn a video clip stored in an iPhone camera roll into an eye-catching bulletin to announce an upcoming event or publication. The resultant video announcement can be exported and posted on a website, on a Facebook page, on a LinkedIn profile, or in a Tweet.
