Tag Archives: animation

Science Video Review: Seven Minutes of Terror

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No, this post is not about my recent trip to Sri Lanka and riding in their infamous tuc-tucs in crazy traffic.  It is the title of the recent video released by NASA describing the anticipated descent of the Mars rover Curiosity from orbit to the surface of the red planet planned for August 6 at 1:31 am ET.  The “seven minutes of terror” phrase refers to the time it will take for the vehicle to descend through the atmosphere and be deposited intact and functioning on the ground.  The terror will be experienced by the NASA scientists back on Earth as they wait to learn whether the mission has succeeded or not (60% of Mars missions have failed).

The video has been called “stunning”, “exciting”, and “terrifying” by various news outlets and bloggers.  I don’t think I would go that far, but I would describe the video as excellent and a successful effort to dramatize and advertise the upcoming Mars landing.  It also manages to get across some technical information but in a palatable way. It’s short: 5:07 minutes and highly visual, with outstanding animations and graphics.  Take a look and then read my assessment below:

The video starts off with a good “hook”:  The opening sequence shows Adam Steltzner (EDL engineer) who says, “When people look at it, it looks crazy.  That’s a natural thing. Sometimes when we look at it, it looks crazy.  It is the result of reasoned engineering and thought. But it still looks crazy.”  The video creators have identified an intriguing aspect of the landing, which is the untested approach to putting the rover safely onto the surface of Mars.  The viewer is immediately curious about what’s crazy and why NASA would be trying something so crazy.  The title is also a good attention grabber.  Right from the start, the viewer is wondering what the connection is between this crazy idea and the seven minutes of terror.  This video thus provides a good example of how to capture the attention of viewers and keep them watching.

Information and images are continually introduced, keeping the video moving forward at a steady clip. Each new segment adds a bit more information, e.g., about the challenges of the landing (thin atmosphere), the mechanics of the landing, what will happen if some step fails, how long it will take for scientists waiting back on Earth to learn if the rover has safely landed. Each new aspect is illustrated with a different animation and described by a different scientist who worked on that aspect of the landing.

They kept the text to a minimum and used it to get across startling statistics:  6 vehicle configurations, 76 pyrotechnic devices, 500,000 lines of code…..ZERO margin of error.  This text is superimposed on animations and other graphic sequences that illustrate what those numbers represent.  And the text is moving across the screen, further adding to the impression of movement.  This is the way to use text in a science video.

There is no traditional beginning, middle, and end.  That’s OK, as I’ve described previously.  The lack of these traditional components does not mean that the video is not organized around a logical manner.  In fact, the video has a definite sequence to it, which is highly organized and keyed to the actual landing sequence it is discussing:  what the 7 minutes refers to and what it means to the scientists waiting back on Earth, an explanation of EDL (entry, descent, landing) and all the steps in the landing sequence, violent entry through the atmosphere, Mars atmospheric characteristics and what it means for the landing process, the supersonic parachute and why it’s important, getting the heat shield off, cutting the parachute and coming down on rocket motors, the skycrane maneuver to avoid stirring up dust, and avoiding a collision between the descent vehicle and the rover once it’s on the ground. The ending screen image has a single, bold statement: “Dare Mighty Things” followed by the date and time of the landing event.

The style of the NASA video is more like a movie trailer than a movie, which is appealing and immediately recognizable by the average video viewer.  Most people have seen hundreds of movie trailers and are familiar with the format, so will readily relate to this style.  Even the music sounds reminiscent of movie trailers.  The major difference is the lack of a voice-over narrator, which is more typical of a movie trailer.  Instead, they used the voices of the scientists to substitute for the narration.

Overall, the NASA video has all ten attributes I identified previously as being important in making an interesting and appealing science video.  I recommend studying this video yourself to better understand the features that will help you create better science videos.

How to Create Animations for your Science Videos with PowerPoint: Part Two

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This is the second part of the tutorial on using PowerPoint to create simple effective animations for your movie projects. In part one, I covered how to set up your slides in sequence to create the animation. In part two, I finish up by showing how to export your project as a movie and then import it into your movie-editing program (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window).

Animations can greatly enhance your videos, providing a way to better visualize concepts or techniques. In future tutorials, I’ll show how to use more sophisticated applications to create animations that will make your videos look more professional.

How to Create Animations for your Science Videos with PowerPoint: Part One

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Would you like to use animations in your videos to illustrate a concept or technique but think you need an expensive program and years of training? Well, think again. If you know how to create a presentation in PowerPoint, then you can use it to develop animations.

In this post, I offer a tutorial on using PowerPoint to create effective animations that can be exported as a movie to use in your video project. In part one, I show how to set up your slides to create a sequence of frames that will form your animation. I provide several examples of simple graphics that will help you develop your own ideas (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window).

Science Video Review: Keep it Moving

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In the previous post, I talked about how brevity is a virtue in making a science video.  In this post, I will consider two more features of successful videos (from the list of 10 characterizing a video I analyzed previously):

#3:  The video keeps adding information at a steady, relatively rapid pace

#4: There is constant motion going on throughout the video.

The constant addition of new information (and new visual stimuli) keeps the viewer watching.  This point is an important one.  If you let a segment of your video drag on too long, the viewer will get bored and look for something else more fast-paced and that seems to be feeding them more and more information.  As I explained in a previous post, humans are hard-wired to be fascinated by motion. A lot of science videos feature talking heads. Not much going on….just someone droning on and on and on.  If you have talking heads in your video, interspersed with images or footage of something else (an animation, a landscape scene, people working), then you make the segment more interesting because you give the eye something to look at other than the talking head.  If you only have a talking head (e.g., TED talks), then your talking head must be describing something (an idea or concept or emotion) that sparks the viewer’s imagination or causes an emotional reaction.

Here’s a video that meets the two criteria (constant addition of new information, constant motion) listed above and also is shorter than 3 minutes:

This is an example of informational graphics (infographics), which is a hot trend in motion graphics.  It’s clearly an effective way to get science information across in an entertaining way.

Science Video Review: Attention Span and The Green Ninja

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In a previous post, I identified ten features that characterized an inspiring science video and pointed out four that I considered to be key to success. I thought I would elaborate a bit on those four key points.

In this post, I’ll talk a bit more about #1:  The video is short, less than three and a half minutes in length.

The average video viewer’s attention span is short.  People want their information in brief, entertaining packets. Unless they are really, really interested in you or your topic (e.g., your mother), they are not going to sit still for more than five minutes to watch your video.  I know that you will be tempted to try to cram a lot of information into your video, thinking it is important to instruct the viewer about all the various aspects of the science topic you are discussing.

I’ve made this mistake and so I know how hard it is to edit out all the footage you shot (of yourself or other scientists) talking about research or whatever the topic was.  This difficulty is not unlike editing a scientific paper:  we must be ruthless and cut out all the extraneous verbiage and data that do not contribute to the main conclusions.  We must be even more ruthless with editing our videos.

Most of the science videos I’ve done so far have been around ten minutes in length, which is probably way too long for all but the most interested viewers.  However, I did strive to include a variety of ways to impart information: talking heads, footage of people engaged in some activity, aerial and ground footage of landscapes, animations, historical images, and text explanations. Such tactics help to keep the viewer’s attention, but it’s better to strive for brevity with your message.

Here is an example of a video that successfully imparts its message in 2:49 minutes: