See this nice NASA video explaining why the world didn’t end on December 22, 2012 and what the Mayan calendar really predicted. This is the type of professional, informative video scientists need to produce about their respective fields to combat inaccurate, unscientific beliefs and predictions that divert attention away from real problems we need to face and solve. If you can’t see the video player box below, here is the URL for the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wimiRUHMI4
Tag Archives: dramatic question
Clearing Land Mines
Although not technically a science video, this film about Massoud Hassani, a designer who developed a low cost method to clear land mines, is a great example of telling a dramatic story (see earlier post about the dramatic question). It is a finalist in Focus Forward’s $200,000 Filmmaker Competition. See the film here:
Science, It’s Your Thing: Winners Announced
Previously, I described the amazingly clueless video put out by the European Commission called, “Science, It’s a Girl Thing!”, which included an inordinate number of sexist stereotypes to paradoxically attract girls to science (go here to see that video and my commentary). Not surprisingly, it drew howls from women in science and prompted a rash of parodies and satirical commentary from the blogosphere. Subsequently, The European Science Foundation sponsored a contest, inviting entrants to submit a one-minute video aimed at the “It’s a Girl Thing” mission to attract more females to consider a career in science.
The winners were just announced at the European Gender Summit. Notice that the top winning entry used the electronic whiteboard approach, which I talked about earlier and did a tutorial on, to convey its message. Congratulations to all the winners and kudos to all the entrants!
I’ve installed the winning entries below. Go here to see all the other entries.
Winning Videos Selected by the Jury Panel:
Science, it’s your thing!, Stéphane Debove, Country: France
#Science It’s Your Thing, Imogen & Freya Wadlow, Country: Australia
Winning Video Selected by Popular Vote:
The Future Belongs to Us Michelle Goffreda Country: United States
Using Graphic Novel Apps to Tell Your Science Story
I’ve been experimenting with the graphic novel format to see how it might be used to tell a story about science. The application I used is called MotionArtist, which is available for free (as the public beta version) until early next year (January 15, 2013) when the retail version will be offered for about $60–70. You can watch a video here that shows what MotionArtist does and how it works:
As you can see, with MotionArtist you can create a graphic novel or web comic relatively easily. There is a slightly steep learning curve, but the tutorials offered on the MotionArtist website provide enough information that most people can get started and then learn by playing around with the application. It does help to already have some experience with other animation software, but most of the tools are fairly intuitive.
I decided to learn as much as I could about the various tools, panel options, workflow, etc. by creating a short project. That has been my approach to learning videography: pick a project that requires some new technique or software that I want to master and then learn by trial and error in the process of creating my project.
In this case, I wanted to use a science topic but one that I could have a bit of fun with and that would be complimentary with the graphic novel/web comic format. So for my project, I chose an environmental phenomenon known as “brown marsh”, which refers to sudden dieback of coastal marshes. Instead of telling the story from the viewpoint of scientists, however, I decided to use marsh snails as the protagonists in my story. Although I set out to tell quite a different story, once I “created” the snail characters, they took over and told a very different story from the one I had initially envisioned (funny how that happens).
I used MotionArtist to set up the panels, import images and some video clips, and add text boxes. If you want to animate, you will need to set up layers so that individual components can be moved independently. I wanted to animate the snails and have them moving around. I started with photographs of marsh snails and removed the image backgrounds as I’ve shown in a previous tutorial. I used Photoshop to develop layered images of snails, marsh grass, and backgrounds. These could then be imported as individual layers in MotionArtist or as a composite image. I also used Photoshop to “cartoonize” some of the images prior to importing them into MotionArtist.
Once complete, the project can be exported as a video or as HTML5. However, I exported as a video because the HTML5 did not seem to work with my content (except for the opening scene); perhaps this glitch will be “fixed” in the retail version of MotionArtist. Although you can add audio and voiceover in MotionArtist, I used iMovie to add some sound effects and music and then to render the video.
Here is the final version, which I titled “Brown Marsh Apocalypse”:
I see a lot of potential for creating interactive graphics with this software to illustrate science concepts and will be giving this a try in the future.
Domino Theory
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.