Tag Archives: dramatic question

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.

The Dramatic Question and How It Applies to Science Videography

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In film making, the dramatic question is what drives the story.  Will the good guy win? Will the boy get the girl? How will the journey end? Once the dramatic question is answered, the movie is over.

In science videos, we often fail to identify, much less answer, the dramatic question.  We are even stumped at the whole idea of a dramatic question because we are so focused on the facts and on educating the viewer.  However, what captures the average viewer’s attention and keeps it is a story (and its underlying dramatic question).  Will the researchers figure out how to collect their samples from an active volcano?  Which scientific team will sequence the human genome first?  How will the scientists navigate a wild river and reach their remote field site with their delicate instruments intact? What motivates a scientist to endure heat, biting insects, and muck to study wetlands?  Why should I care about climate change?

Those are all obvious dramatic questions, but can often lead to artificial conflicts or exaggerated challenges designed to imbue an otherwise dull story with drama.  The viewer is not fooled by such blatant stratagems. So the videographer must take care in selecting and incorporating a dramatic question into a movie project.  It’s possible to be more clever about this and create a video with a dramatic question that directly relates to the science, rather than to peripheral issues.  Here is an example in which the dramatic question focuses on the science topic and is even used as the title of the video:

It’s possible to pose a dramatic question about nature, which is not answered or only partially answered because the research is not complete or it’s a difficult question to answer.  The videographer has the opportunity to use such an instance to teach something about how science works and about how answers change over time as more information is uncovered.  An effective dramatic question is perhaps asked by a non-scientist, stimulating the viewer’s curiosity, and then answered by an expert who proceeds to conduct an experiment designed to answer that specific question because no-one thought to ask the question before.  Here is an example of an excellent video in which the dramatic question is about a phenomenon observed by an average person: why do some millipedes glow in the dark?

You notice that both of these examples involve an amazing visual display.  What if your topic is not so visual or not so amazing to the non-scientist?  I think the answer is that you just need to work a bit harder to show how amazing your topic is and to frame it as a dramatic question.

Science Video Review: Best Quality Crab

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I have a technique that I use to predict whether a movie is going to be good or not. I call it the Five Minute Rule…although this time limit is somewhat flexible. I might come to a decision in one minute or eight. Anyway, this is how it works. If the first five minutes of a film are boring, poorly shot, uninspiring, etc., then the rest of the film will likely follow suit (not always, but usually). On the other hand, if the first five minutes are interesting, elicit an emotional reaction, or make me hungry to see more, then I know I’m going to be entertained.

Two examples come to mind when I consider the Five Minute Rule:

The Joy Luck Club (1993 based on the book by Amy Tan)

and

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover (1989)

The Joy Luck Club not only grabbed me in the first five minutes, it elicited a strong emotional reaction:  I started crying during the opening scenes.  My first thought was, “Wow. If this is my reaction to the opening scenes, what’s to come?” And the rest of the film definitely did not disappoint.  Take a look at this opening clip and you’ll see what I’m talking about (also, the opening title sequence is excellent and predictive of what’s to come):

Now, I know you guys out there are thinking, “Aaarrghh. This is a chick flick.  No way am I going to watch it….unless my wife/girlfriend forces me to.”  What kind of film it is, however, is beside the point.  It has something to teach us budding videographers, which I will get to in a moment.

In the meantime, for you more macho types out there, consider the second example, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover.  I vividly remember the opening sequence and my visceral reaction to it. Within the first two minutes of the title sequence, I experienced an incredible sense of dread and even felt physically ill.  I almost got up and walked out.  In those two minutes, however, there is nothing obviously nauseating….just some dogs and then some vehicles pulling into a back alley parking area.  But there’s something dark and disturbing about the scenes, which is emphasized by the music.  By minute 2:20, you know that this is going to be a film about vicious cruelty.  Take a look:

As it turned out, my initial reaction was right on target.  About the dread, I mean.  This is a disturbing film and not for everyone (so be forewarned if you decide to see it).  However, the opening sequence had me hooked, and I had to stay until the end.  The experience was sort of like passing a gory traffic accident.  You know you shouldn’t look, but you just can’t help yourself.

OK, so what’s my point in describing these films and their opening sequences?  Whether consciously or subconsciously, we judge people, situations, and movies based on the first few seconds or minutes of our exposure to them.  As videographers, we need to keep this in mind when planning a project.  These two examples I described above provide an accurate preview of the mood, message, and quality of the entire film in the first few minutes.  Whether you like these films or not, they deliver what is promised in those opening sequences.

In the previous posts, I’ve listed some key ingredients to a compelling video.  However, one criterion I left off that list was that the video needs to capture the viewer’s attention right in the beginning (and never let it go).  For full-length films, this means that in the first five minutes or so, the audience needs to become invested in sticking around to see how it turns out.  For science videos of, say, five minutes in length, this works out to the first 12 seconds.  So that means the goal is to get the viewer invested in your video in about a quarter of a minute.  Is that even possible?  I think so.

In upcoming posts, I’ll explore this idea further and provide some examples.

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: