Tag Archives: education

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.

Science Video Tip: Show and Tell

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Showing is almost always better than telling. I select aspects of a topic I’m talking about and then shoot footage or create a graphic to illustrate key points. When I interview other scientists, I try to think of ways to have them demonstrate something on camera. One tip is to always ask, “Can you show me what you mean?”, when doing an on-site interview (in a lab or at a field site). This question will often elicit some valuable footage for your movie project.

See this clip that resulted when I asked a scientist to show me what he meant by “relative buoyancy” of a floating marsh:

Treat the Interview Like a Conversation

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Shooting interviews is one of the most challenging exercises a videographer will face.  It’s even more difficult if you have to be the interviewer and also the camera operator.  If you have a lab assistant or student who can help with the camerawork, you can concentrate on the interview.  In many cases, though, you will be working alone or don’t want to risk having someone else mess up your shoot (however, they might actually be better than you with the camera, so it’s worth a try).

I like to treat the interview like a conversation. I go to the interview armed with a few, carefully-selected questions designed to elicit interesting answers, but just use these as starting points.  I let the subject’s answers guide me to ask more questions….much like a normal conversation would flow.  I think this approach produces a more natural and relaxed result, rather than the typical news report style of grilling the subject.  My objective is to make my interview subject look knowledgeable and likable.

We are so accustomed to seeing professionals conducting interviews on TV, which seem effortless, that we mistakenly think they are easy to replicate.  It’s not.  See the video below, which does a good job of showing how to and how not to conduct an interview on camera.

Science Videos and Riding the Wave

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I am not a professional filmmaker.  The methods I’ve been describing in this blog are those that have worked for me, a scientist. Some are standard among filmmakers and others are not. I present my ideas and experiences, not as rules to be followed, but as information that may help or inspire.  In fact, I would encourage you not to be constrained by anything you read here (or elsewhere) and to develop your own style.  That said, there are certain principles that must be understood and mastered.  I’ve mentioned a few of these on this blog and hope to describe more in coming posts.  It’s possible to break those rules and produce something really different and creative.  However, one must achieve mastery of those basic skills before thinking about breaking them. Otherwise, your videos will look amateurish and not attract viewers.

If you are a scientist or student of science who has not yet dipped your toe into the waters of videography, you are where I was five years ago. Since then, I’ve developed a few skills, mostly by trial and error.  We are accustomed to this approach in science.  We get some basic training in lab technique, technical writing, or oral presentations, for example, in graduate school, but only later are these skills honed and expanded….often during our first jobs.  I view videography as just another tool in my toolbox…but a tool that will become increasingly important in the future as science communication evolves.

The reaction I get most often from colleagues is why are you bothering to learn videography and spend (they mean waste) time creating videos?  I am reminded of the time when people asked me why I was bothering to learn PowerPoint and no longer using 35 mm slides and overhead transparencies.  They were really asking me why I was upsetting the status quo.  The older scientists in particular were comfortable with the old technology and simply did not want to change or bother with learning a new way of doing things.  Well, we know what happened.  Eventually, everyone was forced to learn the new way….or they got left behind.  The same is happening with science communication (and communication in general). Even if you are a student now and already familiar with what are new methods to older scientists, you will likely face similar dramatic changes at some point in your career.

It’s really a matter of whether you want to stay on the peak of the wave or let the wave pass you by.  Keeping up doesn’t take as much of an effort as most imagine.  And that’s what this blog is all about:  to show that riding the wave takes some effort initially to get up on the peak, but then requires only minor adjustments to stay abreast.  And like surfing, it can be a lot of fun learning how to ride the wave.

Strive for Brevity in your Science Videos

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When it comes to video, brevity is a virtue.  From shooting clips to the final product, we should strive to keep things brief.  When shooting, you want to keep your clips short, preferably under a minute or two in duration. Why? Because you are going to have to review all that footage you shot, perhaps hours of it, just to find a few minutes that you will use in the final product.  I don’t know about you, but I find that reviewing long clips can be torture.

It’s much easier to shoot multiple short clips that can be reviewed quickly; those that contain useful material can then be imported to your editing program and the rest can just be archived or deleted if absolutely useless.  During interviews, I will film each question and answer separately instead of shooting it as one long sequence.  This makes life much easier when I sit down to edit.  You can always splice these separate clips together later, even reordering them to tell a better story.

You also want to strive for brevity in your video segments, especially the talking heads segments.  The longer the talking head sequence, the greater the likelihood you will lose the viewer’s attention and interest.  I routinely intersperse a short clip of a person talking to the camera with footage accompanied by a narration or a montage of photographs.  Each segment moves the story forward, but is delivered by different people or other information sources. Here is an example:

In this sequence, I had a brief (32 seconds) clip of a person talking followed by a montage of still images, short video clips, graphics, and narration that moved the story forward. I repeated this type of sequence throughout the video, which can be seen in its entirety here.

Also, as I illustrated in the previous post, you can break up a long interview with other footage, graphics, or photographs so the viewer has something new to look at at frequent intervals.  This approach gives the illusion that something new is happening, when in fact the same person is speaking for several minutes.

Strangely enough, I figured this out on my own and very early in my video-making.  I only later learned that shooting short clips and keeping your video segments brief were methods that professionals recommended.