Tag Archives: review

Science Video Review: Be Inspired

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I’m constantly amazed at some of the videos I come across that are made by non-scientists about scientific topics but are head and shoulders above the typical “science communication” video in terms of quality and attractiveness to the general public.

In this post, I’d like to point you to one of these inspirational videos…partly to show you what’s possible to accomplish with a video that’s only 3:44 minutes long.  The video was done by Cristóbal Vila, a 3D illustrator and animator. It’s about mathematical relationships in nature.  There is no voice-over explaining anything, but the concepts are crystal clear.  It’s been viewed 2,356,483 times, which gives some idea of the impact it has had.

You should be curious about it by now, so take a look:

As I said, pretty amazing.  Now, I don’t expect us (scientists) to be able to create something this technically challenging by ourselves.  Vila is a professional animator with years of training and experience.  However, we can learn something from his video that we can apply to our videos to make them more appealing to viewers.  What are the key features that set this video apart?

1. The video is short, less than three and a half minutes in length.

2. The information is all visual and understandable by any culture.

3. The video keeps adding information at a steady, relatively rapid pace (but feels like the information is being leisurely unveiled).

4. There is constant motion going on throughout the video; numbers appearing and disappearing; lines being drawn that are also glowing; objects rotating and spiraling around; things transforming from lines to become organisms; sunflowers and dragonflies waving in the breeze.

5. Colors are intense and dramatic.

6. The text is minimal; only what is essential to understanding the mathematical relationships.

7. There is a dream-like quality about the video.

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.

9. All visual and audio components are rendered to the highest quality possible.

10. There is no traditional beginning, middle, and end, although there are three main components represented by the nautilus, the sunflower, and the dragonfly animations.

These are the ones that seem most obvious to me. You may see some others.  The characteristics that I think are the most critical, that determine the viewer’s satisfaction are #1, 3, 4, and 8.

In the next posts, I’ll take a closer look at these characteristics and offer some other examples of how to incorporate these features into your videos.

What Jurassic Park Can Teach Us About Making Science Videos

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You may remember this scene from Jurassic Park.  Scrub to minute 2:32 and watch from that point on (go on, I’ll wait for you):

OK, now the point I want to make is that humans and other predators like T. rex have evolved to notice movement.  Imagine early humans on the ancient plains of Africa scanning the horizon for any motion that might warn them of danger or the opportunity for food.  Anything hopping behind a tree or flitting through the grass caught our ancestors’ eyes.  Their very survival depended on distinguishing motion that indicated something of interest or something that could be ignored such as rocks or leaves blowing in the wind.

We are hard-wired to be fascinated with moving pictures. Furthermore, we are experts at analyzing movements, whether we realize it or not.

If you watched the TED talk by Chris Anderson in the previous post (if you didn’t, please do), you heard some startling statistics: “Humanity watches 80 million hours of YouTube every day. Cisco actually estimates that, within four years, more than 90 percent of the web’s data will be video….Video is high band-width for a reason. It packs a huge amount of data, and our brains are wired to decode it.”  Read that again: “more than 90 percent of the web’s data will be video”.  These data have been updated.  Google sites, driven mainly by YouTube viewings, had 146 million unique viewers in just the U.S. who watched 16 billion videos in March 2012 alone (comScore Video Metrics).  People are definitely watching a lot of online videos.

Why?  As Anderson explains in his video, even though it may be faster to read the information we seek, we seem to prefer to view it. It’s in our genes to seek information about our surroundings by watching for movement.

The TED talks demonstrate another important point.  People are fascinated with TED talks.  They are riveting. Even the ones in which the speaker is not showing any slides.  One of the most popular is by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher, who studied her own stroke as it happened (here’s the link).  She shows a few slides, but that’s not what draws people in.  It’s seeing her body language and hearing her voice describing her experience that makes the video so fascinating.  The other reason is that she’s describing some amazing ideas and insights that spark the audience’s imagination.  It’s a powerful combination.

Scientists wishing to get their message out (about their latest research finding, an environmental issue, an important method to be shared) should take note of these points:

1. Humans are hard-wired to gather information from audio-visual sources (moving pictures, if you like).

2. A huge number of people are searching for information on the internet in the form of video.

3. Linking audio-visual information with ideas that stimulate the imagination is a powerful combination.

Scientists, as a group, are pretty smart people.  We should be able to figure out how to use these insights to create effective and powerful videos that will reach a wide audience.  The question I have is, why have scientists been so slow to catch onto this?

I hope to explore these ideas more in coming posts.  Stay tuned….

Science Video Tip: The Rule of Thirds

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The rule of thirds is a well-known principle of photography that generally leads to well-balanced and more interesting images.  Most photographers know about the rule of thirds, but it’s easy to forget this concept when shooting video.  If you look at amateur video (or photos), you will notice that the videographer often centers the subject, which is not very interesting composition-wise.  By following the rule of thirds, however, you would place your subject quite differently in the frame and may even prompt you to be more creative in your shooting.

Although you don’t have to follow this rule (or any rule, for that matter) in making your videos, it can be a useful guide in capturing well-composed footage, especially if you are just beginning and are unsure how to set up your shots.  By following the rule of thirds, your videos will look more professional and will be much more pleasing to the viewer.

In this short video, I describe how to use the rule of thirds to compose your shots so that they are visually pleasing (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window).

More Reality Thoughts about Science Videography

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I’ve been describing my experience “field testing” my iPad and the iMovie app to make videos. I attended a scientific conference last week and conducted a few interviews. I found shooting video with the iPad to be somewhat awkward–not at all as easy as with a camcorder. However, it was possible to get decent footage, which could be directly recorded into an iMovie project.

The awkwardness was partly due to having to hold the iPad with both hands to keep the image steady. But the main problem I had was in conducting interviews and holding the iPad in such a way that my subject could look at me while talking. I should explain here that it’s best to have the person being interviewed not look at the camera, but at you. This approach produces a more natural conversational aspect.  Also, the interviewee is often intimidated when asked to speak to the camera. This is particularly problematic with the iPad because it’s difficult to see the camera lens, which is very small. I had subjects nervously ask me where they should look and seem very relieved to be told to look at me and basically talk to me in giving their answers to the questions.  So it’s a good idea to prep your subject before filming to encourage a more relaxed, conversational setting.

In case you are wondering how my field test worked out, here is the finished video:

Science Video Tips: Say What?

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In the last post, I started talking about some of the challenges in using an iPad to shoot video and audio.  I mentioned some of the issues with audio in particular.  Some of these points are relevant to any device you may be using to capture audio.

For example, during interviews should you record your voice (as the interviewer) along with the response of your subject?  The answer is yes.  It will make things much easier when you sit down to edit your movie project later, especially if you are not going to be able to edit soon after shooting.  Although it may be clear from the interviewee’s answer what you asked, it’s not always apparent, especially if your subject tends to ramble and does not answer your questions directly.  Another consideration is that although I plan my questions ahead of time, I always think of something extra to ask during the interview (these unplanned questions often yield some of my best footage).  You can remove your voice during the editing process so easily that there is no reason not to record it.  Also, depending on your desired interview format, you may wish to record both interviewer and interviewee and retain both in your finished product.

So overall, the iPad did pretty well in recording audio, even in situations with a lot of background noise.  I did find, however, that I needed to get pretty close to my subject in order to have their voice record well enough to be distinguishable from the background.  That tended to interfere with framing the shot I wanted.  Because what my subjects were saying was more important (in this situation), I compromised on the visual aspect.

I did not try using a lavalier (lapel mic) with the iPad during this field test. However, a lavalier would definitely enhance the audio of any movie project and avoid the problem mentioned above.  In the future, I will look into appropriate adapters for connecting a lavalier microphone to an iPad and give it a test run.