Tag Archives: slideshare

How to Shoot Video and Avoid the Most Common Mistakes

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cameraoperator_cartoon_klmckeeAre you thinking about making a video but are afraid of looking like an amateur? I get a lot of questions about shooting video, but most often about what equipment to buy. My response usually is that the equipment is not as important as knowing how to shoot and edit the film properly. If you make amateurish mistakes while filming or editing, it doesn’t matter if you used a $500 or a $5,000 camera. I know, because I’ve made a lot of those beginner mistakes.

When we adopt a new technique or purchase new equipment, we quickly discover that knowledge of what NOT to do is as important as learning what to do. When I worked for a government science agency, I wrote many SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) that were supposed to be followed by members of my research group. However, I found that in addition to writing a step-by-step description of how to conduct a procedure, I also needed to include a list of actions that should be avoided. The latter were typically things that an expert would have picked up through trial and error but that often were not mentioned in the standard instruction manual. I even discovered that I needed to write an SOP on how to use an SOP (those of you in government service will appreciate the irony in that).

I’ve previously posted some of the most common mistakes that beginners make in creating their first video, but they bear repeating. Below is my list of mistakes to avoid when making a video, with emphasis on the scientist as videographer. Below the list is an embeddable slideshow with additional information about each one.

1. Ignore Your Audience.

2. Have No Plan

3. Don’t Tell a Story

4. Use Bad Camera Moves

5. Overuse Zooming/Panning

6. Backlight Your Subject

7. Fail to Compose Your Shots Properly

8. Shoot Too Wide

9. Tell But Don’t Show

10. Drag It Out

11. Feature Talking Heads

12. Don’t Worry About The Audio

13. Have Speakers Introduce Themselves

14. Go Crazy With Special Effects

15. Make It Longer Than Necessary

16. Use Copyrighted Material Without Permission

And another embeddable slideshow in Prezi:

How To Get Your Research Paper Noticed

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unknownscientist_tomb_klmckeeLet’s face it. Most of us toil away in laboratories or in the field, and our efforts are not widely known or appreciated—even though we may be working on interesting topics or making solid contributions to scientific knowledge. Many of our scientific publications are read by just a handful of specialists and students in our fields (if we are lucky). One reason is that most papers are not highly visible—unless it is research that appears in journals such as Science or Nature and/or the media takes note. For most researchers, such attention rarely happens. Their work and papers remain mostly unnoticed—beyond a small circle of peers.

So if you don’t get your research published in Science or Nature, how do you make it more widely known?

Create Visuals That Point To Your Paper

As I’ve tried to emphasize in numerous posts on this blog, creating audio-visual communication products will help get your work noticed—by search engines and by people. Images, graphics, and video will put you on the first page of a Google search. People (even scientists) are more likely to click on an image or video compared to a text link. If you post multiple visuals online and each contains a hyperlink to the technical paper, you’ve created multiple pathways leading to your paper. The more people who become aware of your work, the greater the impact (and possibly more citations). Such science communications not only serve to advertise papers, they can: (1) attract top students/post-docs, (2) attract potential research collaborators, (3) be used to meet the broader impacts criterion in grant proposals to NSF or NIH, and (4) inform end-users such as resource managers or health-care workers, to name a few uses. For junior scientists just starting out, getting your work noticed early and more widely can greatly benefit your career.

Interactives and Infographics

I’ve emphasized video in this blog, but another option is to create an interactive presentation or infographic that summarizes your published paper. A few scientists are posting slide shows (for example, on Slideshare or Figshare), which explain and illustrate their research findings. Although such slide shows can be created with PowerPoint, there are newer applications, such as Prezi, that support creation of non-linear, multi-dimensional presentations, which resemble mind maps more than slide presentations.

If you’ve not heard of Prezi, it is a free, online tool (paid pro version provides added flexibility). Instead of the usual linear presentation format, Prezi uses a multi-dimensional canvas that allows you to zoom in and out as well as pan around whatever is displayed. I think Prezi is particularly useful for illustrating complex science topics, especially those involving different scales and hierarchies.  You can also create effective infographics with such software (see this amazing interactive featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day).

Example of a Visual Abstract Created With Prezi

I’ve been exploring how Prezi might be used to create an interactive, visual abstract of a journal article. To illustrate this idea, I created a visual abstract of a recent paper with Prezi (see player below).

For best viewing, select the full-screen option (lower right of window).

My visual abstract targets technical and semi-technical audiences and is fairly complicated with a lot of information and visuals. But it gives an idea of what is possible with this tool. Once a presentation is created, the embed code can be used to install the presentation on a website as I’ve done above. Instead of just listing publications, a scientist could display visual interactives where visitors could better see what their research is all about.

So if you are looking for ways to get your research noticed, you might try creating a visual abstract that you share online. For more about the h-index and citations, see this post.

8 Steps to a Good Video Abstract: Embeddable Slide Show

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More and more journals are publishing video abstracts to call attention to articles and the researchers. Even if your journal does not support video abstracts, you can still create and post one yourself, which will help raise your paper’s online visibility. And, as we all know, the more people who are aware of our work, the more likely it will be cited.

So I decided to create a slide show that covers eight basic steps for creating a good video abstract. This slide show is available on slideshare.net, where anyone can get the embed code to install on their website or share with others.

See below for how the player looks:

16 Mistakes: Embeddable Slide Show

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In a recent post, I covered 16 mistakes commonly made by first-time science videographers. Someone asked if I could produce a slideshow that covers the same material and could be embedded on other websites. So, I’ve uploaded a slideshow about the 16 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Your First Science Video on the website, Slideshare. There, you can get the embed code and install the slide show on your own website.

You can see how the embedded player looks below:

I also created a slideshow in Prezi, which is also embeddable. Note, however, that Prezi uses iframes for embedding, which are not supported on some websites without a plugin (e.g., WordPress).