Tag Archives: video making

Add Captions to Your Videos to Increase Your Audience Reach

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I’ve given many presentations at international conferences as well as seminars at foreign research institutions and departments. One thing I learned from these experiences was that non-native English speakers appreciated it when I made an effort to aid their comprehension of my language. In addition to speaking slowly, I would add a single sentence on each slide that summarized what I was describing on that slide. This approach helps because people often can read English better than they understand the spoken language–especially if the speaker has a strong accent. I know that adding extra text to slides is often discouraged by presentation gurus, because the audience’s attention is split between reading the slide text and listening to what the speaker is saying. However, the advice not to add extra text to slides falls down when your audience is struggling to understand your spoken words. You have to balance the design of your slides with your audience’s needs.

That experience in giving presentations to international audiences made me acutely aware of how captions can increase an audience’s comprehension of my material. In this blog post, I’d like to talk a bit about why and how you should add captions to your videos.

When people first start making videos, they often focus on the audiovisual aspects of the project and don’t think much (if at all) about providing closed captioning text. It’s an extra step that many video makers avoid because it takes time and because they haven’t thought about the makeup of their potential audience. People typically think about closed captioning as mainly helping viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. However, there are probably many more people who simply can’t understand the language being spoken in the video but whose comprehension would be improved enormously by captions.

If you post your videos on a media-sharing site such as YouTube, your potential audience is the entire globe, where many people may not speak your language. For example, about half of the viewers of my videos on The Scientist Videographer YouTube channel reside in countries in which English is not the primary language. YouTube uses speech recognition technology to produce an automatic transcript for each uploaded video. It’s not perfect, but is pretty good; the few mistakes can be easily corrected. You can alternatively upload a text transcript, and YouTube will synchronize the text with the audio. Then, all a viewer needs do is click the “CC” button to turn on closed captioning.

Captions help viewers who struggle to understand your spoken language but can read it. Another reason to include captions is because YouTube provides the option to translate the captions into more than 60 languages; however, this works only if the video creator provides captions. This means that those viewers who don’t speak or read your language can also watch and understand your video. A final reason is that a text transcript contributes to Search Engine Optimization by providing information to Google and YouTube that allows more efficient indexing of your videos. By ensuring your videos are discoverable by search engines, you will reach a much larger audience.

Adding captions to your videos thus increases your global audience as well as the discoverability of your science videos.

So part of my workflow in making a video includes preparing a word-for-word transcript of everything audible in the video. Because I often develop a script prior to filming, I usually can use that text file and only have to revise it a bit to reflect minor changes in the final film. That transcript file is uploaded, along with the video, to my channel, and YouTube then automatically aligns the text with the audio. When the video plays and the viewer enables the closed captioning (cc button), the text then appears on screen and is timed to match the audio.

Creating and adding closed captions to a video is relatively easy and painless–if you know how. In the following video tutorial, I walk through the steps needed to add closed captions to a video:

How Making Videos Can Help You Write Better Science Papers: Distill Your Message

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beachrock_klmckeeIn previous posts, I’ve talked about all the various ways video can be used by science professionals—from creating video abstracts to strengthening your professional identity in science.

One beneficial outcome that I’ve not talked much about is the feedback effect video making can have on other communication skills such as scientific writing and speaking. Not long after I began making videos, I realized that the lessons I was learning about effective communication with video could be used to improve my technical papers and conference presentations.

In this series of posts, I will describe a few of those lessons:

1. Distill Your Message

2. Focus on Your Audience

3. Use Storytelling Techniques

In this post, I will tackle the first lesson: Distill Your Message.

One of the most useful insights I’ve gained from video making is that to be memorable a message must be distilled down to a core idea. In a brief video, you don’t have time to ramble on, listing fact after fact; you must get to the point quickly. I soon learned that videos with a single, clear idea were more understandable and memorable by viewers—and were easier to make. It occurred to me that this principle could be applied to writing papers and proposals or giving conference talks. Many science professionals make the mistake of presenting a laundry list of results; they then add insult to injury by describing those results with convoluted prose or excessive and unnecessary detail. The reader or audience member is at a loss as to what they should remember and, consequently, quickly forget everything you said.

Distill, distill

I learned to always distill my message before leaping into writing a paper or preparing a conference talk or seminar. What was my main finding and its significance? Why should people care about my work? What was new or innovative?

As I began making videos, I found that distilling my findings down to a single sentence and expressing it in clear language helped me later when I sat down to write the technical paper. The process of crafting that sentence made me think harder about my message and what I wanted to get across in the paper.

For example, I might distill a two-year study down to a single sentence this way:

“Species A responded to higher carbon dioxide (CO2) levels when grown alone but not in mixture with Species B, indicating that competition may limit plant growth response to future increases in atmospheric CO2”.

That sentence accurately describes the research finding and interpretation, but is long, contains unnecessary detail, and is not easy to grasp. An improved version might read:

“Competition for sunlight and soil nutrients may limit plant response to future increases in atmospheric levels of CO2.”

This sentence would be suitable for both a professional audience and a lay audience. It expresses the key finding in simple language without “dumbing down” the information. This wording lacks the details about Species A and B, but these are not really needed. The revised sentence is much easier to understand and is more memorable. Part of the reason is that the sentence is shorter and includes a more vivid description about what plants compete for; that is, by conjuring a mental picture of the sun and the soil, I’ve made the information more memorable.

Simplify, simplify

I also began paying more attention to the language I used in writing and speaking. I found that I could express myself more clearly and unambiguously in my writing by using simpler language. By simple, I don’t mean simplistic. Simple means easy to understand or uncomplicated. I’m talking specifically about sentence structure. Some scientific writing is so dense, it takes two or three readings to comprehend what the author is trying to say. The problem is not necessarily due to a difficult-to-explain concept or use of field-specific jargon, but to convoluted, ambiguous language. To illustrate, here is an example (first sentence in an abstract) from Gopen and Swan’s 1990 classic paper, “The Science of Scientific Writing“:

“The smallest of the URF’s (URFA6L), a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH2-terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) subunit 6m gene has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+ ATPase subunit 8 gene.”

At first glance, you might conclude that the main problem with this 42-word sentence is the terminology. However, you would still have difficulties even if you know that URF stands for Uninterrupted Reading Frame (a segment of DNA organized in such a way that it could encode a protein) and that ATPase is an enzyme involved in energy metabolism. Nor is it the length of the sentence.

Gopen and Swan argue that one culprit obscuring meaning in this sentence is subject-verb separation. The problem is that the subject (“the smallest”) is separated from its verb (“has been identified”) by 23 words. A lot of words between subject and verb reduces comprehension; also, the reader interprets these intervening words as material of lesser importance (and, consequently, may breeze through them). If the intervening words express the crux of your finding, this structure will undermine that insight. Here is one possible revision of that sentence to move the verb closer to its subject:

“The smallest of the URF’s (URFA6L) has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+-ATPase subunit 8 gene.”

Now we have a much clearer picture: the authors have identified the smallest unit in animal DNA analogous to a previously described gene in yeast that codes for an important enzyme in energy metabolism. Subject-verb separation is just one way a writer can confuse the reader. The sentence I listed earlier also minimizes the number of words between subject and verb:

“Competition for sunlight and soil nutrients may limit plant response to future increases in atmospheric levels of CO2.”

Not only that, the wording places the context (plant competition) at the beginning of the sentence and the new information (CO2) right where a reader expects it—in the stress position at the end of the sentence (Gopen and Swan, 1990). Readers expect to be provided with old information (context) at the beginning of a sentence, which prepares them for the new information to be given at the end. In other words, save the payoff for last.

If we reverse this order, the new information appears before we know the context:

“Plant response to future increases in atmospheric levels of CO2 may be limited by competition for sunlight and soil nutrients.”

Many writers will see nothing wrong with this construction. True, there is nothing grammatically wrong, and most readers will understand what is meant. The problem is that the construction makes the reader work harder to parse out the context and the new information. Moreover, if you consistently structure your writing this way, the reader’s overall comprehension will be greatly reduced.

A final point is that this reverse construction is passive because the verb is acting on the subject: “Plant response…may be limited…“. In the other sentence, the action of the subject is expressed in the verb: “Competition…may limit..“; that is, active voice. There is nothing wrong with passive sentences, which are common in scientific writing; however, use of the active voice, at least occasionally, will bring your writing to life. For more insight into how structure affects comprehension of scientific writing, see Gopen and Swan 1990.

This distilling and sentence-crafting exercise can eventually lead to a better title for a paper: “Competition for soil nitrogen limits [insert species name] growth response to higher atmospheric CO2”. By distilling my message prior to writing a paper or preparing a talk, I also find that it is easier to organize my material to more effectively support my main finding(s) and to eliminate unnecessary data (or relegate it to a supplemental section). With this approach, I find that people understand me much better.

As I said at the beginning of this post, video-making has opened my eyes to ways I can improve my writing and speaking skills. Learning to distill my message has helped me write better journal articles…and blog posts!

In the next post, I will talk about Part 2: Focus on Your Audience

The Stages of Learning Videography (and Other Skills)

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roller_coasterWhen I set out to make science videos, I was excited and enthusiastic at first about learning a new skill. I was confident that I could master the technical and creative aspects and to quickly begin producing great videos about my research. Once I tried to film and later to edit, however, I discovered that there was a whole lot more to the process—aspects that I was initially not aware of. When I realized the challenge ahead of me, I was intimidated. How could I possibly learn everything I needed to know? What if I could not master a key technique, such as movie-editing or speaking on camera? What if my videos looked amateurish?

Fortunately, I approached this challenge by taking things one step at a time, which was less overwhelming. For example, I practiced filming with my camera until I was reasonably confident before moving on to editing. What I did not realize was that I was moving through four key stages, which we all experience in learning a new skill. This process is sometimes referred to as the Four Stages of Competence or the Conscious Competence Matrix. Understanding these stages can help you deal with the emotional roller-coaster ride that a learning experience can create. Anticipating the ups and downs that occur while learning a new skill can can help us develop strategies to deal with them.

The Four Stages of Learning

The theory, “The Four Stages of Learning Any New Skill”, was introduced in the 1970s by Noel Burch, who worked at Gordon Training International. His theory led to a model for learning based on these four phases. In the first stage, we are unskilled but don’t realize how little we know; that is, we are blissfully ignorant of our incompetence. In the second stage, we still make mistakes but are conscious of our lack of skill. We seek to acquire the necessary skills and then consciously use those skills in the third stage. In the final stage, we use the skill without conscious thought about what we are doing. If you are an expert at any skill—playing a musical instrument, giving a speech, or writing a scientific paper—you went through these four stages.

conscious_skills

The four stages of learning are sometimes presented as a matrix, as in the following video:

Application to Videography

After I decided to make science videos, I watched a few on YouTube and thought, “I can do that; how hard can it be?” However, I had no skills or even basic knowledge of filmmaking techniques and did not realize how incompetent I was. As soon as I tried making a video, I quickly moved into the second stage in which I was acutely aware of my deficiencies. Once I became conscious of my poor skills, I began to read about filmmaking techniques and to practice filming and editing. I soon realized that teaching others would help me learn and began producing video tutorials. Now, filming and editing are second nature. I don’t have to think about how to set up my camera and frame a shot; I just automatically do it. The mechanics of editing are also so ingrained now that I can focus entirely on how to put the material together to tell a story. All this took was some practice.

The value of knowing about this four-stage learning model is that it prepares us for the difficult times and keeps us motivated to push through to the next stage. We can also better plan strategies to deal with setbacks. I find that when many novices first try to make a video and it does not turn out well, they give up. They’ve suddenly moved from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence—and the shock can be demoralizing. After recognizing your lack of competence, watching videos made by expert filmmakers can make things worse. One strategy at this stage is to focus on just learning the basics. Instead of comparing your initial efforts to videos made by experts with years of training, concentrate on avoiding novice mistakes.

Some novices think that making videos takes an innate talent that they do not possess. This belief is not true and therefore is self defeating. Like any other skill, making a video simply takes a basic understanding of techniques and practice to succeed. In stage 3, the emphasis is on practicing a skill to master all aspects of it. A strategy to use during this phase is something called deliberate practice, in which we focus on those aspects we find most challenging. People prefer to practice techniques that they can perform well and neglect the ones that they have trouble with. For example, you may be good at the mechanics of filming and editing a video but have trouble interviewing people or developing a good story to convey your message. To improve, you need to practice interviewing and storytelling techniques.

As you conquer each stage of learning, your confidence will improve. Beware, however, of seeking perfection, which can lead to paralysis at any stage. Another important point is that once you reach the fourth stage of learning, you can’t rest on your laurels. Lack of practice can lead to regression to an earlier stage. I not only practice filming and editing every week, I try to learn something new about videography and then apply it.

If you are struggling with learning videography or are too intimidated to even try, knowing about these four stages of learning may help. By recognizing which stage you are in, you can develop a more effective plan to advance to the next stage. Before you know it, making a video about your science will no longer be such a challenge.