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.
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:
In the last post, I showed you a video that would be difficult for the average person to create due to the advanced animation techniques involved. However, I tried to use it to get across some basic points about what makes a video not only watchable but fascinating to a wide audience. I did not want to leave you hanging and thinking that you have to create a complicated video with advanced animation to be successful in getting your science idea across. Here is a very simple video that contains no fancy graphics or animation as well as no voice-over or written explanations, yet makes its point very effectively. It uses the concept of “perspective” to make this point about the relative energies of earthquakes in history and is appropriately titled, “Perspective”. Take a look:
Now, how many of the features I listed for the other video, “Nature by Numbers”, did you see in this much simpler video? Let’s review:
1. The video is short, less than three and a half minutes in length. Yes
2. The information is all visual and understandable by any culture. Yes (assuming they can read English).
3. The video keeps adding information at a steady, relatively rapid pace (but feels like the information is being leisurely unveiled). Yes.
4. There is constant motion going on throughout the video. Yes.
5. Colors are intense and dramatic. Yes (especially contrasting colors).
6. The text is minimal; only what is essential to understanding the mathematical relationships. Yes.
7. There is a dream-like quality about the video. No.
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. No.
9. All visual and audio components are rendered to the highest quality possible. Yes.
10. There is no traditional beginning, middle, and end. Yes.
By my count, eight of the ten features seen in Nature by Numbers are found in the second video (note that I selected Perspective to analyze on this blog before I had analyzed Nature by Numbers). I was somewhat surprised to see so many qualities in common, but it makes sense. A big difference between the two videos, however, is the music/emotional factor. Perspective lacks music, which was probably a conscious choice by the creator who clearly wanted to keep the message simple and uncomplicated. However, I can’t help but wonder how it would play if accompanied by music appropriate to the visual elements? Just out of curiosity, I played Perspective while playing the music from Nature by Numbers (Often a Bird). Even though the music was not keyed to the video, it matched surprisingly well and would have added an emotional component that likely would have grabbed more viewers and kept their attention through the entire video. But as I said, I understand the creator’s choice not to have music.
Anyway, my main point in this post is to show how an effective video can be created that meets most of the criteria necessary to capture and hold a viewer’s attention without using fancy animation or professional film crews or anything that would be out of reach for the average scientist. Now, I’m guessing that it did take an animation program to create the smooth transitions from earthquake to earthquake throughout the video. However, you could recreate a similar sequence using a program you already have and are familiar with: PowerPoint (although the transitions would not be as smooth). In upcoming tutorials, I will show how to create animations using PowerPoint and export them as a movie file, which you can post as a standalone film (like Perspective) or insert into a larger video.
For now, be thinking about the key criteria we’ve been discovering and how you might incorporate them into your video projects.
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.
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….
