What happens when you put a pig carcass at the bottom of the ocean? If you’ve ever wondered, check out this video created by Jackson Chu. As you may know, pigs are used in forensic research as models for humans and in this study are helping scientists understand what happens to bodies that end up in the ocean. The video is a time-lapse of the consumption and decay of the pig over several days.
The video by Chu is mainly the raw footage with a minimal text description marking the passage of time. With a little effort, it could have been turned into a really nice video explaining the process of decay and how the work will aid criminologists.
A time-lapse also can be created with graphics, as in this next video showing all 2,053 nuclear explosions since 1945 on a world map:
Not all time-lapse deals with destruction, death and decay. Here is one that shows the changes of a single oak tree over the course of a year:
One of the most entertaining types of science video involves time-lapse. If you study a process that lends itself to time-lapse photography, you might want to consider using this approach for one of your videos. Besides providing important information about change, it makes for fascinating viewing.
As I’ve been trying to emphasize in past posts, visual story-telling using a good dramatic question can be a powerful way to spread sound science ideas to a diverse audience. Here’s a video that is highly effective in getting across the concept of the “domino effect in nature”. It was made by graduate student, Megan Callahan, who used simple props (dominoes) to create a compelling video:
The video was made during a workshop held by Randy Olson, scientist turned filmmaker (more about the workshop here). Let’s apply my features of a good video and see how this one does:
1. The video is short. Imagine a scientist getting across an abstract concept….by talking. This video does it in one minute, with minimal talking.
2. The information is presented visually as well as verbally. Yes. Even without the beginning dialog between the two women, the point of the video is clear.
3. The video keeps adding information at a steady but rapid pace. Yes. In this case, the video uses falling dominoes in different habitats to move the story forward.
4. There is constant motion going on throughout the video. Yes, the falling dominoes and cuts from one scene to the next create the impression of constant motion.
5. Colors are intense and dramatic. Not so obvious because the colors are those of nature. The video could have used a few close-ups of the images on the dominoes with dramatic colors (of a butterfly or flower, for example).
6. The text is minimal; only what is essential to understanding the message. Yes, a brief text segment at the end poses the key questions.
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. The music (mostly bongos) adds to the feeling of movement or motion, which along with the sounds of the falling dominoes, creates a mood.
9. All visual and audio components are rendered to the highest quality possible. Yes.
10. The video has people, animals, or cartoon characters that are doing something interesting, unusual, or surprising. In this case, the falling dominoes with attached images representing species are a surprising element.
11. There is an element of suspense. Yes. Where will the dominoes end up?
12. There is no traditional beginning, middle, and end. In this case, there is: the opening scene with the two women, the falling dominoes, the ending text sequence. However, it’s not really that obvious.
So this video clearly adheres to most of the elements I’ve identified as being important to creating an effective message. Let me hasten to add that these are not the only features that characterize an effective video. There may be some that break the rules (and these, I’m guessing, will be highly effective). The point is that there are some common attributes that the scientist videographer can keep in mind when planning a video project.
Use your imagination, as Megan did, and create something memorable. In this case, she took the name of the scientific idea (domino effect) and used it to develop a visual aid that reinforced the concept. She went a step further and attached pictures of organisms to the dominoes, which drove home the point that each domino represented a species. By putting the questioning woman’s picture on the last domino, Megan emphasized that humans are part of nature’s interconnectedness.
Many other scientific concepts lend themselves to such visual storytelling. We just have to be creative in finding ways to tell those stories.
A final point about Megan’s video: it did not require an expensive film crew, elaborate stage settings, exotic shooting locations, or a huge budget to create. The students had NO prior experience with film making. I’m not sure what equipment they used to capture the footage, but it would have been possible to shoot it with a smartphone. The students did their own acting. The only prop was a package of dominoes. Their “shooting locations” for nature scenes were different habitats in their region, apparently close by and easily accessible. This is a great example of how someone using minimal equipment and visual aids can create a compelling audiovisual message.
In recent posts, I’ve been providing reasons why scientists might want to use videography to draw attention to their scholarly articles and to meet funding requirements.
I pointed out how the National Science Foundation and other science funding agencies expect scientists to develop outreach products and activities that inform a wider audience about the value of their science and to generally increase the public’s understanding of science (the Broader Impacts criterion). I also showed how videos and images can put your scholarly article at the top of a Google search page, when your text-based document is buried on page 43.
Journals are also increasingly using video to illustrate methods or to visually show the results of a study they’ve published. Such videos, which are often included in the supplementary online material, are linked to your published article on the journal webpage where specialists in your field will see it. Videos can also make your article and work more visible to students and others who may be searching for information on the topic using Google or other search engines. If you have the only video on the Web on your topic, it is going to be ranked high on the Google search page (see this post for an example of how this works).
In the current post, I provide an example of a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was accompanied by supplemental online material, including three videos illustrating their results. The paper is titled, “3D Imaging and Mechanical Modeling of Helical Buckling in Medicago truncatula Plant Roots“. The authors conducted a study of how the roots of the plant behave when they encounter a layer that is more resistant to penetration, a common occurrence in some soils. They were able to view the change in root growth pattern by using a clear gel as a growth medium. Two gel layers were created, the lower one being of a stiffer consistency than the upper one. The roots grew normally, that is, straight down, when in the upper layer. However, when the plant roots encountered the more resistant gel layer, they began to curl and form into a helical shape. This “helical buckling” provided more force at the root tip, which helped it penetrate the more resistant material. Their modeling of the mechanics of root growth patterns predicted this greater force when roots grew in this helical manner.
This work showing how plant roots manage to grow through tough layers of material was illustrated using 3D imaging. Below is a 3D, time-lapse video of the growth of a root through the upper, less resistant layer and then through the lower layer that caused the root to buckle and curl into a helical shape.
And here’s another example of a video done to accompany a paper published in the journal, Coral Reefs:
The paper that the above video illustrates is titled “The Use of Tools by Wrasses (Labridae)“. The video shows a fish cracking open a bivalve by throwing it against a large coral head. Although the video needed some close-up views of the action, it does get across the idea in a short visual clip (2 minutes). On YouTube, the video has been viewed over 40,000 times.
Both of these examples illustrate how you can use video to augment your journal articles as supplementary online material on the journal website or on your own website.
Some journal publishers are now able to accept video embedded into the online article in a similar manner as photos, graphs, or tables. Here is a link to an article in the journal, Cell, that has embedded video in the online version of the paper.
Having a video available to illustrate your research can often get your paper highlighted in the news section of the online journal. For example, here is a link to a video reconstruction of the skull of Australopithecus sebida. There is also a podcast with the author on the same webpage.
By having audio-visual components associated with your print or online articles, your work will be more visible to search engines, and journals are more likely to select your article to highlight on their webpage.
References:
Bernardi, G. 2012. The use of tools by wrasses (Labridae). Coral Reefs 31 (1): 39. DOI: 10.1007/s00338-011-0823-6
Nonaka, S. et al. 1998. Randomization of lef-right asymmetry due to loss of nodal cilia generating leftward flow of extraembryonic fluid in mice lacking KIF3B motor protein. Cell 95 (6): 829-837. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81705-5
Silverberg, J.L. et al. 2012. 3D imaging and mechanical modeling of helical buckling in Medicago truncatula plant roots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online (before print). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1209287109
Scientists sometimes have difficulty explaining their work in everyday language that most people can understand. How do you know if the language you are using in your videos or other science communication products are comprehensible by a 10th grader, for example?
Most word processing programs have an option that allows an assessment of the “readability” of the text in a document. The science videographer can make use of this tool to check and modify the language you plan to use in your video project….essentially tailor it to a target audience. This tutorial shows how to turn this option on and how to use it to revise a technical explanation so that it is understandable by a broader audience (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window):
View or download the entire script for the video here (click the arrow at the top of the document window for full page view):
You want to make sure the information in your science video (or other science communication product) is remembered. This video describes several ways to ensure that the content of your video is remembered (for best viewing, select the HD version and full-screen options (see menu bar at bottom of player window):
View or download the transcript of the video here (just select the arrow to see it full screen).
One of the biggest obstacles for scientists is explaining our work in everyday language. How do you know if you are succeeding? In the next post, I describe a tool that will allow you to quantify the readability/understandability of your language.
