Lab, Camera, Action!

Posted on: 4 September 2013

Making even a handful of videos teaches you a lot about the production process, most importantly perhaps, that it’s much easier to re-film a section with minor errors than to try to cover mistakes in post-production. For example, in the photo that accompanies this article, you hopefully haven’t realised that we had to electronically remove an unfortunately positioned profanity carved into the bench! This would have been much simpler to fix during filming, by either getting Andrew to sit somewhere else or, if we were really desperate, using sandpaper … On a similar note, it’s always useful to have some extra people on hand to spot these kinds of mistakes – you obviously need at least a presenter and cameraperson, but allowing someone to pay full attention to the audio, or to directing the shots, makes the overall process a lot easier.

However, the key element, we’ve found, is the story. The first thing you need is an idea: a novel explanation of an interesting phenomenon, a cool demonstration, or something that viewers can make at home. In that respect, video is much the same as any other medium, and it’s important to prioritise the script before concentrating on the specifics of realising it. Since our videos are based around a presenter telling this story, they are basically mini-lectures, augmented with flourishes permitted by the format.

And there are numerous advantages to video, both practical and aesthetic. You can take people to places they couldn’t normally go, such as inside a particle accelerator; cuts can compress time so, for example, a large lump of superconductor can be cooled to −196ºC in moments rather than minutes; and presenters can interact with physically impossible visualisations of the phenomena they’re describing. We didn’t aim to be showy in using special effects; instead we used video tricks and explanatory graphics that add rather than distract.

Another reason it’s important not to get distracted by the technical trivia of filming is that, as photographers and videographers are wont to say, your camera doesn’t really matter—and, in this age of DSLR video, that’s truer than ever. Once you’ve got a video camera and microphone, most of what stands between you and the shot you’ve envisaged is ingenuity; extra money to throw at equipment mainly buys convenience.

We made Lab, Camera, Action! with a video-capable DSLR, a tripod and video head, a radio lapel mic and an external sound recorder bought with the grant money. (We did raid our camera bags to supplement the kit lens which came with the camera, though.)