Learning on ScreenLab, Camera, Action!
However, what you haven’t got in booms and video lights you can make up for with MacGyver-esque improvisation. We’ve used everything from bike lights to an overhead projector heavily modified with aluminium foil to illuminate our shots; grabbed a high shot with a camera mount involving rubber tubing and cable ties; and discovered that, even allowing yourself dozens of takes, a weighted tripod is a mediocre substitute for a steadycam. In fact, here’s a challenge: can you work out which of our shots was completed with the help of a camera braced against the wheel of an upended bike?
We edited and produced the videos in Adobe Premiere, and used After Effects to add the graphics. Like all software, there is a significant learning curve—and After Effects has some serious limitations when it comes to 3D—but with persistence (and more than a little bit of patience), it’s usually possible to find a way to create what you’ve visualised on-screen. We found the internet to be a vital resource, with tutorials available for most popular software packages explaining how to produce just about any effect you can think of.
Since we wanted to reach a broad audience, YouTube was the obvious choice for distributing the videos, as it provides free hosting and is ubiquitous—this has helped us catch casual browsers, and get our work shared on social media. We’ve also found that the ability for people to simply embed the video player in other websites has been important: in fact, such embedding has been responsible for nearly a third of our traffic.
… online science communication is a double-edged sword
Online science communication is a double-edged sword: you gain access to a vast potential audience and concrete statistics, but with little idea of who that audience is, or whether a view of your video translates into genuine engagement, understanding or inspiration. You also lose the ability to personalise your explanation based on audience reaction, as you might in a live show or a one-on-one demonstration. However, the sheer weight of numbers might well make up for the unknowns; even our relatively modest 40,000 views would take years of live lecturing to surpass and, when videos go viral, views can stretch to the millions.
Though producing videos can be hard work, we’ve really enjoyed the process. It’s a creative way of sharing our enthusiasm for science, whilst geeking out and learning new skills: technical, narrative and cinematic.
We’d definitely encourage other scientists and science communicators to have a go at putting polished videos online. So, if you’ve got a cool demo, put the cameraphone away; beg, borrow or steal a reasonable camera, think about how best to tell the story, and have a go. The results are really worth the effort.
Dr Andrew Steele and Tom Fuller
www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/lab-camera-action
