Lovely set of films from my chum Alom, of scientists showcasing their work: Labreporter.com.
One of my ambitions for SciCast this year is to intersperse films of this nature with ones from schools. Crossover films like this one are particularly interesting, too. My gut feeling is that the 2:30 duration is still the right way to go, but I need to refine a template format for undergrads and academics – and that means making a bunch of films myself.
One of the joys of How2 is that one started each item with a single question, and the job of the film was to answer it. Things went off the rails when films grew to include loads of other stuff – while it might have been interesting, if it didn’t contribute to answering the question, it shouldn’t have been there.
One idea per film.
That’s hard enough to hold professional film-makers to, let alone professional scientists holding a camera for the first time.
Alom’s films are delightful, but they’re also very professional. I want to find a happy medium, where the bar is set high enough that people have something to shoot for – but not so high they assume they’ll miss. Tricky.