Tag: scicast

Other science video competitions

Jonathan SandersonLeave a comment

There are at least two more science film projects online, alongside SciCast; the Wired/PBS broadcast mashup Wired Science are soon to launch a competition for high-school students (scroll down), and New Scientist are running their own equivalent via YouTube.

I’m assuming the former is only open to US participants, but if you’re in the UK and enter the New Scientist competition, feel free to send your film to SciCast too — we’ll make sure it’s archived so schools can use it (YouTube is usually blocked by local authority firewalls).

A new day

Jonathan SandersonLeave a comment

Yesterday, I hit a bit of an impasse – a particular film I’m trying to cut that just wasn’t working. It was always going to be cheesy, but it wasn’t coming together in anything like the way I’d wanted. The timings were off, and it looked rough as anything. I struggled through for a while, lashing together at least the audio, but ultimately gave up on it.

This morning it’s a whole different animal. The shots still aren’t there, the performances are dodgy, and the script is over-complicated… but today I can see the charming idea behind it all, I can start to see a decent little film emerging, and as a result I’m enjoying the process again.

I’m frequently surprised by how this happens – given the opportunity, how I feel about a film, on a gut-reaction, emotional level, can change overnight. It’s one of the reasons I like to have three or four on the go at once, since there’s always a few with which I reach a barrier of some sort.

I need a new word

Jonathan Sanderson2 Comments

I need a word for the feeling of intense ennui and frustration one feels when attempting to find any shot that can fill a gap of six frames, only to find that every camera is repositioning at exactly the same time.

‘Fit to fill’ has never been so abused.

I’ve put a few new films up at SciCast this week, by the way, along with an old favourite.

Technorati Tags:
scicast, video editing

SciCast review on the BBC

Jonathan SandersonLeave a comment

I wasn’t expecting this to appear for another few weeks, so a great spot by my dad: BBC News’ Click technology show has a ‘Webscape’ column, and this week they’re featuring SciCast. Yay! The review should be going out on Click bulletins over the weekend, and with luck will be in BBC Breakfast News at 0645 Saturday morning, on BBC1.

If I’m not much mistaken, this would be the first time anything I’ve made has gone out on BBC1. ITV, Channel 4, Five, Discovery, Discovery Kids, BBC2, and a bunch of other channels – sure. But BBC1? Not that I recall. I’m hoping they show a clip of my nephew Stanley…

Thanks also to Violet, who as far as I know is the person behind this happening.