Imagine you’re a biologist. Nothing in your formal training has prepared you to communicate with the public about your work… that just isn’t part of a scientific education these days. So, what if you want people outside the scientific community to understand what you do? Should you tell them to read the papers you’ve published in peer-reviewed journals? That probably won’t work; even if they could find a library with access to the journals in which you publish, your papers aren’t written for the non-scientist. What if you made a movie instead? “But Neil, I have no idea how to make a movie about anything,” you might say. Fair enough, I suppose, but as of last weekend, I can confidently recommend a great way to get started.

I spent Oct. 10-17 in Bodega Bay at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab, participating in a workshop called “Scientific Filmmaking: An Introduction to Filmmaking Tools for the Working Scientist.” The workshop was taught by Jeff Morales, a freelance filmmaker and former staff producer for National Geographic Television, and Dr. Colin Bates, a marine biologist and filmmaker based at the University of British Columbia. There’s a lot more to learn about filmmaking than can be taught in seven days, but Jeff and Colin did a great job of introducing us to all the technical and artistic skills needed to start making high-quality films.

The goal of the workshop was to complete a “rough cut” of a short (4-5 minute) film by the end of the week, but we began with simpler exercises like building a scene, creative camera work, and sound recording. Each day, we would learn some new skills, then shoot and edit a short (~1 minute) practice exercise in just a couple of hours before sharing our creation with the rest of the group. Then, with critiques from Jeff, Colin, and each other, we learned how to improve our work next time.

I’ve posted a few of my exercises below, so you can see what I’m talking about. Caveat: they’re nothing fancy. But that was the point: we were learning the basics.

.

.

.

For my final project, I worked with Kelvin Gorospe (University of Hawaii) and Annie Schmidt (UC Davis) to produce a short film about a graduate student researcher at Bodega Marine Lab, . I won’t bother posting our “rough cut,” but sometime in the next few weeks I’ll upload the final version – it needs a little bit more audio mixing and a couple of other tweaks before it’s ready for primetime.

Creating a presentable short film in about 48 hours was an adventure, to say the least! But it was a great learning experience, and one that I’d highly recommend to any scientist who’s interested in teaching the public about his or her work. To learn more about Jeff and Colin’s workshops, click here. Both Jeff and Colin really know their stuff, and even more importantly, they’re excited about teaching scientists how to make films. Thanks to them, my future video projects are going to be WAY better than they would have been without this workshop! Now if I could just make time for those “future video projects”…