The Benshi

I don’t get it. Over the past 35 years the technology of science talks has changed drastically. Today there is no tolerance for outdated things like overhead projectors, but what about the content? You can present the same old disorganized mess and no one will bat an eyelash. Someone should work on raising the standards.

AS INCOMPREHENSIBLE AS WE WANNA BE. Scientists’ talks don’t have to be as bad as they are. They really don’t. There are things that can be done. Honest to goodness, there are.

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“AND HERE ARE MY OVERHEADS …”

Anybody out there remember overhead projectors? Anybody remember science meetings in the 1970′s when scientists routinely slapped one hand-scribbled overhead after another onto the projector — nervously adjusting each one as they looked back and forth from the screen to the projector to the audience?

Today, if you showed up with an overhead projector at a science meeting, you would be the laughing stock. Same for 35 mm slides. THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED. We have zero tolerance for people who fail to change with the times. At least when it comes to the technology of a science talk.

But what about the content? What about how the information is presented?

I swear to you there has been no change. Nothing. Nada. No standards, no expectations, no change. You can get up and give the same boring ramble… one graph after another (as I sat through recently at a major science meeting), no questions posed, no hypotheses presented, no synthesis. You can do all that and the worst that will happen is people will mutter later, “Yeah, that wasn’t a particularly good talk.”

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“REAL SCIENTISTS DON’T CARE IF THEY’RE UNDERSTOOD”

Why such intensely competitive technological standards for presentations, but NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING for content?

It’s time for a sort of “Rotten Tomatoes” review site for major science speakers. Somebody needs to start going to major symposia and writing REVIEWS for the presentations. A presentation is mostly about “performance” — just like theater — so why not evaluate it as such.

It’s what happens when you put on a play. The theater critics show up, then publish their reviews. And the next thing you know, the whole world is able to read about how, “The visual elements of the play were tremendous, but the performances were dreadful.”

Why not the same for scientists? Reviews that say, “The guy is clearly doing important work, but he presented it in such a backwards, upside down fashion you couldn’t make sense of it.” Or, “She laid out three clear hypotheses, each with their supporting data, leaving you torn between which was most likely and making you want to hear the rest of her presentation to get the answer.”

What? Would it be unfair? That’s exactly what the members of the U.S. Congress cried in the 1980′s when C-SPAN first began broadcasting live from the Senate and the House. Suddenly a whole lot of fat slob congressmen had to start dressing better, sitting up straight and stop picking their noses for fear people from their home district would see them on C-SPAN.

The real answer is that the entire science community doesn’t want to confront the fact that it DOES matter how you present your work. Scientists like to blindly cling to the sacred belief that for all cases, “the data speaks for itself” — the idea that how you present research is irrelevant, the ONLY thing that matters is what is presented.

Which is foolish. And lazy.

ARTIFACT FROM THE PALEOCENE. This was found in a cave in France. Apparently cavemen would trace the outline of their hand on it, which was then projected on the cave wall where it would provide the initial shape for drawing turkeys.

There’s a great article in this week’s New Yorker about the fundamental divide between information (i.e. Google) vs. entertainment (TV and movies).

Youtube Vs. Television: An interesting article this week in The New Yorker as Youtube launches an ambitious plan this spring to steal part of the television audience.

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“REBRANDING” STORYTELLING FOR SCIENTISTS

Scientists suffer from “storyphobia” which is the irrational dread fear of the words story and storytelling. It is the fear that those terms will lead you into “bending the science to tell a better story” (the New Scientist review of my book wrongly accused me of advocating that). Which is a valid concern, but no reason to ignore the basic dynamics of structuring your presentation into a flow that will grab attention, hold it, and pay it off.

Maybe it’s time for a different term that has the same meaning but none of the baggage. How about, “logic structuring.”

I recently attended an event where several prominent scientists presented overviews of multi-investigator work on ecosystems. The talks were dreadful. They were utterly devoid of any logical progression. Just an episodic laying out of work that has been done. Which leads me to wonder something …

Why is it that ALL scientific journals have GUIDELINES FOR WRITERS in which the logical structure (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) are plainly laid out with zero room for variation, yet there exists NOTHING of the sort for oral presentations? How is it that you can give the dullest, most rambling, borderline-incoherent of talks in science and nobody complains?

I spoke with folks after these talks. They agreed the talks were painfully dull, but some said, “they had to present a lot of information, they couldn’t help it.” Yes, they could. If they wanted to. If there were anyone saying, “you could do better.” Or if there were even SET GUIDELINES of some sort forcing people to start their presentation with an initial set-up posing the overall goals, why the goals are important — basically “what’s at stake” — what will happen if we don’t gather this information — and eventually some synthesis that brings it all together, BEFORE running out of time and ending with, “I guess that’s all I have time for today.”

Sheesh.

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YOUTUBE VS. TELEVISION

Along these lines, there’s an excellent article in this week’s New Yorker about Youtube’s ambitious plans this spring to steal a significant part of the television audience through the launching of 20 new celebrity-driven channels on their website.

Right now Youtube is hugely popular, but they face one big dilemma — people watch 4-5 hours of television a day, but the average visitor time on Youtube is only about 20 minutes. At the core of this divide is the internet’s preoccupation with information (the more the merrier) versus the television world’s obsession with entertainment. The information people prefer ABUNDANCE, the entertainment people thrive on SCARCITY.

And this is what is at the heart of storytelling. You hold people’s interest by withholding (artfully) the information they are seeking — keeping the clues scarce — forcing the audience to follow your thought processes that lead to the eventual answer. This is what the weatherman on my local TV news show does with his trivia question each night. He starts his predictably dull report (the weather is mostly the same in L.A., just like Steve Martin’s bored weather guy in the movie “L.A. Story“) with a trivia question that you want answered.

If he were a scientist he would start his report with the trivia question, immediately give you the answer, then progress forward. But a storyteller poses the question then doesn’t “pay it off” until the end of the report/story. It’s a way of approaching the process of communication. Yes, it’s manipulative, but it can be done in a totally honest and “non fact-bending” way. If you do it well, people enjoy and appreciate the journey.

That’s what storytelling is about.

And guess what happened last week at the end of the storytelling workshop we did at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium. A native Alaskan man came up to talk about storytelling among their elders. I asked him to tell his favorite story that he’s ever heard. He began with, “It was a story an elder told about one day he was walking home across the ice when suddenly a huge crack appeared ahead of him, larger than he could traverse …”

And there you have it. Perfect storytelling. A tiny bit of exposition, then the establishment of a clear question — “How will he get across this crack in the ice?” Good storytelling is instinctual. Alaskan natives know this. Scientists should, too.

Dorie Barton will be at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt Lake for our session on Feb. 19. No matter what sort of script you’re writing — whether it’s a 5 hour epic or a 5 second film – you need help with it. We all do. You need knowledgeable people who can read your script and give you notes that are based on a solid combination of both instinct and analytical powers. You may have one or two friends for this, but you’ve probably already burned them out. My recommendation is to hire a professional like Dorie.

WANNA TELL A GREAT STORY? You almost certainly will need help. Every movie company knows this. Which is why they hire story consultants. And that’s what Dorie Barton is. But her skills are valuable to more than just Hollywood storytellers. She can bring the same knowledge to all sorts of science films. You can visit her website at http://www.developmentgirl.com/

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STORY CONSULTING

Let me offer up a simple plug here for Dorie Barton’s skills in case you’re involved with making a video. You don’t have to be making a Hollywood feature film for Dorie to be of value. Even if you’re just doing a 3 minute promo piece for your laboratory, you will benefit by trying to tell some sort of story. She can help and guide you with this process of making the story in the script work effectively.

When I first met her a decade ago I knew she was a talented actress. But when I introduced her to a friend with National Geographic’s feature film office and they began hiring her to do script analysis for them I found out she is also an extremely good script and story analyst, which is one of the most sought after skills in Hollywood. As a result I have hired her on several projects to help develop scripts. And this is what she does these days, full time. Here’s her website: http://www.developmentgirl.com/

If you are developing a script for a possible video I strongly encourage you to either email her through her website, or just show up at our session at Ocean Sciences (in Salt Lake City on Feb. 19) where you can speak to her at the breaks. Or you can email me for more details on her skills. She’s can do a range of work — for just a hundred dollars you can get a certain amount of her input which could potentially change the entire direction of your project. Script development is the most important part of making a video — if you don’t have a good blueprint to start with, the odds of having a good end product are pretty slim. I strongly encourage you to at least have a phone call with her if you think you could use some writing/development assistance.

The goal of all this stuff is to tell better science stories. A script consultant can play a powerful role in that process.

“He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis …” (read on, urology fans!)

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BRACE YOURSELVES FOR THIS ONE …

My thanks to David Aldridge for Tweeting about this rather stunning incident in the anals of urological research. He put it into the context of my “arouse and fulfill” dictum, pondering whether there might be limits to this approach. The source is here, but here’s the entire text for you, which may leave you a bit aghast. It reads almost like something from The Onion, but I guess it’s the real deal. Also worth noting in the first sentence is the location of Dr. Brindley’s historic lecture — Las Vegas – which leaves you wondering what he did with his display specimen after finishing his lecture.

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PROFESSOR BRINDLEY’S STAFF

In 1983, at the Urodynamics Society meeting in Las Vegas, Professor G.S. Brindley first announced to the world his experiments on self-injection with papaverine to induce a penile erection. This was the first time that an effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) was described, and was a historic development in the management of ED. The way in which this information was first reported was completely unique and memorable, and provides an interesting context for the development of therapies for ED. I was present at this extraordinary lecture, and the details are worth sharing. Although this lecture was given more than 20 years ago, the details have remained fresh in my mind, for reasons which will become obvious.

The lecture, which had an innocuous title along the lines of ‘Vaso-active therapy for erectile dysfunction’ was scheduled as an evening lecture of the Urodynamics Society in the hotel in which I was staying. I was a senior resident, hungry for knowledge, and at the AUA I went to every lecture that I could. About 15 min before the lecture I took the elevator to go to the lecture hall, and on the next floor a slight, elderly looking and bespectacled man, wearing a blue track suit and carrying a small cigar box, entered the elevator. He appeared quite nervous, and shuffled back and forth. He opened the box in the elevator, which became crowded, and started examining and ruffling through the 35 mm slides of micrographs inside. I was standing next to him, and could vaguely make out the content of the slides, which appeared to be a series of pictures of penile erection. I concluded that this was, indeed, Professor Brindley on his way to the lecture, although his dress seemed inappropriately casual.

The lecture was given in a large auditorium, with a raised lectern separated by some stairs from the seats. This was an evening programme, between the daytime sessions and an evening reception. It was relatively poorly attended, perhaps 80 people in all. Most attendees came with their partners, clearly on the way to the reception. I was sitting in the third row, and in front of me were about seven middle-aged male urologists, and their partners in ‘full evening regalia’.

Professor Brindley, still in his blue track suit, was introduced as a psychiatrist with broad research interests. He began his lecture without aplomb. He had, he indicated, hypothesized that injection with vasoactive agents into the corporal bodies of the penis might induce an erection. Lacking ready access to an appropriate animal model, and cognisant of the long medical tradition of using oneself as a research subject, he began a series of experiments on self-injection of his penis with various vasoactive agents, including papaverine, phentolamine, and several others. (While this is now commonplace, at the time it was unheard of). His slide-based talk consisted of a large series of photographs of his penis in various states of tumescence after injection with a variety of doses of phentolamine and papaverine. After viewing about 30 of these slides, there was no doubt in my mind that, at least in Professor Brindley’s case, the therapy was effective. Of course, one could not exclude the possibility that erotic stimulation had played a role in acquiring these erections, and Professor Brindley acknowledged this.

The Professor wanted to make his case in the most convincing style possible. He indicated that, in his view, no normal person would find the experience of giving a lecture to a large audience to be erotically stimulating or erection-inducing. He had, he said, therefore injected himself with papaverine in his hotel room before coming to give the lecture, and deliberately wore loose clothes (hence the track-suit) to make it possible to exhibit the results. He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection.

At this point, I, and I believe everyone else in the room, was agog. I could scarcely believe what was occurring on stage. But Prof. Brindley was not satisfied. He looked down sceptically at his pants and shook his head with dismay. ‘Unfortunately, this doesn’t display the results clearly enough’. He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped breathing.

But the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, ‘I’d like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence’. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.

The screams seemed to shock Professor Brindley, who rapidly pulled up his trousers, returned to the podium, and terminated the lecture. The crowd dispersed in a state of flabbergasted disarray. I imagine that the urologists who attended with their partners had a lot of explaining to do. The rest is history. Prof Brindley’s single-author paper reporting these results was published about 6 months later [1].

Professor Brindley made a huge contribution to the management of ED, for which he deserves tremendous gratitude. He was a true lateral thinker, and applied his unique mind to a variety of problems in medicine. These include over 100 publications that focus on the areas of visual neurophysiology and several other aspects of neurophysiology, including ejaculation and female sexual dysfunction. He also published one remarkable paper studying the effect of 17 different drugs used intracorporally to induce erection [2]. Seven of these (phenoxybenzamine, phentolamine, thymoxamine, imipramine, verapamil, papaverine, naftidrofury) induced an erection. It is not clear to what degree Brindley’s own penis served as the test subject for these studies.

This lecture was unique, dramatic, paradigm-shifting, and unexpected. It is difficult to imagine that a similar scenario could ever take place again. Professor Brindley belongs in the pantheon of famous British eccentrics who have made spectacular contributions to science. The story of his lecture deserves a place in the urological history books.

We had such a good time last month at AGU we’re doing it again next month with S FACTOR 2. Send in your videos or just attend as part of the audience.

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S FACTOR 2: Featuring my friends, actress and script consultant Dorie Barton (who has appeared in lots of movies including, “Meet the Fockers,” “Down with Love,” “Bewitched”) and actor/improv acting instructor Brian Palermo (he was the computer science professor in, “The Social Network” and was in “Thank You For Smoking,” and “Big Momma’s House”). It’s going to be another great session — come join us in Salt Lake. Details on video submission are here.

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IF YOU’RE GOING TO THE OCEAN SCIENCE MEETING IN SALT LAKE SEND IN YOUR 5 MINUTE VIDEO

Last month we did the first official “S Factor” panel at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. It was a great experience featuring 10 videos ranging widely in quality which we, one at a time, showed to the audience, offered up our filmmaking knowledge (both of the other panelists were USC film school classmates of mine in the mid-90′s) and conducted discussions with each videomaker and the audience.

That was actually the 4th time I’ve done a video workshop at either AGU or Ocean Sciences, but the first time that I brought along two ringers which made it about ten times better than the previous sessions. So this time I’m bringing my long time writing advisor Dorie Barton and veteran improv comedy actor and Groundling alum Brian Palermo. Last fall I did an all day workshop with them in Los Angeles with 25 environmental activists. They are awesome and were a great team so be sure to stop by if you’re at the meeting.

If you want a great synopsis of the state of the planet and whether you should be worried about the future, you should set aside an hour over this holiday break to sit down and listen to this excellent (and simultaneously non-excellent) talk by Lester Brown. It is packed with head-turning numbers and specifics. It’s the best overall presentation of the state of our planet I’ve heard in a long time. Even if the emotional message of it is hard to figure out.

FIND THE TIME FOR THIS — YOU’LL NEED 42 MINUTES. This year, instead of turning to religion for hope, you might want to turn to science, technology and society for your dose of hope via this very concise and interesting presentation by one of the grand old men of the environmental movement, Lester Brown.

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THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE ODDLY COMMUNICATED

How can a talk be simultaneously excellent and non-excellent? How can a talk be boring, disastrous and perfect. It has to do with different audiences.

This talk by Lester Brown is amazingly good if you’ve got a long attention span, have no need for visuals, and can listen close enough and be smart enough to get your message ONLY from the substance of what he says, not from the style.

On the other hand, if you’re a short attention span person (like most of our society today and the artist half of my brain) it has the potential to be disastrous. First off, he says absolutely nothing with the style channel of communication. His largely monotonic voice does not waiver from when he’s talking about the grimness in his first third by describing a potential “perfect storm” of population explosion, global warming, and crop failure as soon as 2030. He’s predicting total calamity, and doing it without even changing the pacing of his words, versus the end of the talk when he pretty much says it’s starting to look like we may have this environmental thing licked. But with the same emotionless sterile delivery.

By the end of the talk he’s telling about how we’ve moved out of the age of coal, into the age of oil, and are now clearly headed to the age of wind — Yay! But he delivers this hugely optimistic good news with … alas … the same dispassionate even keel as the bad news. Which is great if you’re an academic and can get your cues just from the text delivered, but not so much if you’re a multi-tasking soccer dad who is trying to listen to this while talking to the wife on the phone and picking up the kids from practice. That audience member will have a hard time answering his friend’s questions that evening when he mentions at a cocktail party that he listened to this talk and they ask, “So what’s Lester Brown saying, are we doomed or not?”

The even worse news is that the last third of the talk is so packed with optimism that it would be very easy for a listener to come to the conclusion of, “Hey, we’re doin’ it! We’re actually saving the planet! Yay, I can quit worrying!”

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HOPE FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Seriously. The broader messaging dynamics of this talk are a mess. And not the least of which is that he begins by saying, “The title of the latest book that came out earlier this year, “World on the Edge,” is intended to create a sense of urgency.” Well … if you wrote the book … and you want to create a sense of urgency … why are you so relaxed and presenting your talk in an utterly non-urgent manner?

You might answer, well, that’s just who he is — it’s his style of presentation. But I’m telling you that ALL elements of presentation come into play. This is like the people at NSF giving boring talks about science that are promoted with the slogan, “Science is Fun!” No, it’s not. Not if your presentation isn’t fun.

I mean, it’s comical, but it’s no different than the most boring, lifeless, droid of a person saying, “I’m really excited about the work I’ve been doing lately.” Yes, your substance says you’re excited, but your style doesn’t. It’s that simple.

So I hate to say anything critical about this talk because it is very, very good. In fact, why in the world can’t President Obama just take the EXACT transcript of what Lester Brown says here and deliver it to the entire nation in a national address. It really poops all over the climate skeptics. The statistics on wind power and fazing out of coal plants and implementation of energy efficient bulbs just absolutely steam rolls over the climate skeptics in their efforts to combat the climate movement as the numbers really do say, “It’s happening.”

My recommendation is that you find an hour over the holidays, turn off your cell phone, do a few mind relaxing exercises to get your attention span ready to listen for 42 minutes, then hit play. It is the most concise and broad ranging presentation I’ve heard in a long time that will give you a clear idea of how there really is hope for humanity. Which is a nice message for the holidays.

It was a great session, and here’s a great blog review of it in case you weren’t able to attend.

Jason and Sean were excellent, as was the audience. It was the best one of these video events I’ve seen so far, in large part because the videos themselves were so good.

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BLOG REVIEW OF THE EVENT

Liz Kalaugher wrote this blog review in which she did a perfect job of catching all the best moments and quotes from the event.

Last month the World Wildlife Fund celebrated their 50th anniversary and were nice enough to let me crash the festivities with this talk. My basic message is that the climate movement has done an impressive job with the CEREBRAL part of communication. Now they need to shore up the VISCERAL side.

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Filmed at National Geographic’s headquarters — they did a really nice job.

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I AM PRO-VISCERAL

The overall message of this talk is relatively simple. The American climate movement has done an impressive job with the cerebral side of communication, producing mountains of polling data, values models, mental models, classification and description of climate skeptics — all sorts of METRICS. But that’s only half of the communication picture — the cerebral/informational half.

As I say in this talk, there’s the other half — the more visceral component — the more experiential stuff. The divide is as simple as the difference between buying a book on acting versus taking an acting class where you actually have to act.

So I thought I was going to be the big rabble rouser of the day with my talk, but little did I know how blunt and incisive Martin Palmer’s talk would be. Which was nice. My message was mild by comparison. His talk (see video below) is truly amazing. I had heard a podcast from him in 2009 for which I sent him a fan email raving about how great it was. But I had totally forgotten about him until he began his talk and I started hearing some of the same things from that podcast, causing me to sit up and look around like, “wait a minute, this is that awesome guy!”

The talks might have benefited for the web by being only 10 minutes, plus I say “um” an awful lot (terrible to have to watch yourself giving a talk), but the talk presents pretty much the main things I have to say these days. Something has to change with climate communication. They have to realize they’re only addressing half of what communication is about. As a friend said to me last weekend, it doesn’t work to just buy a video about surfing. If you want to surf, you have to get out there and DO IT!

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I’m ready to start the Martin Palmer Fan Club based on this talk. His organization clearly understands major parts of human nature that the climate movement doesn’t.

Hollywood has a lot to offer the science world, but you gotta respect the cultural divide.

THE S FACTOR PANEL AT AGU: All three of us were in the same film school class at U.S.C. starting in January, 1994. Previous to film school I was a tenured professor of marine biology, leaving me with a brain that is still 50% scientist. Sean Hood did an undergraduate degree in physics at Yale University giving him a brain that is today 75% Hollywood, yet still 25% scientist. And Jason Ensler? Ain’t no science bones in his body. He brings the 100% pure voice of Hollywood to the mix. Out of this combination we will provide a bridge from the way scientists approach communication to the way Hollywood approaches communication. This is how you effectively connect the two worlds.

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SPEAKING EBO TO THE GREEKS

In my 20 years of living in and around Hollywood I have attended numerous events in which the organizers have this great idea of, “let’s put a group of great scientists together with a group of great filmmakers and let them cross pollinate!”

Guess what happens most of the time. They might as well say, “Let’s put a group of people who speak only the Ebo language of Nigeria together with a group of people who speak only Greek and let them cross pollinate.” (the Ebo reference is of course a nod to my best friend and Sizzle co-star Ifeanyi Njoku).

In the end, the Ebo speakers will gather on one side of the room and speak amongst themselves as the Greek speakers gather on the other side to speak amongst themselves. I’ve seen it over and over again. Scientists and filmmakers do not match. They not only speak two different languages, but they think very differently when it comes to communication. I talked about this a lot in my book.

Scientists are “story-averse.” They have a sort of story-phobia — the fear that “if I start worrying about telling a good story, I’ll stop worrying about keeping things accurate.” Which is a valid concern, but the fact is you can tell great stories without having to alter any information whatsoever. Journalists do it every day. You just need guidance in how to organize the information in a manner that will grab the interest of the broader audience, and that is exactly what we will be doing in this workshop Tuesday evening at the AGU.

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WE WILL, WE WILL … CROSS POLLINATE YOU

I spoke yesterday with Sean Hood about the workshop. He’s viewed the ten selected videos twice and has a bunch of the same thoughts and comments I have — starting with being pleasantly surprised with the quality. The videos are good. And yet … they don’t do a particularly good job of storytelling, so there’s plenty to work with.

We’ve got lots of specifics to offer up — one video has spectacular footage buried in the middle of it instead of putting it at the start to grab the viewer’s attention, another desperately needs music scoring, several need to not open by introducing the on-camera host (and maybe not even have an on-camera host), pretty much all of them need to give more thought to posing an initial question, most of them need better visual elements, and all of them need to give more thought to how you grab, hold, and satisfy the attention of viewers.

Lots to work with. It’s going to be a great session. Bring all your friends, it’s open to the public. Look forward to seeing you there!

If you’re going to tell the world how to communicate, you have to communicate it well.

Would you take advice on how to dress for success from this guy?

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SEE YOUR FUTURE, BE YOUR FUTURE

You’d think this would be a piece of common sense. But it’s not. I don’t want to mention any names because all the guilty parties are so well intended, but I’m subjected to this over and over again. It’s happened AT LEAST five times I can think of. People get in touch with me about making a video about how to communicate science well, but when I start asking questions about how much budget they have, how good of a crew, what are their plans for sound design, do they have a good gaffer who knows how to light well — all sorts of reasonable and necessary questions for good communication, I usually get an answer of, “nah, we just got a friend who has a handi-cam we’re gonna shoot it on.”

You can’t do that. You can’t make a video telling an audience about how messages need to be communicated well only to have the video turn out so poorly lit with such crappy audio that the viewer can hardly understand it.

Does everyone understand this simple problem? Did I just start talking Portuguese up here? Does anybody remember H. Ross Perot?

Let’s repeat this all together … FILM AND VIDEO … ARE … VISUAL MEDIA. Say it a few more times to yourselves. A “well communicated” video consists of plenty of visual material that clearly conveys a certain amount of information coherently. Looking at the face of a human being (i.e. the standard “talking head”) says only one thing visually — “face.” That’s it. If you want to make a video about fish, you need to have images of fish. If you want to make a video about bridges, you need to have images of bridges. But here’s the hard part …

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TED TALKS VS. BLOGGING HEADS

If you want to make a video about something that is exciting, the video itself needs to be exciting. You can’t have some lackluster person staring at you saying listlessly, “It’s important to make exciting presentations.” That does not work.

Similarly, if you want to lecture people on the need to communicate effectively, it does not work to do it in a video that most people want to shut off after 30 seconds. It doesn’t. Sorry. It’s a conundrum. I’ve railed about this before with the stoopid Bloggingheads concept that usually presents two horribly lit old men blabbing about some dull topic. Yes, the transcript of what they say may be fascinating, but do you know what they are saying VISUALLY in such a presentation? “Hi, we’re boring old men who don’t care what we look like because we’re so certain that everything we have to say is priceless.”

Do you have any idea of why TED Talks have become so popular? Do you really think it’s because the content of every presentation is so amazing? Would you watch a TED Talk if it were poorly lit with bad audio shot on a single camera that is so wide the speaker is just a little blip on the screen? TED Talks are exciting and interesting in large part because they are shot in a manner that is exciting and interesting with great lighting, multiple cameras and flawless audio. They are presentations spoken perfectly in the language of presentations.

Yes, we all want to communicate better, but you need something more than good intentions. You need an ability to communicate well to start with. Unfortunately, for film and video production this usually requires money, with the bottom line being that you get what you pay for. And this is a concept that most scientists, who are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers, simply cannot comprehend. (and I know this to be a fact — I was a scientist and was just as bad at it as anyone)