The Benshi

The webpage for the S Factor 2 last month in Salt Lake City is now complete — have a look.

THE S FACTOR 2 IN ACTION. Here’s a 6 minute video giving you an overall feel for how the S Factor 2 event last month at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Salt Lake City went. It was great — an excellent mixture of brave new videomakers and a panel doing their best to help improve the level of storytelling. Can’t wait for the next one.

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SCIENCE FILMMAKING 101 (BROUGHT TO YOU BY NSF AND ASLO)

The future is now, with the S Factor workshops! In the future, pretty much everyone will be “speaking” to the world through video. Almost as easily as you write an email you’ll be “writing” a short video to convey your thoughts. Plenty of scientists are beginning to realize this, so we’ve put these workshops together to help the process.

There’s two basic steps in making effective videos. First, you need to learn how to shoot a video camera and how to edit the footage together. Then, once you’ve developed the ability to actually make a video, it’s time to move to the next level by having your clips assembled in such a manner as to tell some sort of coherent story that can: 1) GRAB the interest of viewers, 2) HOLD their interest as you lead them along a journey, and 3) PAY OFF their interest by answering the question(s) you posted in the beginning.

The S Factor workshops are an evolutionary process, sponsored by NSF and ASLO, as we slowly work with the science folks to help them produce smoother and more effective videos. We’ll be doing it again later this year with S Factor 3 — stay tuned for details!