Ever since reading The Viral Video Manifesto (I was very, very skeptical given the title and cover design. Yes, I literally judged the books by its cover. It ended up being a worthwhile read.), I've been very mindful of the habit of projecting the TV aesthetic onto web videos. B-roll, or the filler-footage that you sometimes see in flashbacks and interviews (shot of the subject at work while their voice is in the background), is a "very TV" thing that folks often bring over into web video, thinking it's evidence of high-quality production. I've been much more hesitant about using b-roll (or at least try to be much more intentional about it) in Science Out Loud now. The tl;dr version of VVM is that virality in web videos (which is often the proxy for value/success/what is good, for better or for worse) hinges on authenticity, and that things that are "very TV" (like b-roll) and considered good in traditional production may end up getting in the way of a "good" web production.
One aspect of slick production that, I think, still carries a great deal of relevancy in web video is camera movement. Specifically, movement that advances the illusion that the viewer is in the world of the video, even if that video was made with really nice equipment. Movement that immerses viewers in the video. The type of movement that I favor in SOL are Go-Pro or iPhone-like shots - making the camera act like the eyes of someone who might be standing there and watching the video happen in real-life.
Admittedly, the main reason why we tried them out in the first place was to add visual interest to a scene that was starting to get a little boring because she was just standing there delivering lines. So, it's a little gratuitous.
(My favorite shot of SOL so far. Also would be slightly creepy if this was actually someone's eye movement looking at A.*)
Now, to achieve eye-level dolly shots that mimic the eye-trace of a bystander of the video (or just cool moves in general), some *actual* production outfits use big, expensive equipment.
(Not in our budget.)
There are also lots of DIY dolly tutorials out there, but you have to pay up in cold, hard free time. We don't have much of that around here, either.
Option 1: Human Dolly
I like how this followed the beam of light, which isn't exactly how a bystander would see it (we tried a wide-angle at first, but decided against it for the reasons below). However, there is still something immersive about the eye-level POV, and the pacing of the reveal of the green cloak matched up nicely with the narration to make it clearer. Setup:
(We eventually abandoned the ladder idea because a) it was somewhat unsafe and I thought he was going to fall off at any point and b) because we needed to get more on eye-level. Same movement, though. I've been wanting to try this DIY stabilizer for a while now. I think it would've made this scene a lot easier to shoot.)
Again, this movement matched up well with the narration (talking about shining a laser through diffraction slits, eventually revealing how light diffracts). Setup:
(Very, very tight setup. Had to physically guide camera op in the dark so he wouldn't run into anything.)
Pros: Cheap, can work in tight spaces.
Cons: Physically very, very tiring (and hard to get consistent shots once your arm gets tired) (also hard to get consistent shots using your arm) (also hard to get decent shots, in general).
Option 2: Use what is available at that moment in time (i.e. handcart + human + tripod. Lots of tape, optional.)
(Kind of reminds me of those POV shots of kids walking up to a huge door and looking up in the movies.)
Using a fisheye lens here would've also been cool. An instance where high production value (i.e. looks less n00b-like than if you shot it with your webcam) doesn't necessarily make it look less authentic (and as a consequence, less good). You still feel immersed in the world of D-Lab.
I don't have documentation of the setup here, since I was sitting in a handcart holding a tripod (whose neck had been flipped upside-down to make it shorter) steady as the director pushed me around to film this.
We couldn't really film in this clean-room (bad sound, having to sterilize all the equipment, limited space to move, etc.), so we ended up shooting in the adjacent hallway that looks into it. Setup:
(Similar to that of the D-Lab sequences).
Setup:
Sometimes we change things up and tape the tripod to the FRONT of the hand cart. Are we the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or are we the Massachusetts Institute of Technology??
Point is, even though you can achieve authenticity in many different ways, there are variations in execution (and I suppose we could be thinking about changing ours up). I suppose we were lucky enough to even have a handcart at all. The slickness of whatever moves/production elements we include is definitely something I've been thinking about a lot lately, though.
*By the way, the way we did the slow pan up in that plants gif at the beginning was by creating a lever system out of the tripod. Took off the head and used the base of the tripod as the fulcrum, then used a long boom pole as a lever. Fixed the camera on one end - with a lot of clamps - and hung the camera shoulder rig on the other. Adjusted r1 and r2 so that the torques from the camera and shoulder rig juuuust equaled each other (creating zero angular acceleration) and gently touched the system into movement so that the camera would look like it was panning up at constant speed. Full credit to George for devising the setup.
