The easiest way to make a [good] video on a technical topic (or why making videos on technical topics is hard)
A few weeks ago, the crew and I shot a video about semiconductors. It was, by far, the smoothest and easiest video to shoot (maybe out of all the videos I have ever made, Science Out Loud or otherwise).
Ironically, we thought it'd be one of the trickiest to shoot, given the logistics of the demo...
...And also the fact that we had about three locations with very different native lighting/audio situations.
(Server rooms, while visually appropriate for a segment on how semiconductors are used in modern electronics, are loud and have fluorescent lighting that gives the following effect...)
But all-in-all, start-to-finish, we wrapped in a little under 12 hours (which is on the faster end for a 5-min. episode of Science Out Loud). Crew call was 7:30 AM, but we didn't even start rolling camera until close to 11 AM (Jamie met us at 8 AM, but we spent some time hunting down shorter alligator clips to tidy up the circuit he'd built/make it look clearer on camera.) We were also a bit at the mercy of the availabilities of the managers of the server room and clean room spaces (and MIT was closing early that day due to a snow storm). So, despite the logistical hurdles, why did this one end up seeming so [relatively] effortless?
Long story short (or shorter than it could be), this video worked for the following reasons (in increasing order of importance):
This was Jamie's second time making a Science Out Loud video - he was mentally prepared for how physically-demanding the day would be, and I think he rationed his energy accordingly. (I'm making this sound like a much more trivial thing than it really is. Everyone, including myself, underestimates how hard hosting is, and how much the skill of hosting lies in what you do both when the camera is rolling and when it isn't.) In general, he was prepared - he'd tested out the demo beforehand, was comfortable with all his lines. These things may sound obvious, but I'd venture to say that an overwhelming majority (~80%?) of folks hosting things like MITx course videos don't do this (mostly because it takes up an enormous amount of time that they don't have - but that is a post for another day).
Jamie knew the content inside-and-out (he's graduating with a Ph.D. this summer and his research directly relates to semiconductors). Whenever we'd realize that certain lines weren't working in the context of the props or movement (things we couldn't predict just reading scripts), we could easily ask clarifying questions to help us restructure or edit on-the-fly. Because of his "expert status," he was connected - he had pretty easy access to all the facilities because he works in them, and knew all the space managers (so we had much more freedom in what we could try shooting and where). He also advertised his previous video on comp sci blogs, which landed a Reddit embed and made his previous episode the most-watched SOL one to-date. And his videos are partially footed by a portion of his lab's NSF grant set aside for outreach projects.
He had a great, committed attitude the entire process. From the beginning, he was totally on-board with the outreach aspect of it (his wife is an elementary school teacher... I think that helped him during the scripting process, actually), was up for approaching material in a new way. He was one of the most eager for feedback and was able to efficiently incorporate our feedback on scripts (mostly because I think he was excited to do it). Actually, the first thing he said to us on shoot day was something along the lines of, "I noticed that in my last video, there were moments where I didn't sound as happy to be there as I wanted to be. So I want to make sure I sound more enthusiastic or more accurately reflect how I feel about his material for this video."
Preparation, expertise, attitude - sounds easy enough, right? (Answer: No.)
Preparation: Preparation takes time, the most in-demand commodity at MIT (and in a lot of other places, academic and otherwise). It also takes much more work for some people to be good on camera than others. (I know I taught a class titled "Becoming the Next Bill Nye," but I am convinced that not everyone can become the next Bill Nye. Post for another time.) I'm not entirely sure how to tackle this one, besides hiring semi-informed "talent," the way hosts are hired in commercial productions. We actually played around with this idea - bringing on a separate host unrelated to the script developer - for this season (which led us to cast this individual in an entirely new series). But MIT's DIY culture tends to not be as receptive to this idea, the idea that it's not always possible to hack your way through everything - including being a great, live science communicator. Occasionally, folks like Jamie (and several of our other students) come by, jumping head-first into this little experiment of ours. But can we build a pipeline that doesn't fundamentally rely on this (because I'm not sure these people are as common and many might think)?
Expertise: In general, this is the thing that MIT has going for it that shows like SciShow, Veritasium, Vsauce, etc. don't. It's also not leveraged as much as I would like for it to be. At this point, as far as content programming goes, I try to focus on making videos that pretty much only MIT can make, cognizant that preparation and attitude are the qualities that MIT struggles with regarding science/educational videos (and that those channels don't as much). That means we don't make Khan Academy-style videos anymore. That means we don't make tutorial videos (because we don't have the time, we're actually not super great at it). That means we don't make explainer videos on basic physics concepts unless we involve something unique and contextual like the MIT Skydiving Club. Expertise is the self-awareness of knowing what you know and how to leverage it well. Harder than it sounds. And content expertise is actually something our students (especially undergrads, understandably) struggle with a bit (and has been a fascinating learning experience this season - more on that later). You also run into the struggle of balancing getting undergrads and younger students involved, being mindful of the near-peer aspect of what we do, with grad students (who may "know" more, but who the audience may see more as a typical instructor figure and less of a relatable peer).
Attitude: It is always difficult to critique and discuss anything that involves assuming people's intentions. I think most of the folks I've worked with on these videos come at it from an outreach-oriented attitude (and maybe a little fascination with fame, but who wouldn't?). I also know that there's a moment - maybe when we're in the third or fourth draft of the script, or maybe during the tenth take of a shot, or maybe during the 15th hour of the day - where people hit a wall. A what-did-I-get-myself-into wall. And there's a fork that diverges from that point - people start to realize and appreciate the difficulties and nuances associated with communicating science well, or people start to wonder why you're wasting their time. I don't think the latter is an intentionally malicious attitude, or even a mean one. It's very natural. But I do wonder why communication has been extrapolated out of science and been given a less-legit status as an endeavor at places like MIT. People are able to hold communication in lower regard (or maybe lower priority) because it's been designated as a separate thing in the first place. George, the director of our SOL videos, was telling me that he had a conversation with a grad student Bioengineering Communication Fellow who said he was participating in that program because he didn't "see a delineation between science and science communication." Would being more intentional about integrating communication back into science training more seamlessly address this (something beyond "you will have to write 20-pages of material for this technical class as your communication requirement")? I've toyed with the idea of turning the class I taught into one that fulfills the communication requirement at MIT... but there are more confounding variables associated with that issue than I could expound upon here due limitations of space and your attention span. What it seems to boil down to is that everyone is on-board with the idea of communicating science well... to the extent that efforts to do so don't infringe on the "real work" of science itself. Because science and science communication are two separate things.
Lest I sound like I'm giving a cop-out conclusion, I am aware that I'm totally giving a cop-out conclusion when I say these are all unresolved phenomena whose roots are well-beyond my jurisdiction. The nice thing about K12 Videos is that I feel like it's a microcosm of the MIT and science communities, and that it's a small sandbox to tinker with approaches to these issues on a much smaller scale. Jamie did a great job on his episode. Is that scalable to delivering better and higher volume content?