Okay. Hey, Eric i wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed reading your paper that you
published in Frontiers in Communication, and I especially liked the table of questions that you
had in there... questions that scientists may have about making videos and I thought it would be a
a fun exercise for the two of us to answer some of those questions in a video.
Hey, that sounds great, Karen. It's great to see you again after all these years. I knew you'd be somebody
who'd be interested in the paper so and I think it's a great idea you know it'd be fun to
go through those with you, and hopefully we can inspire more scientists to start making videos
you know by talking about these questions.
Okay and so to I think today we're going to tackle the first question which is why should
scientists use video as a communication tool.Now, this question was not in your table, but it is the question that your paper addressed.
That sounds great. You know I'm sure this is something you thought about quite a bit because uh you know when
you wrote your book The Scientist Videographer, um you shared a lot of good information.
Tell me a little bit about kind of what was your journey to start making videos what
what made you think that a scientist like you or me should make videos to share their research?
Well, the way I started out...I got a new camcorder or a camcorder the first one I had ever owned
and I started taking it out in the field with me and just shooting footage without really any
thought about making a video that I would then post online. But about the same time, the agency,
the science agency, that I worked for... they were pushing us to produce information products
that were not just our scientific publications, our journal articles but information products that
the general public could access and understand. And I had the idea that, well, video might be a great
way to address that mandate from my agency, and so I started making videos.
How how long ago was that? Was that like 10 or so.
It was in the early early 2000s when I started shooting footage and
it was kind of a hit or miss thing because when i did it when
we were doing field work and obviously you know when you're out in the field and you've got a
lot of work to do it's hard to stop and shoot footage but i managed to get a little bit of
footage to begin with. But as I as I went on and really started editing videos I really saw how
it was such an effective way to share information about my research with other with colleagues, with
students, with resource managers, with the news media, and with the general public which is what
my agency wanted us to do and and I also saw that it was a really great way to show your unique
qualities and your communication skills because in a text document you can't get across
intangible qualities like enthusiasm, curiosity, humor which you're really good at. You can
do it much better in a video or it comes across much better in a video compared to a text document.
Yeah, you know it's it's interesting when you're talking about your agency wanting outreach
tools to reach a broader audience, that's something that's been very
important for me at the USDA as well and I think for me initially it started off with
uh you know a lot of the stakeholders for my research are farmers and farmers don't, farmers
don't read my papers. I don't blame them, you know. They're not intended or they're
often far too technically dense and um overly jargony for farmers to understand that and so
my real journey does make videos started with um making a video that i thought farmers would
would appreciate and um that was back in 2013. About the time that I think I learned about your
efforts and then we initially talked that was quite a while back um but for you know for me
too it's it's just such a great way to um you know in terms of why i make them it's a great way for
me to take all those I've taken a lot of still images over the years a lot of photographs and
i can incorporate those still images into a video and basically bring a paper to life you know add
some color and some far more interesting visuals than often we would have in a in a paper.
Yeah and another aspect to this is i think it's a really good way to build your reputation in your field .
In the past we depended on our scientific papers, our conference presentations, and personal
interactions to build a reputation but with video you can reach a much larger group of
people. A worldwide group of people in fact. And now with mobile devices that can shoot
a high resolution video it's really easy to shoot video and then there are inexpensive
and easy to use movie editing apps that make it really easy to polish your video into a finished product.
Yeah it's gotten a lot easier than when i actually made my first video.
I was finishing my phd and I remember how my computer crashed about every
10 minutes it seemed like and nowadays you know these these new video editors are pretty
they're they're much more user-friendly. They can really work very efficiently. It's a fun process
and I think it's just a good skill to have you know in addition to reaching a broader
audience whether it's farmers, the general public, other scientists, students like you said.
For me, it's kind of like learning to type several years ago you know i think there would have
been a few decades back some scientists probably gave some you know secretary their manuscripts
to type out uh and nowadays that's kind of you it's unheard of. All scientists know how to type
and my thought i think going forward and i think you mentioned this in your in your book
the scientist videographer that science video is the next wave of science communication and
so i think just learning to make videos and tell a story with that using visuals is going
to have so many other benefits for us. Yeah, you know i always think about the first time i saw
a powerpoint presentation uh going back I forget when powerpoint was introduced and I remember
the reaction of my colleagues sitting around me that. Oh that's a fad. It's never going to
take over. I don't have time to learn how to how to do this and of course look where we are
now. Virtually every conference, people are using Powerpoint and and those colleagues that never
learned how to use it they had to depend on other people to make their uh to do their presentations
for them. and I think the same applies to uh making videos. You just put a little bit of effort
into uh maybe a 30 minute to an hour effort into learning the basics of uh editing.
You'll have uh you'll have the necessary basics to to make a fairly decent video.
Yeah, that's how I started out and the first videos i made and and were posted online
um those have now had thousands of views compared to the papers that came out of that same research
have uh probably only been read by a handful of specialists.
You know it reminds me so in my paper um where the table is, i talked about my first video that went on YouTube.
And that was in 2013 the paper I think as of now 2021 has been cited like 25 times or so but the
video on that but the video on that same topic has over 20 000 views and it was initially shown at
a conference to about 25 people and so you know if it hadn't had gone on Youtube or if I hadn't
didn't make that video, i don't think the impact of the research would be near as great as as
what it is. So i think it's such a helpful way and um that's kind of why we're making these
series of joint videos together right?
Yeah and actually the other thing that was affected by learning how to make videos was i learned how to frame my message
very efficiently and concisely because i had to get it across in a video in just a few minutes.
And you have to be very clear about how to distill down to the the basic elements of your research
and why it's important to the general public. Kind of like an elevator pitch right and weren't we going to kind of give the the viewers...
Yeah, that was our tip that we were going to
offer viewers of this video is the tip based on the idea that you know everyone has
been told well you need an elevator pitch which is a short summary of, something about yourself,
what your area of expertise is, a project that you're currently working on in case you run into
somebody important in an elevator at a conference like the uh program manager of a funding agency
and they turn to you and say well what do you do? And so my idea is to turn that elevator
pitch into a video and i'm talking about a short video like a minute okay and in it you would say
Hi I'm so and so, here's my area of expertise, and I'm working right now on a really neat project
and here's what that project is all about and and this is what i expect to come out of it.
So were you thinking that that's kind of the homework assignment for viewers right to kind
of help them get them get started on this? Yes it's for viewers who have been thinking about
making a video or who have been hesitant to try to make a video this would be a starter video that
would get you get you going. I like the idea. One question I have is when you say an elevator pitch,
they would just do that just with themself talking. They don't need to bring in any
other visuals for this kind of assignment right? They could, they could or they could just if
they don't want to talk on camera they could just shoot some footage of their laboratory or their
a field site if they do field work. Or even use still images and then they can explain what
what they what they're doing or something about their research using a voice over but I
would encourage somebody to try to speak on on camera because it really teaches you
a lot about how to present yourself and and then you see how you are coming across to other people.
I like that that idea i think just you know just to keep it simple if they just start with
just set up their camera stand in front of it and give their one minute spiel
their elevator pitch. I think that'd be a great way to start and there are also uh
templates in application editing applications like iMovie, which are like
movie trailers, and those are really fun to use because it's already set. Everything is set up
with music and text and transitions and all you have to do is drop in your footage or images or
and you change the text to say whatever you want it to say and and those are those are really easy
to make rather than just starting from scratch and trying to design it and put in transitions and
select the the fonts and that sort of thing. The movie trailer is already set up for you with
all of that plus music. oh that sounds great in fact it reminds me that at my on my Youtube
channel I need to create a trailer. I know you have a trailer on yours and I need to kind of have a
a trailer video that says a little bit about me and what my video channel is about and what people might expect there.
Yeah i think a lot of people when they go to a Youtube channel uh the
uh if you have a trailer that automatically plays for each new visitor and it really it really gives
them a good idea of what your channel is about and what you're trying to accomplish with your channel.
Sounds good. So do you think we should wrap up this question maybe?
Yeah i think we should wrap it up
And so i think i think we've pretty much made the point that we think that scientists should
be using uh video as a communication tool and we all we all uh try to keep up to date in
the instruments that we use in our research and this is
the communication tool of the moment, and I think it's really important
for scientists to at least have some basic skills in how to make and edit a video.
Well that sounds good. So I encourage viewers, scientists to go and give this a try.
Read the paper and you know hopefully look and see the different types of
videos on both Karen's channel and my channel Just kind of see the different things that we've done
in our journey to learn how to make videos. do it yourself videos. Right Karen? Do it yourself.
Yes, yeah we're not we're not talking anything with a professional crew or things like that.