Friday, July 13, 2012

science: it's universal (a video)

i'm pleased to release my hack day creation from the dotastronomy 4 conference: a video called science: it's universal

this project was initiated to be a response to the science: it's a girl thing atrocity released by the european commission a few weeks ago.  but i think the final product stands well on its own, and hopefully manages to reach a broad audience!   i hope you enjoy!


Science: It's Universal from amanda bauer on Vimeo.


i have no way of judging whether this video creation will be well-received by teenagers, which was the target audience of the EU video.   so, if youre a teenager - what do you think?   or if you know teenagers, show them this video and let us know what they think!


as for the making of the video, we started after lunch on tuesday, 10th july 2012, as part of the dotastronomy hack day festivities.   i went around with nicole all afternoon, interviewing participants at the conference about their experiences as astronomers, developers, and scientists. 


many thanks to markus poessel and the haus der astronomie for providing all the recording equipment we used during the shoot! 


i hadnt appreciated at the beginning of this project just how long the video footage would take to render and upload.   it was 5 pm by the time we finished all the interviews, and then 10 pm before i was able to start with the actual editing of the video!  i became fairly frustrated, but really enjoyed the story nicole and i were envisioning from the footage we got. 


it was also nice to be working in the creative atmosphere of all the other hackers, with surrounding sounds of computer keys clicking as the night grew late. 


i did all the editing in iMovie, which required a significant learning curve as i hadnt really used it extensively before.  


we worked through phases of giggling giddiness and iMovie exhaustion.   by 2 am, we were determined just to finish the thing so we could present it the next day at the conference, and by 3:30 am, we were ready to go (to sleep). 

working under pressure such pressure made me recognize the need to focus on the basic content.  i had to chose not to worry about less significant details in order to accomplish the overall goal.  i tend to work to deadlines and fill the extra time with attention to potentially trivial detail.   it's a lesson for me in the future to first focus efficiently on content, the main idea, and only then allow some time for editing the intricate specifics.   

anyway, we proudly presented the video we hacked together to the dotastronomy group on wednesday.  i've edited a bit more since then, but the bulk of what you see above is what we put together from scratch in those 14 hours.   whew!


some of you might notice that i briefly appear in the video - just long enough to introduce the uniquely aussie tim tam slam to the group!   ;)

i really hope you enjoy this presentation.   please let me know what you think in the comments!  

all photos in this post were provided by alasdair allan

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Amanda, this was a great contribution

heroineworshipper said...

Holy backlash against mane hair.

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