 Okay, get underway. Look, thanks very much for joining us and welcome to this Science Media Center Webinar. It's called Getting the Most Out of Science Video. I'm Peter Griffin, the Director of the Science Media Center. Here with me we have Asher Finlayson who is actually dialing in from Auckland. Asher is head of video at Fairfax responsible for all Fairfax's videos including the videos you see on the stuff website that's generated by their own videographers as well as video sourced from third parties and this is a bit of background. Asher has a wealth of experience in this space previously at Al Jazeera, ITN and Sky News. Now joining us from Auckland we've got Will Hine who's dialing in. Will is a reporter on One News and TV and Dead Science reporter and has been for several years now. He's covered all sorts of research based stories and responded to a lot of breaking news stories such as the Kaikoura earthquake and last week's falls in Auckland that have had strong science angles. He was previously at Radio New Zealand and has a print background as well at the Southland Times. Dr. William Killison is here with us in Wellington. Heidi is a post-doctoral fellow in urban ecology at Victoria University of Wellington and an advisor at the Wellington City Council. Heidi is a biologist and has been using GPS and miniature cameras to track the movements of domestic cats in Wellington's urban environment. As you've created, what you're going to see today is based on that research. And then we have Baz Katchion, video producer, director and trainer who runs workshops for all sorts of organizations on how to get the best out of your smartphone for shooting and editing video. We've trained Fairfax reporters in the use of their smartphones for video and we're hosting our upcoming Auckland and Wellington Science video workshops. We're holding it at the end of March and there still are a few places open for that heavily oversubscribed in Auckland, but particularly in Wellington. So go to the Science Media Center website and apply if you're interested in being involved in those. We've also got my colleague, Dacia Hervlock here, who's going to be running the briefing. And here from these speakers, play some videos and at the end have a Q&A session so save all questions to the end. If you do have a burning question, write it into the Q&A box you see on the right-hand side of your screen, a little Q&A box as we go along. If anything occurs to you, you want to ask a question, put it in there and we'll try and get through as many as we can at the end. But first, I want to give a bit of context as to why we're here and why we're doing this. We put this webinar together because we're hearing all the time from media outlets that we work with that video is increasingly a crucial aspect of their coverage. They want more and better quality video on all sorts of subjects, but science is a strong category for online media outlets particularly. Even I think by a couple of things, the first is audience behavior. We're increasingly comfortable consuming visual content, often more so than text material, so its appetites are changing. But so too is the online advertising environment. Pre-release ads on videos are an important and growing source of revenue from media companies. So, palling video content is attractive to advertisers. All of this constitutes a big opportunity for those involved in communicating science and research. In fact, it's a necessity that we all become more adept at communicating at the medium of video. Making some mind-blowing facts just take YouTube alone. As of January 2017, 300 hours of video were being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Five billion videos were watched on YouTube every single day, as of January 2017, and an average month, 8 out of 10, 18 to 49-year-olds watch YouTube. Let's talk about the growth of video here in New Zealand. New Zealand last year did some surveys around this, and you'll see on the screen there the results of that. The TV still reigned supreme as a way to reach people on a typical day. But that online video is incredibly strong in the 5th to 39th age group. And if you look at what is growing, it's all about video. It shows across all content types, online video is the fastest growing in terms of weekly reach. Videos, including linear TV, are offline. So, video is increasingly important. What about science and videos? In 2014, Nielsen surveyed New Zealanders about their attitudes towards science and technology. They found that Kiwis trust scientists are very interested in science. They support science and think it's important to their daily lives, but they find it hard to relate to science in their daily lives and are often confused by conflicting information about science. So, what the results showed, most Kiwis get their information about science via the media. TV newspapers, but again, as you can see there in those graphs, online video is a fast growing category, particularly in the younger demographics. Now, BT's World Internet Project backs this up and it's evidence, it's surveying, it does as well. It's evidence of this trend towards video. So, as a researcher, someone trying to communicate research out of a communications office and an institution, there are really compelling reasons to tap into this fast growing medium. Research at TBRF is largely about getting peer-reviewed papers. We know this. It's all about your publication record. But the reality is that much of the world's research is authored by a tiny fraction of the world's researchers. The New Zealand video is therefore a primary channel for exposure and impact beyond our confines of peer-review. This also shows that if you are publishing journal papers, the impact of those papers is greater if you are being quoted in the mainstream media via social media channels. Sites for papers are higher among researchers who get exposure via those channels. Our view is because of all of that conflicting information that confusing people with their new surveys is picking up, we need experts more than ever communicating clearly and effectively. And we see every day the spin-offs doing so has for researchers and their organizations. So that's all of the New Zealand data, and the case we think there is for putting a specific focus on using video to communicate your research. But how does that work in the real world? How do researchers and media outlets work more effectively together to get the most out of video? As you guys have some insights to give here, I'm going to hand it over now to Asher to give his view from the facts perspective. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, everyone, for having me along to today's discussion. It really is great to have the opportunity to talk to you. It's interesting listening to Peter's outline at the top there, just how the state of the industry is now. And he's right that there is a major focus on video at the moment, more so than ever. But as we grow our video production, there's still plenty of room for massive growth. Because even somewhere like Fairfax, we only have very limited resource to be able to reduce the video that we can in-house. So it's great having external partnerships and having people coming in from third parties to fill that gap that we just cannot fill ourselves. But you have seen that we don't carry a lot of video in the stuff science section, and that's something we'd love to change. So any help that you can give us is very much appreciated. I appreciate the choir, but science really is a great subject. It's got plenty of potential to engage with a wider audience. But a key reason our audience is missing out is because of its accessibility, and Peter touched on that at the very top as well. We're used to what's available, but generally when we run a science story, it's not presented in a way that's particularly engaging to the audience. But we can change that, and we're working really hard to do so. Because I'm a regular on-style and I'm a bit cheeky, I'm not with my very own formula that might help you. Please feel free to place it under peer review, but do know that I only just passed science. Thought A equals P plus I to the power of two. Expanding that out, if A is accessibility, P is presentation and on is information. Then presenting your information correctly makes it as accessible as it possibly can be to a wider audience. And get that right, and your engagement go through the roof. Human visual beings, it doesn't matter how good the story is, the style of text with a generic image at the top, it just doesn't hold anyone's interest for very long. And I meant to expect that up. When we have video and images and interactive spread throughout the text, we see a dramatic increase in time spent engaging with those stories. You can get further through the article as well. Two images on screen there. You'll see one on the right is a thousand word block of text with a single stock image. The left is a thousand word block again, but it's got two videos and these two images sped it through as well. I couldn't actually screencap the whole story. It ends up getting that long. One on the left has a much higher engagement score. It's giving people options and how they do it. It's giving people options and how they choose to consume their story or just forcing it one way. So some people will read the story. Some people will read just the text. Some will skip through. Some will just watch the videos. Some people will just have a look at the whole lot. It's all about giving them options. So as some of you have access to some of the most interesting stories, imagery and generally you have a monopoly on new discoveries. So how can we help you increase your audience's interest? So let's start with what works. Out of the ordinary stuff, things that the late person just wouldn't ever come up with on their own. And that's the key. How do we make the inaccessible accessible to the late person? To get a story up high on the home page, which is our single biggest promotional space and to make it an AD shareable so that readers want to share it through their own social accounts. That's spread it. How do you work, especially with our readers, anything underwater? The ocean is such a different world and anything that helps us explore down there without having to get wet ourselves makes the audience happy. It's just the same as underwater. Only it's even harder to get to. Just think telescopes are our friend. Very similar to telescopes. Anything through a microscope is good. In fact, I would just assume that anything with a scope is good. I could live in such a beautiful place like New Zealand, but we've seen, and especially over the past few years, it's a pretty volatile place. Kiwis are intrigued about how that affects them with flooding, with earthquakes, all that kind of natural stuff. And I hate to get caught up in the discussion of the internet was made purely for cat videos, but there's something in that. There is a reason that the internet and cute cats do go so well together. It certainly shouldn't be limited to cats, but just keep in mind that anything to do with animals and the quirkier, the better. Especially if there's some kind of message, which there always would be, that you would be trying to get through. Did you know and how we do it? Things behind the scenes give a great look at what the science world is up to. And really the answer is no, we didn't know that. That's cool, let me share it, with you all the questions that you want. You guys work with every day, so undoubtedly you're not as amazed as we the general public are. So it could just be that all is needed is a simple shift in perspective to try and think about different ways that you might be able to get that information that you're studying across the general public. Of course, good stories that fall outside of those categories. I would certainly like to hear about that. If you're in a position to provide us your elements yourself, then let's try following these simple tips. Some of the do's and don'ts of creating a video with a stuff audience in mind. Keep them relatively short, 60 seconds is around the average length of a clip on stuff. When you'll find them shorter, it's not very often that a long video clip will do very well. Next generally comes down to the fact that the audience doesn't have time to do that thing. In terms, this is another point that I'm stressing today and Peter made the observation at the very start as well. It's all about making the inaccessible accessible to everyone. Interesting visuals, it doesn't matter if it's video or still imagery. We prefer moving imagery. It's just easier to watch, but if there's any video specific visuals, there's no reason that it's still into video, and we can run through some of the ways of doing that shortly. For instance, if we are creating a video in-house out of vision that you have sent to us, giving great and precise descriptions of what it is that we're looking at, how is it relevant and why should we care, that will go a long way to helping us together a really watchable clip. Audio, this is the main difference we find in between online and broadcast. With the line, a lot of people are now looking at stuff on a mobile device and quite often are looking at it without sound. It's the same as talking on your Facebook feed. I know that's about to change very soon where they're going to turn on video as well. A lot of people are leaving their sound off, so we need to make sure that the videos are working. They're telling the same kind of story. The narrative is being driven without the need for room. They're saying that we don't want audio. It's definitely a nice to have for those people that do want to watch with sound on, but it's imperative. Maybe we get around that by using text. There's a lot of videos coming through these days on your Facebook feed and stuff coming through on stuff as well. The narrative is very much driven by text on screen and that works with the video whether there's audio or not. An example here, I'll just try and dive into if you've actually uploaded the videos directly to it. Do I need to actually put it on myself? Yes, you could. That'd be great. The space one, please, would be good. This is the space video that we're about to show you that this goes back to that same example I brought up previously of how you had a thousand-word block of text. You can play that if you like now with the sound down would be good. Okay. There we go. This one goes back to that space example I was giving earlier in that this was the second video down on my story. It was about space junk. You'll see here that we can play this whole video. It's two minutes long so we might not end up getting the whole way through but you can watch that video yourself and get everything you possibly need out of it because it's got the text on screen. It's got interesting imagery. It's two minutes long which I would class as being really too long but if you actually sit there and watch the clip you'll find that it's really two videos in one as well. The first part explains how there's all the space junk up in the atmosphere. The second part goes through the different types of space junk and it's really quite interesting stuff. My point here really is that the whole thing is really nice imagery. It's stuff that we don't naturally get to ourselves as a general audience and the whole thing is explained through that text. Here we go. The second part now and it sort of shows you all of the different parts of different types of space junk and I found this one really quite interesting myself. I think that this one here also did extremely well on-site. That may happen to the splash which when you're looking at stuff there's a big picture on the top left. Many people think that's our lead story but just think of that as more like the magazine cover. This is the one just next to it in the center but if you can get a story into the splash you're absolutely winning because that's always the biggest the most read story at any one point. We're not much time talking about the technical side of things because we'll hear from Baz later on in the seminar looking with the SMC to create workshops specifically around creating these kinds of videos. As Peter mentioned at the start we have done a lot of work with Baz over the past couple of years. I used to train around 400 of our reporters up and down the country and Baz and I constantly in contact about what's working for us and how he can put that into his training into his training workshops. He can really help with the technical tips and tricks and I would definitely recommend attending one of his seminars later on in the year if you get the chance to. We'll stop that video now. We'll jump on to another good example of what's worked well for us on staff and I'm sure that you will all remember this one was from I called it a Seabed Race Peter, have you got that one there? Is he down or not? Again, this one can be played without sound and talk over the top of it if that's cool. So all of this we put our own, we've got a few drones around the country it's a bit of a pet product and it's going really well but trying to get a drone to something like this especially in the early stages it still doesn't quite work so I'm sorry if whoever filmed this is on this call I can't remember exactly who gave it to us but we were very appreciative of it it did extremely well, it gave an amazing of what was actually going on in these remote parts of the tree after such a devastating earthquake but again it really did make help that story even accessible to the audience and I know that the majority of the other main news networks picked it up as well and I'd imagine that it would have done just as well for them as it did for us that's the kind of thing that we find really helpful that was just imagery as well there's no there were no words over it there was a bit of music or even just natural sound and it worked really well this here is another one this one is shot from one of our drones one of our visual journalists went down there who we've recently trained up to get a wings badge he went flying this is over the road just north I think of Sumner and it's just beautiful so this is something that we got ourselves and if you've got a story that you're working on that you think could really be this aerial footage could lend a real hand to feel free to get in contact with us because we love this aerial footage and so does our audience so any chance we can get we will put it up in mind as well to get a completely different perspective and so far as I know we're still leading news media outlets I think actually Will might be able to correct me if I'm wrong but I think TVNZ might have just got one but they're really growing in popularity the vision that you get out of them is just insane our audience loves it but where there are going to be more and more of these kinds of things you can get in on the ground floor and provide us with that kind of imagery it would definitely use it one other example I wanted to show you was from the Cleveland floods last week we've got that video as well we've got two of our pilots last week who just wanted to get stuck and start creating some really nice imagery out of Cleveland so I think we had it out there two or three days in a row this was directly after it had stopped raining luckily there was a bit of a break in the wind so we could put it up and then it closed in again and then the next day there was even more actually I think it might have been a few days later there was even more so we were able to get some pretty amazing footage again there was no voiceover on it there was just a bit of music I think it's all about the imagery kind of footage really complements the article beautifully gives a different perspective that most of our most of our competitors can't words can describe the amount of water that was there but as you can see there it's the aerial footage that really conveys the scale this clip here is currently the most viewed clip on stuff so far this month closely followed by similar footage of other parts of the flooding we also had another clip that's even gone up again today because of the sinkhole that's happened out in West Auckland so we're using them up and down the country and the other thing I'll say about drones as well not to harp on about them as much as that we're also venturing into, I know it's not video specific but we're venturing into 3D mapping which I know is something that is really taking science forward by storm as well so when I say you're trying to increase that engagement from our audience it's not just stills it's not just video it's anything that is interactive so if we can create a 3D map of an area that you're studying and we can put annotations on it and things like that we can embed that within the story and really keep that keep the interactivity up and like I say that will increase the engagement and the last thing I wanted to discuss with you I think where are we I want this one aren't I the last thing I want to discuss was working directly with our stuff journals we don't have a designated science editor we've got a lot of news directors up and down the country they keep an eye on the SMC press releases and our reporters have plenty of good contacts throughout the science world I'm sure you everyone on this call has a report friend especially within Fairfax because it's such a wide-ranging company they're the experts at knowing what works well for our audience so the good stories do get picked up following on with some of these tips that I've given you briefly here today and that Baz will teach you later on and the others here on this presentation will give you it will certainly go a long way to helping a story going from a run-of-the-mill story to a must-have and that's what you really need to be aiming we've also got a very talented projects team and one of the visualties is turning data into quality interactives and animations well like I said before it's not video specific but statistics can be a very visual element in our storytelling journalism has become a really big part of what we do and I'm sure that appreciates the chance to work with you on helping make those statistics work visually one of the spring's to mind was from one of the press release just yesterday or the day before about there was a waste water study revealing that meth is the most commonly used drug in Auckland but I thought that was an absolutely genius study and the fact that you were able to to work out what the most used drug in Auckland was just by studying the waste water I suppose it makes sense when you think about it but I would never have thought to do that and I think that all of that data that would have really helped turn that story as you had to interact with it in some way that would have really helped turn that story from that blog text of a few hundred words that it was it was just a general file picture at the top. I can guarantee you that if there was an interactive click or a video up there it would have generated a much more interesting and much higher audience and that's our point of doing what we do. So that's really helpful I hope there's a few tips in there I'm always available as well I'm sure that my details will be sent out to everyone from Peter and Co. So if you do have an interesting story that you want to share, feel free to get in touch with me directly. Thank you. We're going to hand over now to Will if you do have questions that actually his presentation like I put them in the Q&A box now we're going to answer as many as we can at the end of the webinar so over to you Will. Thanks for this everyone. It's great to talk about this sort of thing I get a lot of inquiries from scientists in the searches about what sort of video works for television, what can be sourced in the field and what should be recorded by researchers in a way that can help them get their story onto Talia onto the web or what have you. I'm going to keep it very basic I just want to talk mainly about how you can assemble footage that can be incorporated into a news board that has profiling at your work and I'll come to the story that I want to show you in a minute but the thing I want you to bear in mind essentially is that we want things done simply. Raw footage which isn't too overtreated is fantastic simple basic shots that help capture the story that we can add to later on with our own cameraman and what have you. As Asha said there we have phones as well and we can bring those and our cameras out to the field and do stuff with you but there's a lot of material that only you will be able to shoot. I often talk to scientists and they say to me you should have been here when or I wish I had a camera back then or they try to describe something which happened and they tell me they've deleted the photos they took on their iPhone and I've feared a great event which isn't much use. I just want to give you a few tips how you can give the footage needed preferably footage but it still works fantastically well as well so without any further ado if you think you can put on this demo video the one thing I'd want to put a look for here is just to sort of decorate the shots that searcher has taken themselves and the shots that we brought to bring along our camera. Okay well that now we're going to go through the footage we're going to go through the footage we wanted to pull this clip out which is a bit old now I think it's three years old. The footage obtained by the researcher was very simple there was nothing fantastic about it but it did it well perfectly from our point of view it caught all of the action and importantly this story did not have been done without that footage we wanted the means and resources to take away an ephemeral style crew into the forest to wait for the making habits of the giraffe weevil to become a bit over a matter of hours or days or probably weeks so have you been able to put a video and this is one that would have had to probably remain the story for radio or text print so on this incident it was critical that the researcher used the camera to get the shots and done so it did it very well also point out there that the simple story was sort of at the simple end of the spectrum which involved just the footage brought by the researcher coupled with something we took in the laboratory there plus a single interview so perhaps that brought it a bit easier in the spectrum it wasn't a multi-tensure it wasn't in multiple locations but it all would be viable with Chrissy presenting that sort of footage I'll just go back to this now if we can Peter is there in that picture and I sort of had a few tips I guess as to how you can obtain similar results the first thing I would say is about the quality of your equipment we're often given footage from the likes of Miwa and Juniors and different pictures and there's always no spectacular drone footage the GoPro is underwater shops and all of it is spectacular but if you don't have that as I just showed you in that story just previously you can do things on a fairly simple camera I'm unsure what Chrissy might have been using there to get the feel of making you think it was a fairly decent camera but essentially your iPhone or your smartphone these days can be your camera it is the camera that we frequently use in the field for our own news broadcasts from a breaking news scene or what have you so the iPhone gets really good footage assuming something as well lit these days and the camera is steady the audio is likely to be quite ropey still but you'll still get a very very good picture that can be put to air so if we can just go back a slide there I think I've jumped the slide ahead there can you go back one Peter that would be great to what we want this is the number one thing if you're supplying footage to us of your field work we want steady shots it doesn't necessarily mean a tripod but it means holding your camera steady taking on one element for a good 5 seconds if you took this example perhaps of a picture and a paddock taking samples crouching down we would want the person videoing them to be pleased to expect holding the camera steady and locking off essentially on that shot we also want in landscape this is a critical thing we often get footage into us and it's been someone holding your iPhone in a vertical format and that just doesn't work that well for broadcasts we do see it occasionally when it's sort of a breaking you've seen in someone's film the tornado or film with someone shooting someone we'll sort of put it in the middle of the screen and we'll blur the sides but it never looks ideal so I'd always always always say hold your iPhone with your smartphone in the landscape orientation and then angles angles is important sometimes we get someone who supplies us 3 or 4 minutes of footage and it's all from one single angle at one distance from their subject and that is very very difficult to get it because it doesn't give us much velocity in changing from one shot to another and making it a sequence for the viewer to look at so if I gave you the example there of the person crouching in the field what I'd suggest if you were the person filming would be start with that shot with the person filling the frame and get them doing the science then go back 10 metres get a big wide shot get a shot that provides some context go back another 10 metres get a really long shot super wide they go right back up to the person doing the science walk right up to them get a shot of their hands fill the frame what you're seeing on your little screen then maybe film a shot of the little pulse they might be filling then get a really nice and low and get a shot of the grass sort of waving all of these shots just a single angle the camera held steady 5 to 10 seconds then maybe spin around get one of the research space looking at what they're doing all of the different shots really assist us when it comes to editing as I say if you give us one single long shot it doesn't matter how exciting it is you can't really run that for more than 8, 10, 15 seconds without it getting really boring what I'd say next let me see if we can flip to the next slide Peter that would be great it is just as you don't like I've already talked about the vertically held smartphone that's a no-no similarly a wandering focus and what I mean by that is someone holding the camera and filming this fantastic field work but a little bit of their focus to wander and the camera to go sideways and then up a little bit and then down a little bit and then I'll go to the right and I'll do a bit of that and then I'll swing over this way and then I'll give 4 seconds of this all of that becomes really difficult to edit that's quite interesting to the person editing it, let alone the dealer so it's sort of best to be feeling in your mind about the shots you want and to choose one selectively and then choose another and that can mean turning off your smartphone for a few seconds or pushing stop and working out what you're going to do and then doing another shot and then pushing stop again and rolling for 3 minutes and trying to do everything at once all from a fixed position and ending up with a jumbled a lot of shots something I'd say is selfies people sometimes like to hold a camera on a selfie angle and give sort of a video tour of their research station or wherever they might be their laboratory with them filling half the frame and sort of giving it a commentary and a guided tour there's nothing wrong with that for particular types of video it works quite well on YouTube and blogs and other things but for us we really just want the footage that can include people in it of course doing the science but we don't want that selfie type angle with someone speaking to their audience that becomes very difficult to edit and looks quite odd on a television broadcast especially if you have the journalist speaking over those shots you have a person on screen sort of opening their mouth and talking which is what we call fishing in the industry people sort of mouth open no words being able to repeat simply because we're doing the talking over them the next thing I'd say is music and graphics this is something we get all the time from people even experienced people in the industry comms people, video teams we get a musical soundtrack for their science and or sort of graphics and subtitles and strange transitions between the shots dissolved and the like and we really don't want any of that we really want the simple or basic product we want the natural sound whether that's a running stream in the background or an explosion going off or even if it's nothing remarkable even if it's just a bit of wind noise we want that audio we don't want music and there's nothing wrong with music and graphics for a YouTube video or for a corporate video or for a blog they might really hit the spot and be just what you need for us though we prefer the unedited raw vision that gives us the most license to work with it the most sort of leeway also say talking to camera it's done all the sort of things I've already talked about and you've got some fantastic shots and by all means you can have a chat to the camera maybe explain what you're doing but if there's too much of that and it's it becomes difficult to work with particularly as I say because the audio on a smartphone can be extremely average you do need to be quite close to them sometimes to get sort of audible speech coming through I'd say don't bother if you are playing on supplying this footage to us or to another media outlet where you expect to then do an interview with you on camera similar to what you saw in the story about Sirath Weevils I'd say don't bother with the talking for us we'll bring our camera we'll do the interview we'll ask you all the questions that we're interested in it's more the footage that you're taking that we're looking for and especially I guess just to emphasise the footage that we want is the stuff that can't be recreated it's the stuff that you did maybe a year ago maybe you're not really talking about your science yet maybe you want to wait until the paper comes out or good but take the footage when you're in the field make sure you've got that footage first to refer to later because all too often once your paper's out there you've got to recreate the science you've put away the equipment you've done the work, you've done the tests you can't just pull it out again and for that matter we don't really want to see you recreating it we'd rather see you doing it real it adds a layer of authenticity and that's really what we want to see I guess I'll just finish up by saying basically just do it when you're out now if you've got a bit of camera you've got a point of view with optical zoom, great if you don't have those then as I say get out the smartphone just take the shots if the footage comes out poor and it doesn't work for a broadcaster no harm done but it's best to have it there that at least gives the journalist and their media the option of using it should they wish that's pretty good for me that's very much well great advice there keep the questions coming thanks to those of you who've submitted some but keep them coming and we'll answer as many as we can so that really is the view from journalists and from media outlets what they're looking for we're going to hear from a researcher who's given us an answer herself it's gone a couple of years ago and created a very effective video we're going to roll that video first and then Heidi's going to talk to us everyone for tuning in and giving me the opportunity to give you my perspective about creating that particular cat video so this is how to guide for science video production but just as mentioned my perspective we're going to hear a few differences from what we've heard from some of the previous panelists because they're a lot quicker than I originally anticipated I had no idea how long it would take to produce a video of this sort and the reason that it came together with the support of the media center was that I wanted to enter a science video contest called 180 seconds of science so that really dictates the length of the video needing to be three minutes long we did that over about a week not for an hour here an hour there, some time for filming and maybe a bit of editing in the evening but as mentioned I did think a lot longer than it did but it was a really fun process and the process what I started out with first was obviously thinking what sort of content that I wanted to include in the video but I stopped with an outline and it was very very similar to if you were straight to write a scientific publication or to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for a conference such as an event introduction and what the project is why it's important and why your audience should care about that particular issue so trying to kind of lay all those particular things out I actually tried to flesh out that outline and sort of write down those key points that I wanted to make and then I recorded those to help a communications team at Victoria University so at that point I had several different clips of things that I wanted to include in the video and at that point we really needed to edit and I'll just give you an example of how I set that up again this was just what worked for me so you may have a different system that would work I tried to put together the clips and sort of move them around in the order and think about what sort of visual I wanted to accompany that audio unfortunately I got to this point as I had a three minute video to create but I had recorded about 18 minutes of audio and really was very captured because I didn't know what I was obviously going to have to cut out quite a bit of audio and still have it make sense so this was one of the challenging parts for me was to shift all those boxes around in the table put things down to the second and figure out the best way would work and also in that process this entire video was made with the iMovie program and I was absolutely fascinated by that I had never used it before but found it quite easy to work with and I did have someone who was able to give me some advice as well but it was just phenomenal what was no experience was able to do and zoom in on photos and overlay all sorts of meets so very impressed with the iMovie application and definitely recommend that and some recommendations we'll move on to the next slide I worked very closely with Steve Victoria University Communications and Marketing staff and if you have something like that within your organization that you're able to tap into their expertise I would highly recommend that you take advantage of that and they gave me a wealth of information that I wouldn't have been able to do it without them I don't think I was at the time in the use of still photos but I've got one of my favorite ones there from our CATCAM project I was a bit excited on videos that I forgot that I also had all these wonderful photos but as you can remember from that video there are quite a few still photos in that and with the iMovie program we were able to zoom across the photos so we did that quite a bit with screenshots of the CAT maps so we were zooming out on the really big maps and I found that did make a really big difference to make the video more enjoyable and easier to understand so just on video definitely keep those still photos in mind and as you heard from Will collect them as you go video or still footage because it is hard to recreate them after the fact also very good the still photos for your PowerPoint presentations at conferences if you're doing a smartphone you need to know when it will come in handy just film everything and that way you've got a nice reaction of stuff that you can do too at the end on your video is absolutely crucial as I mentioned I had to cut out 15 minutes of audio and still have something make sense so I've done that past a number of people especially most important to run it past people who are not familiar with your project to see if they are able to get a comprehensive understanding of what you are trying to convey and you also have some photos that you may as part of a funding agreement you may need to have this approved by them so definitely keep that in mind as well and sure that you listen to that feedback because that last finger on the slide of using proper or consistent equipment you get some feedback from Peter Griffin of the Science Media Center that is about a minute 17 into that video when we see some fluffy cats going down the stairs it's very obvious that I used a different microphone because I went back the second day and recorded that particular piece of audio and then splice that in afterwards but it's very obvious that it is different it's not consistent with the audio that we had before and as mentioned I was trying to meet a deadline to enter the science video contest I said oh yeah great thanks Peter I'll keep that in mind and I'll get on to that and I'll fix that when I get around to it but here we are at Science Media Center and I still haven't gotten around to it and we're all watching it again and I do sort of cringe every time I see that so just save yourself the trouble and listen to that feedback and just get that consistent overall a really enjoyable experience and very good to everyone who made it possible sorry for hassling you about the audio but we'll get there in the end we'll get some new audio overdubbed on that I'm sure okay so we'll move on now finally to Baz are you with us online? Well let's find because Baz quite appropriately has submitted a video a sale that he's taken that's going to play and he'll be here for the Q&A at the end so let's roll Baz's video now so that Baz is impressively done actually we've got Baz online to answer some questions in the Q&A we'll move to Q&A now as I said if you do have any questions any of our speakers please enter them in the Q&A box on the right hand side of your screen right now so we'll kick off with the Q&A this is probably one that a lot of scientists really grapple with what's involved in the applied science such as cellular or molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry or in the case of Alexander who's submitted this question, plant micro interactions, how does a approach work if you're obviously not expert in video or animation so making the real abstract and complex simple but maybe you can start off with that with Asher or Will what's the real advice you have when it's something that might be a model for instance or something that isn't confused with going out into the field and recording something, what's the best way to try and get that across? I'll answer that one for a start I think it goes back to mine and Will made the point as well that we can use stills and into video from an online perspective so long as we've got those descriptions of what we're actually looking at how it's relevant, why we should care all that kind of thing we can pull together and actually make a decent little video clip about it we'll be the same for broadcast and you just put your voice over under it in the things that are difficult to see we can also do animations you know with the things like planets we can do animations as to any trial and scientist might have observed we did one a little while ago showing how ground trading radar works our animation and graphics team isn't massive but if we talk to the scientist ahead of time we can work out how to do sort of an animation we can recreate ones we find on YouTube in our own style as well and if it's a big topical science news event that we're doing a story on then it's a great chance that the BBC or USABC might have done it as well but if it's a story of the day we might be able to find an animation they've lost their summons on transfers or something I think they're gone sorry John Will so essentially we have an idea for something which needs an animation which can't be easily filmed or photographed and then talk to us and see what our animation team might be able to cook up or what might be out there on YouTube that we can recreate but animation and graphic skills are probably more limited to the annual professional work tops that's a pretty big occasion that's probably slightly grounded okay so that we've got a question here about usage of video that might be generated by a scientific institute that we'll reach to does video that for instance runs on the stuff website, does it become the property of what's the deal around copyrighted content and ongoing use of it if you give us permission to use it then we'll do our best to run it as high up the site and as prominently as we possibly can but we it gets tagged when it goes into our system as not being a fair faxed owned piece of vision or still we absolutely still hold the rights to all of that and we would never sell it on to make any money out of it that way I agree with that as well we might use footage again for a broadcast down the track whether it might be a year or two years later as sort of stock footage but again we wouldn't sort of claim any ownership last to it and if it was stipulated then we would adhere to that we'll always put a credit on it as well it's supplied the whole video your credit would go down the bottom underneath it if it forms a part of a wider video we can always put an on-screen credit to that as well okay similarly just related question here about use after the fact maybe several months or years down the track can researchers or the institutions put conditions of use around something if they're concerned that it might be used out of context just as a bit of B-roll background footage notes for instance you can annotate what's in your archive that say they need to be used under these sorts of conditions absolutely simple answer to that one whatever permission you give us we'll stick to that if you don't want to use it again for anything else we just we'll remove from the archive or mark just do not use as well I'd agree with that as well we've got video researchers who catalogue all about video and if there's any conditions attached to any of it then they do note that in the archive technical question here and we've talked a bit during Heidi's video about audio audio quality is really important question about iPhones in particular is the iPhone microphone going to be good for most occasions or should you invest in an external mic for the iPhone so I don't know about it I'm probably going to say something all good there's two kinds of mics that we'll go over in these workshops at the end of the month this microphone by far is a little RODE lapel mic that's easy to use or smart devices they'll also work on there's also a little plug and direction one again made by RODE they're probably the leaders in the market at the moment so not as good but then again you don't have leads and cables and if you just grab something on the run or if you're out in the field it's fluffy on a wind socket so that makes them pretty cool and temperate because wind is your enemy but you need to know how to get the best audio out of just your phone too so that's a matter of getting out of the wind, getting the light composition right but making sure that the silent colour's not around and making sure you haven't got a wet road slicking in the background or a bluster or a pneumatic drill going in the background so there's a whole bunch of stuff you'll learn about audio in two ways really at these workshops one is how to get the best out of what you've got just with the phone in your pocket it's a really good audio with authority and gravitation through using a lapel mic and on your directional field mic with a little fluffy on so yep you'll susulate stuff out in the workshop OK maybe just another technical question maybe Baz you talked about in your video about the iPhone a great platform iMovie ID was using iMovie as well on the Android platform there's going to be people coming to these workshops with Android smartphones which you sort of go to a couple of apps on that platform Sure I'll just pop them in the text Q&A box can they master pro and fill more go which you can both get from Google Google apps are probably two of the best they're not not as good I kind of you know the wish you run a real shoot edit and load all on your device and some people for example with Will and Ash often they just want really really good well shot raw footage that they can then process so there'll be a bit of both some of those Android phones shoot amazing videos better than the Apple in some instances it's just that workflow can you master pro and fill more go which is just up in the text box have a look at those if you've got an Android they'll work on some Android phones not on others it's an ongoing cake fight to find a really robust internet for the and often people that shoot on Android phones just go into a computer and do it old school which is put up on a main PC using whatever WPIN here or one movie whatever Thanks Beth question here for Heidi so obviously Heidi you created that for the 180 seconds of science competition submitted for that but did any media outlets pick it up and use that footage as well absolutely there's always been a large media appetite for cat research so I've been very fortunate in that regard but yes it did lead to some additional context however very not to be able to have a video turn out the way that I wanted to because after in new views it always is a little unpredictable at times so it was quite fun to have a video which I was able to edit and just be in control of the final product. So question just there on the editing process so you worked with the comms team you talked about iMovie were you sitting over the shoulder of an editor who was working in iMovie or were you hands on doing the editing yourself? The editing was done by myself and a wonderful gal from the communications and marketing team at Victoria University and I had zero experience with iMovie and she had some experience so we just basically sat in the office with the cat walking over the keyboard and we were really happy with how we did what she liked. Thanks Heidi. Okay keep your questions coming we'll get through as many as we can as long as you can stay here. Okay interesting question what's the best way to tip off a reporter like Asher Orwell that we've made this kind of video media release and that they make a bigger story out of Facebook, direct email what's the best way to direct it off to the spread content they're creating? I'd say next we've got a really good email address there news tips at Fairfax or is it news tips and stuff I can get that to you it's on the website as well and pretty much every story that goes directly to the newsroom and that's being monitored by by our reporters all day every day so they definitely get picked up that way or if you're on Facebook you can go straight to there. I have some of my details into the online but if anyone can contact me feel free we'll find an email there even if it's just to talk about what sort of footage you could get if you're about to head out or going to something in the laboratory if you want to talk about your options just feel free to get in touch no problems. Sort of kind of a little bit of this but another question for scientists that are not particularly visual with an expert explaining to camera how fast be it all interesting clearly it won't make TV but maybe for social media or those online platforms where people can post directly to like YouTube and Vimeo. We'll make the point before that you can always shoot it and if it gets used then grass someone might pick it up but if it doesn't no harm done. Again it might come down to what the topic of the research is going to have a graph or is there some other way of telling the story we have a lot of archive footage that we can draw on that might be exactly what you've been looking maybe it isn't I'm not sure maybe just sound us out there's lots of different ways to tell stories and you know TV, print, video what have you. A question there about the science media savvy science video workshops we're doing so we've got a lot of talk and coming up one in Wellington as well they're both pretty heavily surprised at the moment but a question about South Island we'd love to bring them to South Island so we've done them before in Christchurch and Dunedin so come and talk to us if you'd be willing to host a workshop and we can get Baz there and hopefully have some dinner so definitely get in touch with us about that. Similarly a question around science video competitions so obviously there was the great 90 seconds of science competition so as far as I know there's a good answer that will be run again last year so that's actually right out of Australia but they have an across the ditch category which had a lot of entries last year so hopefully that will be continued and there are other competitions going on within universities like the MESA which is the student organization for the McDiamond Institute they run their own one and most of the universities do as well so that is actually a really good impetus to do a science video to start working on one. With all these workshops in Wellington Baz is actually going to carry on beyond those workshops and mentoring people with the aim that everyone who goes through these workshops actually has a crack at producing good content in mind this could be a very good way to prepare for it. So I'm aware there's a handful of workshops Convita used to run competition competition was the first, second and third prizes for exactly these kind of things no longer than three minute videos with significant you know several thousand dollars you know five thousand ten dollars first prize added that with the faculty university book so I'm just nice to judge those I'll just check with Convita to see if there's anything to handle them so I'll round up all of these workshops here. Okay, thank you guys. If you're here about measuring impact obviously researchers really like to be able to show how many eyeballs are being on their work is it possible if a researcher or an institution collaborates with the media outlets to actually get some metrics on how many people viewed that video so they can report back on the overall impact that it's had. Within stuff there's a general policy that we don't we don't release that kind of sensitive data you know to the masses but I'm sure if we're actually working with somebody directly on a story you know we'd be able to work something out I'm sure but I mean even if it's I know you don't like general weeping statements but we can definitely tell you whether or not it performed at a high middle low level comparative to other stuff on the site about working on an individual basis really. A question here interesting actually just wondering about mentioning or explaining lab animal work and science communication what are the perspectives from a media point of view I think sort of getting an interesting issue around ethics of animal testing and that type of thing and some of the sensitivities around that is that something that either if you want to make sure we'll have encountered. I've had similar issues arriving arising with sort of genetic sort of work and I don't think any news story is going to go very far if it becomes a debate for showing a particular shot or not it's difficult to say there's probably not any story about animal lab work to explain the importance of the work and what needs to be done to achieve some sort of outcome I guess depends on what type of work was it would just be good to speak to the research maybe on a more about what animals we're talking about what sort of work it is I guess I can't be clear so I knew more about what the example was. A question here for Heidi which is about the process of gathering all of that footage and the graphics, the GPS overlay and all that sort of stuff. Any tips on managing that workflow maybe over a long period of time while you're gathering all of that material how do you store it, how do you categorize it, make sure you can make sense of all of that stuff when it comes to time to actually edit together a video? Thank you for the question. As mentioned I just put it in a Dropbox file and when I got around to it I tried to organize it thinking this might be good for this particular usage or things like that a lot of the footage that we saw from the CAT perspective was actually from a different project from the GPS one it was from one with the video cameras on their collars which I had done previous to it but it was able to be sort of stored in seamlessly to give us a cat's eye view of things and more an idea about where they were wandering and what they were encountering through their eyes. So again I mentioned even though it was from a different yet similar project we were able to use that to accompany audio in that particular science video. Thanks. Okay, here's another question, quite a fundamental question really, how can we as scientists recognize something that could make a good story? Something that we should film. So how do you make your perspective as well as someone who's been through this process? What are you looking for? How do you know to be keeping an eye out for good stories? Any tips for identifying material that could be used later on really effectively in communicating research? How do you start with you? Okay, obviously if you're trying to make your methodology and anything visual that you can use to comprehend that audio would be useful. For example, with the GPS project I had a lot of background footage of me simply putting a harness on a cat in case I ever needed that for a media interview. These are very simple bits of your methodology which may not seem very important at the time but does come in very useful at a later date. As I mentioned in the previous question, just sort of trying to organize those into different folders in a drop-off type storage facility. Yeah, my computer's just full of cat photos and videos basically and I know where all of them are and I know what pieces they are so just trying to stay organized with what you have and being able to pull that out when you need it. Asher, as any suggestions there practical things that researchers can do. As a scientist you're really excited about something. You're genuinely quite excited and it's almost like you need to make that human connection and we'll just sort of look at a few tips and tricks here and I'll see if you can give you a whole load. If you find it exciting how somebody like me who's not a scientist how would you put it in layman's terms? How would you break that down? And of course we're talking about visual medium. How could you show that? So you might need to think what I'm excited about this you're interested in exciting and energizing other people about this. How do you do that? It's always a human thing. Where's the human angle? Animals, we love animals. Of course it's looking at more tests. Do we test animals for the greater good or for a fluffy? She's getting chopped off on the table. It's a great classical reality conflict there so is there a human interest story? I know that's a big board speaking. I think a good test also is when you're telling your friends and family about your research do they like to get a constant stream of questions? Is there interest in what you do and if the answer to that is yes then I think you'd be wise to maybe pitch it to a wider audience and I think for anyone get in touch with the guys at the Science Media Centre because they will very, very handle on what will work and what won't and they'll be able to advise you on perhaps what format works. Maybe it won't be video, maybe it will be a different type of media whether it's print or radio but they'll be able to talk to you about how to maximize your telling story. Yes I've done that as well there's a couple of tools that I'll send out to everyone which we use in our Science Media heavy courses. One is very simple the very effective tool it's called the message box and it's a little device that allows you to really think through the core of your story and then ask the obvious questions, the so what question that the public will be asking when they watch this video identifying the problem, the solutions and the benefits to society if that solution bears fruit. So there's also storyboarding templates as well to allow you to on paper visualize how you think the shots could be put together. I think the experience that we've had is the more work you put in upfront on paper the easier it's going to be with the point that you pick up your microphone and start taking some footage that's definitely something we'll be drilling into in the workshops as well. Just a couple of final questions one is an interesting one about the use of humor in communicating science or research and there was an element of that in Heidi's video sort of quirky there with the gap in her lab in her office sort of element to the video what do you use there on the use of humor obviously the videos that go viral tend to be quite humorous ones that really are able to sort of think everyone has in them that everyone wants to laugh the work is something they should be thinking about when they're generating videos for things like stuff or TV's in. I absolutely agree with that it goes back to one of the points that I made at the very start is all about making that accessible accessible and if you make something funny you're going to get a lot more traction with it people will share it a lot more on their social media platforms it just gets to a much wider audience that's it you're going to have to be you know the humor has to fit in with what you're doing for something overly serious and you're trying to get a laugh out of it as well the reaction from the public might go the opposite way but generally I would say I would say yes humor does work and it works well for stuff's audience there are a bunch of workshops guys for health and just health exactly it's not really humor it's not necessarily the open haha sort of humor it might just be an excitement an engagement a riot side it might not be things that are slightly taking the piss of yourselves and what you're doing not so you can do that but just an element of energy, excitement and intrigue a little bit of nerve we're always not sure about those things and you know like I mentioned Barbara Breen she's this little dynamite from AUT and she just lights up on camera she's excited and passionate and the buzzer's eyes and she can't help but to deal with that too humor definitely that's one of the main tools okay thanks Pat and just finally a practical question really is it better to aim for one big hit video in submitting a video to a media outlet or is this scope for a series of videos exploring for instance I guess you like fresh water or climate change are you interested in series as opposed to one hit on a video I think works best for us and it goes well you know there's always going to be an opportunity I'm sure for a follow up later on you've got an opportunity to get as much information across as you can initially it's better off for you as well I think maybe there's a room for a series being hosted on your institution website or on you but probably for media most probably a one-off experience initially they would probably want to commit to a series on being with one particular individual I wouldn't imagine okay and look just finally once just come in best case for communicating in the health sciences space are there any real sort of go-to issues to illustrate health science stories that you think work particularly well I'm not sure on that one will do you have any ideas with science stories we often like to relate that back to someone at home and how the story can affect them or they'll up one with X or Y addition so if you are doing a study with if we're talking human treatment or human medicine would normally have to film with someone with the affliction that's being looked at if you're doing tests with that person would like to often dig ethical issues around that and lots of disclaimers and forms it might be a blind test we're talking about so perhaps not possible but if there is that opportunity then that can really bring a a medical area to life and can just humanize and sort of help explain what it's all about and then also go to especially if you're talking about a topic which is difficult to go on camera if we're talking about you know turn on human body and make sanity to show if we can show actual people how they're discussing and talking about how the condition has affected them then that goes a long way a couple of quick things here I'm doing a lot of work in the health sector not just running smart videos but we make patient experience for patient journey videos for Weiss-Massard and Canterbury and Counties-Vonico and they love it though we're doing some really moving stories with people on camera that are very upset on oncology issues and we're talking about getting through the hospital and they started this training feedback for these health boards at high 5,000-8,000 people each and now they're really standalone mini dockos really some of the really strong stories we've got a young boy who was a young boy who translated stories we've got people who have died and their family members and these are really strong stories and some of our talent we have KDs to be in a public domain and we get lots of hits so there's a real interest in the health boards now and clinicians getting human feedback from their clients which is in the old days you'd go to a doctor they'd do it to you off you go so now there's kind of this real feedback interest and well how is it for you well not very good actually all fantastic and so they're great stories and exactly what it's like if there's a human element there and those triggers can then there's a lot of science behind that oncology miracle or this or that or it's a new development or this new initiative that's working so well and it's got a total science base people, where's the people where's the community I guess we'll wrap things up there thanks so much to our speakers Asher, Will, Heidi and Bas thanks to Desha for running the briefing thanks so much to all of you for attending this webinar is going to be recorded so we'll send a link so you or any of your colleagues can play it back we'll also send the contact details for Will and Asher and also for Bas who does a lot of these workshops around the country and can tailor one for the needs of your organization if you'd like to do that now if you're interested in attending the Open the Wellington Science Video workshops the application to those in May on Friday so go to sciencemedicine.co.nz for all the information on how to apply and as I'd love to hear from you if you'd like to organize one in your region as well we'd love to get to the South Island later in the year thanks again for tuning in expect a follow-up email from us with the recording link and all the other information have a great afternoon and thanks for joining us cool thanks guys bye