Description: In this video, Felice Frankel provides commentary about the aesthetics in a selection of science videos.
Instructor: Felice Frankel
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For the rest of this video segment, I thought I would go through a few of them with you and we'll watch them together.
So let's start with this one.
It's actually a piece of art, but I immediately saw the technology involved with getting those balls floating in the air.
So it's relevant for us, I think.
And I think the video continues to engage us.
I was really drawn to the color in this particular attempt.
It's quite beautiful, in that sepia tone-- for me, anyway.
So now we see a hand.
That's interesting.
They are making the video a little more compelling by inserting a fourth ball.
OK, it's a good idea that you run the video and change it after a few seconds.
So look what's going on now.
They've cut into a new video with colored balls, which is really quite beautiful.
And so we're inserting yet another iteration of the video after the first.
And I'm still fascinated, and want to look at all those balls.
It's the same set up that was in the previous video, but this time colored.
And we're at the very end now, and there you go.
I thought it'd be fun for you to just take a look at this particular one.
The question is whether or not this is relevant to your own video making.
That's your call.
So let's go to the next one.
You're seeing a surface inside a piece of equipment.
And we see drops of water forming on the surface.
I gather the researcher first tried to capture the phenomenon with angles lighting this.
There were too many reflections and glare, he mentioned to me.
So in the end what you're seeing here is interestingly a ring light.
It's concentric with the lens, and it's lighting this surface at a perfectly perpendicular angle.
I remember that he tried a lot and wound up with this one.
And we're seeing that these drops are coalescing and becoming larger.
And that is in fact the point of the science.
Later when he sent it to me, I asked if he intended to include in the frame the left side wall of the apparatus.
For me it looked kind of like an accident.
And in fact his first response was that he didn't intend to show the wall, but after thinking about it the edge is very informational to scientists who understand this kind of stuff, because the edge affects the motion of the drops.
So for me, I would have shown even more of the edge.
Great deal of attempts were made in trying to make this video.
In the end, I think it's a great job.
So here's something that's considerably different from what we've been seeing before.
We're seeing a flattened something-or-other become unflattened totally by himself.
We can sort of guess that - -that was a bit of a jump.
You can guess that the battery is making all this happen.
It's somewhat origami-like, wouldn't you say?
And now he's becoming even more of a something-- I don't know what to call it.
It really is a robot.
And so these researchers are doing some pretty fabulous stuff, where you start with a flattened assemblage that becomes something else.
And we did speed this up a little bit, So that's why you're seeing some jumps.
There he goes.
Kind of silly, but incredibly unique and very exciting, leaving a trail behind him, by the way.
And finally, this last batch is a bit beyond the course, because these videos were made with a high speed camera.
But I thought I'd get you excited about your next steps, in case your work will benefit from high speed photography.
The point here is, as we continue to suggest, is that the way you approach any kind of videos should still be informed by what we've been discussing for the past few weeks on how to make your still image.
I hope you agree about that.
