November 2007 Archives
Finding high-quality royalty-free photographs you can use in your film can be tricky, but it’s not impossible. This post at the Presentation Zen blog provides a terrific list of links.
We’d add Flickr to that list; there, you can search for pictures published under Creative Commons licenses, many of which you could use in your SciCast film. Anything that’s ‘Attribution’, ‘Attribution Non-commercial’ or ‘Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike’ is OK for us (the ‘no-derivs’ licenses won’t work — you’re not allowed to change the picture by, for example, cropping it to fit in your movie).
Just remember to add a note in your film’s credits explaining the source of the stills: ideally, provide a link to the page from which you snagged the image.
OK, so it's going to be hard to match Stewart's globe-trotting series with your own earth science film (anyone taking a Christmas break near a handy volcano? No?), but check out the geodes film for an idea of the sort of thing you might manage yourself.
Make a film, send it in, and If it's any good we'll make Iain watch it.
Hey, you could even try pinching an idea from his series, and see if he notices.
Have you seen the Curly-Wurly stretching film?
As of today, it's an official Guinness World Record. Hurray! And congratulations to Helen.
Go and watch the film to find out what I'm talking about.
I can't begin to say how much I want one of these construction sets, available from Think Geek in the US (yes, they will ship internationally, but if you find a UK distributor please let us know in the comments here). The retailer have done a perfectly good introductory film here, but there must be more one can get out of the set for a SciCast audience.
We're not the only ones running a web video competition, of course. One that ran over the summer is CBBC's Me and My Movie. The site (nominated for an interactive BAFTA last night, no less) is very slick, though frustratingly slow to use when you're trying to find something specific. There also aren't very many films, at least that I could find.
I guess we’ve all seen the hovercraft made from an old CD, a balloon, and a squeezy bottle top (you haven’t? Instructions here) – next up in complexity is the foam-tray-and-propeller variety. Here’s a nice write-up of one such design at Instructables.
It can be tricky to get hold of suitable motors and propellers in the UK, but your local branch of Maplin will likely have something usable.
If you try making one, point a camera at yourself doing so and send us the result. Obviously.
(ed’s note: woohoo! First ‘proper’ entry!)
