SciCast Notes:

Nominee: Institute of Physics Best SciCast Physics Film, 2008

If you’re coming to SciCast from the Institute of Physics’ previous competition ‘Paperclip Physics,’ the style of this film will be immediately recognisable. And you know, it works just fine. It’s surprising just how much information you can pack into two and a half minutes, and using simple demonstrates to illustrate your explanation can help keep your film short and punchy.

This film is well-written, the demonstrations arising naturally along with the explanation, so none of it feels forced. If you’ll pardon the pun.

Criticisms? It’s a little formal. One of the basic problems of video is that it’s not always obvious to whom one is talking. In this case, the team appear to be performing towards an audience… but there clearly isn’t one, there’s a camera instead. Should the team have talked to the camera? It’s a tricky call. Did you find the team talking off to one side of the camera distracting?

The more ‘televisual’ way of doing this might have been to have only one presenter on camera at once, each building on the explanation of the previous speaker. Working like that can make your film simpler to shoot — you don’t have to work out how to frame three people and props all at once — and keep each section short, tidy, and self-contained. The opening of the film works well for precisely this reason, and is very nicely cut together.

Of course, there’s no right or wrong way of making a film, and what the team have done passes the most basic test — ‘Does it make sense?’ Yes, it does. Well, apart from the hats.

So: good job, Carbon-12.

— Jonathan