Separating Substances

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entrant09
License: Creative Commons Attribution Separating Substances Badminton Junior School
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21 Jan, 2009

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A long-lost treasure chest provides inspiration for a study into separating substances.

Director's Notes:

Say the film-makers:

This film demonstrates how to separate materials. We really enjoyed using animation to introduce the film and our teacher was amazed to find out that we achieved the blue background of the sea by filming through a paper cup held up at the window.

PS. We apologise for the spelling mistake in ‘separation’ but needless to say we missed this in the hurry of editing!

SciCast Notes:

Interesting technique, this — recording sound during the performance, but using it only as a guide and revoicing all the dialogue. Since many cameras struggle to capture the sound from this sort of thing, it works well. Indeed, a similar technique is used for films and drama. They call it ‘Automatic Dialogue Replacement,’ but it involves the actor standing in a booth and trying to match their own performance again.

I’d never thought of doing this with SciCast films, but it’s a great idea. It gets around one of the biggest problems — not being able to hear people — and it’s not as distracting as I’d expect.

I also like the whale introduction. It’s worth exploring the bits of software that come with your camera for this sort of material. I’m no fan of the Digital Blue camera used here (I think they’re very poor quality), but the software looks to be rather good fun.

Bringing something from the animation into the ‘real world’ is very clever, too. An inventive and well-constructed film that must have involved lots of work — thanks for sharing!

— Jonathan.