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ELIZABETH CHOE: So today is the first screening
of your rough cuts.
And the way this will work is I will show one of the videos,
and we'll all watch it.
You guys can take notes on it while you watch.
And after each screening we will give
general high-level feedback to the creator.
And that's what-- we'll just go through the whole class
and do that for the first half.
Now for the second half, there are a couple options
that we could proceed.
The first being what I usually do
with Science Out Loud, which is to basically do Google
Docs for detailed comments.
And this is really useful because it's
sort of like a check box when you're
going back through and looking at feedback from another person
when you edit.
So this was for George's farts video.
And I made some notes about where
we should add some animations, where we should add overlays.
So this is one option that we could do.
Basically break you guys up to where you will end up
commenting on at least two people's videos,
and we would know who you would be assigned to.
The other option is that we could just
go ahead and pair you guys up or group you guys up,
and instead of doing the Google Docs feedback,
you can just talk to each other one on one.
Do you people have preferences on how we do this?
AUDIENCE: Google Docs.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Google Docs.
Anyone else?
All right.
So we'll do Google Docs.
And I will give you the details on how
that's going to happen during the second half of class.
Sounds good?
So, as it was for the table reads--
remember that repetitive comments are OK.
It's OK if you feel the same sort of feedback
that another person has already said
because it'll draw attention to the creator
and what they need to work on.
Also remember that at the end of the day this is your video,
so the feedback is for you to take or leave-- hey, Nathan.
And this is probably going to be the most valuable class
time the whole month because this is where you're really
going to have concrete advice on implementing the stuff
that we've talked about so far.
So really take this as an opportunity
to give as constructive and meaningful feedback as
possible.
All right?
Does anyone have questions or comments
before we start watching?
No?
Are you excited?
OK.
AUDIENCE: We need popcorn.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I thought about making pop-- but then I
thought that if people were taking notes on their computers
and they had, like, butter on their fingers.
We'll pop for another screening.
AUDIENCE: --later for a snack.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: That's fine.
Maybe we should close the big--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, I'll close the door.
Does anyone want to go first?
No?
Does that show up on screen OK if I turn these lights off?
OK.
OK, well, then we will just go down the line.
How about that?
So lucky you, Nathan.
Do you want to say anything before we screen,
or do you want to just go ahead and watch and then
talk about your process?
AUDIENCE: I'm going to be honest,
and I made a pretty bad mistake in putting
off filming until yesterday.
And so I only got to get in the editing this morning.
And it really shows.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Well, let's see what you have.
And there is time, that's what tomorrow's for.
AUDIENCE: I couldn't get the animations to work.
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
And do keep in mind that all day tomorrow and all day
Thursday is open for you to incorporate feedback.
After today's class ends, we're not
meeting again until the screening on Thursday at 6:30.
So as long as we get videos in by, like-- 6:00
PM's the latest.
Hopefully you're not working up until 6:00 PM.
You have the rest of the day to work.
PROFESSOR: But if you need our help, then e-mail us.
And we can meet up if you want.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yes.
We will be in the classroom tomorrow and Thursday
if people need help.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Why does your-- why does your fridge start to smell?
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: The sound sounds good.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Why does your fridge start to smell?
And where does that icky black liquid come from?
Wouldn't life just be easier if things didn't rot,
if things lasted forever?
Well, maybe, but probably not.
According to the USDA, the average American household
wastes 25% of its food.
And a lot of restaurants are even worse.
So if we didn't have decomposition,
what would happen to the food we throw away?
Food in landfills normally gets dealt with by bacteria, fungi,
and protists that allow the nutrients in food
to return to the soil and, eventually, other living
things.
These decomposers also break down other dead stuff,
like trees.
In fact, they're pretty much the only thing that can eat wood.
So in a world without rot, while your home may not
have to worry about being eaten by termites,
who rely on protists in their stomach,
pretty soon forests and landfills
would be flooded with a lot of dead stuff.
So how do we avoid this problem?
Well, basically, in your fridge, on a forest floor,
in a dumpster, almost anywhere, there
are fungi, bacteria, and protists that live entirely
by eating dead stuff.
These dead things can be more or less divided
into three categories.
Carbohydrates-- sugar and starches.
Lipids-- think fats.
And proteins, like meats.
All of these are chemically different,
so they each get broken down by different enzymes
in different ways before being absorbed by decomposers.
For example, proteases break down proteins
into amino acids, the cells building blocks.
Lipids rely on lipases.
And carbohydrates on things like amylase and cellulases.
So how does a perfectly nice broccoli floret
start giving off this foul black liquid?
Fruits and vegetables are almost entirely made of water.
So on the most basic level, you could
say their cells are like extremely complex water
balloons.
The exterior-- a cell wall-- is made
of cellulose, a complex carbohydrate that
gets broken down by enzymes into small sugars the cell can
get energy from.
When bacteria or fungi uses cellulase to eat
the exterior of a cell, it's like
if I were to pop the balloon.
That's the muck you see in your fridge.
And that's how you get that icky black liquid.
What about that stink?
For fruits and vegetables a lot of time
the smell happens after the icky black liquid forms.
Other bacteria that weren't involved
in the initial colonization move in
and start to stink everything up.
Meat gets smelly when lipases break down
fat in the meat into glycerol and fatty acids--
two energy sources.
And fatty acids are kind of gross.
And so while your food rotting may smell absolutely terrible,
because of it the environment's able to recycle
crucial nutrients it needs.
And, well, that's why we have all this.
[END PLAYBACK]
PROFESSOR: Are you kidding?
That was awesome.
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right.
General feedback?
PROFESSOR: Well, I want to hear what you think
before we give you feedback.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Like what are the things
that you like about what you did,
and what are the things that you already
know you want to change or add?
AUDIENCE: The audio.
ELIZABETH CHOE: The audio.
AUDIENCE: The lack of animation.
The main things.
ELIZABETH CHOE: What was the hardest
part about making this video?
AUDIENCE: Actually going and doing the shooting.
I kind of put that off as long as I really feasibly
could have because I really didn't want to do it.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Was it as painful
as you thought it would be once you started?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
Well, I will say that the script is very, very
tight in this video.
And it has come a very long way from
your initial brainstorming.
And if you come to the screening,
you'll get to actually see all the pictures.
So, just a plug to come to the screening if you want to.
But the script is super tight.
And I know that you spent a long time honing that,
and I think that really paid off.
It's two thirty-three, which is a great time.
So I think that as far as the content goes
it's really strong, and I can tell that you spent
a lot of time developing that.
Does anyone want to add some more feedback?
I mean, I can talk to-- yes, Yuliya.
AUDIENCE: I like the transitions.
There weren't too many of them, but it
was nice to see a change of background and scene.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
And clean cuts.
No funky swirls, no fades.
It's nice.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, definitely.
I was going to say something else, but I forgot.
ELIZABETH CHOE: That's OK.
We can come back if you remember.
Anyone else?
Yes, Andrea.
Sorry.
AUDIENCE: I really like the pacing of it.
It's a little rushed in a couple of places,
but that's-- that happens.
But I like the pacing in general.
And I also like the water balloon example
and the different camera angles, and I
thought it was just really artistically very well done,
very well composed.
ELIZABETH CHOE: What was so terrible about actually
shooting?
Was it being on camera?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And also, each one took a lot of takes.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
I will say-- because I know that a lot of you
expressed sort of concern and hesitation
about being on camera, and I feel like a lot of this class
has been like actually no, you're really great on camera.
The opening shot is delivered really, really well.
And there are spots where, like Andrea said,
you're rushing your words a little bit.
And I'm sure you'll see it when you go back through.
And whenever you guys do your Google Doc comments,
point out spaces where maybe his delivery changes.
It is a little inconsistent between scenes,
but there are some scenes where it
is delivered so perfectly and so clearly,
and you seem really, really comfortable on screen.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I will say-- did you shoot it by yourself?
AUDIENCE: I did shoot it mostly by myself, since I put it off.
AUDIENCE: Because I found that it was a lot easier to have
someone shoot it than, like, when we were doing
those first blogs and stuff at the beginning,
I thought that was a lot harder doing it by myself
than having someone there.
I felt less comfortable being alone than with someone.
Which is kind of-- I thought it'd
be the other way around when I first started the project.
Other than that, like, how I think he used--
went to Star Market.
So representing a local grocer too.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah.
I agree.
I like the part where he talked about the smell.
You know?
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And I like the cut on the fridge.
AUDIENCE: The visual, yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: What do you guys think
about the visuals in general?
Because it's always hard to do a chemistry or biology
video because the visualizations are always
somewhat impossible to do.
Yeah, Yuliya.
AUDIENCE: I think it would be nice to show some
of the scientific vocabulary, so we can see it and not
just hear it.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, like a label on top or something.
AUDIENCE: And then for the backgrounds,
like, the plants backgrounds worked really well
and, like, the fridge and all that.
But there was a part where there was just
a random penguin or random pictures on the wall that
maybe could be overlaid with animation.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Like this shot.
I like that you have the kitchen space
as sort of your home base.
Because your centered on the question of why things
rot in your fridge, and that's what
allows you to explore decomposition
at greater length.
But this is doing that whole thing that a lot of web videos
do, where you center the subject.
And I was talking to Chris [INAUDIBLE]
about why it's so common that SciShow does it
and Vsauce does it.
And it sort of gives off an air of it being not as formal.
But it's also a little bit comical, too.
And I think that if you just-- even
if you zoomed in just a little bit and got
rid of, like, this spray thing on the side
and the cooking things on that side,
it might help with this one.
Also remember to tuck your mic in under your shirt if you can.
Let's see.
But you were talking about this penguin here, right?
Yeah, so this-- I mean, you could
play around with keeping this footage, if you like,
and just zoom in a little bit.
See if you can digitally zoom in on the editing software.
If the resolution kind of goes kaput,
you may have to re-film that part.
But again, I think Yuliya is right in that
be careful about having visual distractors
when you don't really need them there.
I do agree with-- was it Andrea?
Who said something about the pacing?
Yeah, I think the pacing of your cuts are pretty good.
Like, nothing lasts a little too long, nothing's too short.
If you have B-roll, it might give you
a little bit of breathing room in between shots
where you're talking really fast and you have a lot of content.
But yeah, like stuff like this-- I
don't remember what you're talking about here.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- --while your home may not have to worry about being eaten by--
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, so--
AUDIENCE: Comical note on that, I
filmed in front of someone's house,
and they actually came out and asked me to stop.
And so I kind of--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, no.
AUDIENCE: --gave up on actually filming at home.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Filming in front of a house.
I mean, is this in your dorm room?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
AUDIENCE: That's what my backup idea was, since it's my home.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, actually, I think that it works fine.
And I would say for this one, do a wider shot for this one
because it doesn't quite establish
that you're in your own place.
Like, if you can see you sitting on your actual bed,
that might help a little bit more.
So again, it's not a matter of using wide or close-up
shots for the sake of using them on principle, but like what
the background actually reveals and sets for the audience.
AUDIENCE: I was wondering, can you go back a little bit?
Because there was-- I was wondering
what your vision was for this.
AUDIENCE: Right there.
Yes.
I'm still missing stock footage.
AUDIENCE: OK.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, so this is like a placeholder
for the rough cut.
I figured that was the case.
AUDIENCE: --what you were planning to do here.
I was like, I'm not sure what I'm looking at.
OK.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
Oh, the dumpster shot.
Yeah, I wanted to say something about this, too.
If this is something that you decide to re-shoot,
I would also maybe scoot back a little bit as well.
Because it's hard to tell that it's really a dumpster
until you actually say it.
Where was this?
AUDIENCE: It's down at the loading docks.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, OK.
AUDIENCE: I had a lot of trouble with the dumpsters
I'd planned on going to.
By Walker is a bit of a wind tunnel.
And the Stata Center, out behind W20 was really noisy.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Which one's W20?
AUDIENCE: The student center.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, OK.
I mean, there is an optimal dumps--
if you guys are ever in need of an optimal dumpster
to fill up, let me tell you.
Right behind the MIT Museum-- by D-Lab actually--
there are some prime dumpster spots for shooting.
And that's where we shot George's farts one, too.
So if you need to.
But in this one, I mean, I think it's really
matter of the camera angle.
Did you shoot this on a tripod?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
Were you limited by how far you could let your mic cable go?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
Yeah, maybe think about this one as a potential one to re-shoot.
Because I think the visual background makes a lot of sense
and is a really good transition--
it's a really good change from the kitchen setting.
So I would really love to see that it's actually a dumpster.
AUDIENCE: And if you are refilming--
only if you are refilming-- something that I noticed
is that when you're talking you bounce a little.
So just-- like in some of the film
when your up close we see that.
And it's just maybe something that if you
can be aware of that while you're filming.
It was just one moment, I can't remember exactly where it was.
Where is it?
When you were talking, a little towards the end.
And I noticed it a little more, this sort of gentle
bounce while you talk.
That you don't do all the time.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Maybe we can find the--
AUDIENCE: I'll look at it more carefully, because there
was a point where I was like--
AUDIENCE: I think it was the end of [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Do you know what I'm talking about?
OK.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Maybe we can note that in the Google Docs,
whoever's commenting on Nathan's.
And again, stuff like this, I think it's great, but maybe
just like crop this framing a little bit more
so it's a little more rule of thirds.
Because the rule of thirds works really well for this shot.
And [INAUDIBLE] pointed out a really good tip.
When you do rule of thirds, use the eyes
as sort of the point instead of, like, your face.
Because there's just a little too much room
on the top and right-hand side of this framing.
How did you film the opening?
Like, were you by yourself?
Was it the first thing that you filmed?
AUDIENCE: I was by myself, and that was the-- no, it wasn't.
It was like second place I went.
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
Because whatever conditions you were
filming under for this scene, I think
you should really try to remember
what it was that you did.
Because this opening--
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- --start to smell?
And where does that icky black liquid come from?
Wouldn't life just be easier if things didn't rot?
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Like that question
is posed actually quite naturally.
I think the tendency for a lot of people when they're starting
would be to sort of overly cheese that question up.
And that's sort of what happened in early readings
that a lot of you guys did.
But this one just sounds very natural,
like how you would actually pose that question in real life.
So whatever conditions that you were under filming this one,
really try to apply that to whatever you re-shoot.
Were you there with him for this one by chance?
Hmm.
Maybe it's an energy level thing.
Like--
AUDIENCE: I think it was I was inside.
ELIZABETH CHOE: You were inside, so you weren't as
nervous about filming outside.
Yeah, actually, that does a lot to people's deliveries.
But yeah, just something to keep in mind.
Does anyone have final thoughts before we
move on to the next video?
Do you know who we had paired up to comment on Nathan's?
PROFESSOR: Andrea and Kenneth.
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
So basically, for the rough cut thing,
we will pair you up with two people.
One of those people is going to be the person who
helped film your video, and the other person
is just someone completely new.
So Kenneth and Andrea are commenting on Nathan's.
Andrea, do you want to say anything about yours before we
screen?
AUDIENCE: There are lots of placeholders for stuff,
like similar.
It's really boring.
ELIZABETH CHOE: We will be the judge of that.
All right.
This is Andrea's.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Eating is one of the great pleasures and necessities
of life.
And to enjoy everything from energy bars to apples,
we rely on one part of our bodies
to do an important job-- our teeth.
Teeth are the hardest substances in our bodies.
They're harder than our bones, and they're
even harder than iron or steel.
While we chew our teeth experience
forces of up to 225 pounds.
Hmm.
So why doesn't our jaw just crumble
under all of those forces?
Between your tooth and your jawbone,
there is a specialized piece of tissue
called the periodontal ligament, or PDL for short.
The PDL can easily absorb the normal forces
that a tooth experiences when we chew, say, an apple, cushioning
or protecting our jawbone from our teeth.
And inside the PDL there are all kinds of cells.
One type, called mechanoreceptors,
sense forces of movement or pressure applied to the tooth.
Teeth sound like they're already perfectly designed.
But sometimes we really need to force them
in a certain direction.
Like with braces.
As the braces slowly force the teeth to move,
the PDL gets squeezed in one direction
and stretched in the other, kind of like a rubber band.
Here's where it gets interesting.
To make room, the mechanoreceptors
in the PDL trigger cells called osteoclasts
that actually come in and dissolve part
of your jaw to make extra room.
The mechanoreceptors also trigger another kind of cell,
called an osteoblast, which comes in
and builds up part of the jawbone.
This allows the PDL to get back into its regular cushioning
shape, thus holding the tooth securely in position.
So if braces use osteoblasts to physically reposition teeth
for cosmetic reasons, what if we want
to use them to replace things in our bodies?
Dental implants replace teeth that
are damaged or missing to restore chewing function.
And MIT engineers are using the properties
of osteoblasts and osteoclasts that are already in our bodies
to create a chemical coding for these implants.
Just like in a mouth with braces,
this coding helps create natural bone
to help lock the implant into place.
Your jaw isn't the only place where
these osteoblasts and osteoclasts are
altering your bone structure.
In fact, this bony remodeling process
is happening throughout your entire body.
And these implants aren't just limited to teeth.
Doctors can replace knees, hips, and even spinal disks.
Right now, these implants are designed
to have the exact same functionality as the parts
that they're replacing.
But in the future, scientists may even
use implants to improve our brains.
Just like with braces, we could modify our bodies
to be more perfect.
Once we've tasted the forbidden fruit of perfection,
will we still be human?
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right.
So, Andrea, why do you think your video is boring?
AUDIENCE: It's really dense with information.
It also doesn't have very good settings in it,
except for the office.
And even in the office, the lighting--
there was just nothing I could do about the lighting.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think that one of the quickest fixes that you
can do, and one that'll make the biggest difference,
is that it's very slow moving.
And I think it's because you are so conscious of fighting
the tendency that most people have to deliver their lines too
quickly that you're talking a lot slower than you usually do
in real life, in a way that is clearly not you.
And you could actually just play with speeding up
how fast the video plays.
We did that for one of the people who
did Science Out Loud, actually.
The same thing happened to her.
As soon as the camera started rolling,
she would talk just way slower than she normally does,
and it just felt really unnaturally paced.
And once we bumped up the speed to, like, 115%,
it read a lot more normally and flowed a lot better.
And I think in general, look at where
you're cutting into new spaces.
I think that you erred on the right side
for your rough cut, which is to leave a little bit
too much room at the beginning of each of your clips.
But when you go in, really, you can shave off
like a good second, half a second off of some of the clips
that you're cutting, too.
Instead of having a beat and then your action starting,
just go straight into the action already happening.
So I think that happen a couple times.
[SKIPPING THROUGH VIDEO]
For this opening shot I mean, just
start it like half a beat before you say,
eating is one of life's great necessities.
I think you take these nice long pauses
in between some of your thoughts to really let the viewer gather
or comprehend what you've said.
But some of the gaps are just really long.
So you can either cut those out and maybe cut to a close
up of you talking, or cut to B-roll in those cases.
But I think that'll help a lot with just
the sense of the movement of the overall video.
Did anyone have other comments?
Yeah, Kenneth.
AUDIENCE: I remember in there you were a little scared
to start filming.
But I thought you felt pretty natural in front of us,
and it didn't feel you were nervous or anything.
Apart from the slow speed, I think actually you
look quite natural.
AUDIENCE: I was going to say that too.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, David?
AUDIENCE: I was thinking that one way to cut
that down is when you look at a clip or you look at a song,
so you cut right before the song.
And then it's like a straight line.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Wait, sorry.
I didn't hear that.
AUDIENCE: Plus, when you put the video as well as the sound.
ELIZABETH CHOE: The sound?
AUDIENCE: The sound wave.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, yeah.
The sound wave.
Yeah, the sound wave.
That's a very good tip.
AUDIENCE: Then I was thinking that I like the transitions.
I find the transition very meaningful,
and they help you continue the story.
ELIZABETH CHOE: What were you having planned
on this big section here?
Was it supposed to be an animated section?
AUDIENCE: I've been looking for images.
FEMALE IN VIDEO: This is when we chew, say, an apple.
AUDIENCE: I think one part that will
help that felt really slow-- but maybe you
put in there for a visual pause-- is the middle section
when you were talking about putting on braces,
and you did the whole sequence of you
like putting on gloves like an orthodontist would.
And it's good for comedic effect,
but it kind of interrupted the video for me.
And I think this is an instance of killing your darlings,
where I don't know how long it took to film this.
AUDIENCE: So should cut out everything in the office?
AUDIENCE: No, I like-- like when we all laughed,
that was a great reveal.
And I think you can almost cut from this shot
to the one with you with braces--
like when you say, with braces.
Because you don't even say anything over this part.
It was just kind of silent.
AUDIENCE: I think she could keep it
if she tightened it to like one second.
We can get enough out of you just
putting on-- starting to put on the glove
and then transitioning to the next one.
I think it's fun.
I think that I agree with you that it's too long,
but I think you could tighten it, really,
and it would still get the impact.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Comedy is really hard to pull off,
like George was saying in the earlier workshop.
But a lot of comedy that works in these types of videos,
and that you'll see in SciShow or Veritasium
or pretty much any popular YouTube channel,
is that they're very quick.
They're quick insertions of someone making a face or sort
of an unexpected B-roll shot.
And I think that I agree with Jaime.
And you can play around with this.
Play around with taking this part out completely,
play around with shortening it.
But it has a funnier effect when it's a lot shorter,
because one, it doesn't interrupt the flow of the video
as much.
And also just gives a chance for the viewer
to be like, wait, what just actually happened?
It keeps them on their toes a little bit more.
AUDIENCE: For that, I really like that part.
The only thing I would suggest is
that at the end when you reveal the braces to kind of show them
for half a second longer so the viewers
can notice that it's braces.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I think the braces shot was actually
a little too short.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And like right here--
AUDIENCE: How did you do that?
The braces shot?
Did they just put pretend braces on you for a minute?
ELIZABETH CHOE: It was like a denture.
AUDIENCE: Oh, OK.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And this is an example
of shaving off some of the beginnings of a clip.
That is exactly where it starts, it's a good half a second.
Which doesn't seem like much, but when
you're watching a video it seems like an eternity-- half second
that you can just take out completely.
AUDIENCE: So how close to when the sound starts?
Should you do it right there?
ELIZABETH CHOE: I don't have a best practice of do it like 0.2
seconds before it starts.
But I think that, in general, having it as close to when
you start talking is best.
Because otherwise, it reads a little bit newscastery.
Because you'll notice that on a Dateline special,
the host will go, and I'll start talking.
And that's what gives it the newscastery feel, versus a lot
of YouTube channels and SciShow, they just
go immediately as close to the soundwave starting as possible.
AUDIENCE: Bring us two frames back.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Two frames back?
AUDIENCE: I usually go like two and three frames back.
And then if that doesn't sound good,
then adjust it from there.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And who's doing Google Docs for Andrea?
AUDIENCE: Nathan and Yuliya.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Nathan and Yuliya.
Any last comments for Andrea?
I do want to emphasize-- and for the people who are just here
for today-- it is a crazy amount of work
that they're doing in such a small amount of time.
We basically spent the first week not really
touching cameras whatsoever.
I mean, they were doing assignments them,
but pre-production takes up so much time.
So I think that the scripts that you guys have
are really, really tight and really good.
And I know that you're working under limited time and very,
very limited resources.
Like you were saying, you didn't have lights.
And that makes a huge difference in what your final product
looks like, so
I'm really happy to see that people can identify--
this is what I think it's off about this video,
I think this is what it would have improved.
That's the stuff that really is important.
And I think the scripts, and you guys really constructing
compelling narratives around the topics
that you were talking about, they've come such a long way
from the first day.
So I'm really happy to see that.
AUDIENCE: It's ready, but I think
you have to refresh the page.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, OK.
This one?
All right.
Any words before we screen?
AUDIENCE: No disclaimers.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, it's good.
It's fine, I hope.
I just didn't like how I cut it, but I
think it still is quite well.
I haven't finished the animations,
but yeah, some of it's in.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Imagine holding a party, and then
sending out invitations after the party.
Wait a minute-- that doesn't make any sense.
Are my friends are going to be able to time
travel back just so it's at my party?
In 2009, Stephen Hawking actually
conducted such an experiment to disprove time travel.
What exactly is time travel, and how does it work?
It actually has a lot to do with speed.
A lot of what we know about time traveling actually
comes from Einstein's theory of special and general relativity.
We are actually time traveling right now, but not
in the manner that sci-fi phi films have depicted them.
We are, in fact, time traveling at a pace of one hour per hour.
In other words, every hour I experience, the world around me
experiences a singular hour too.
Now, it may sound simple and trivial, but stay with me.
This is where it gets interesting.
Now, the lat part of Einstein's theory of special relativity
is actually a phenomenon known as time dilation.
Effectively, this means that the faster you travel,
the slower time passes around you.
It potentially means that I could
travel at maybe more than one hour per hour.
This phenomenon, however, is only noticeable at really,
really high speeds-- speeds near the speed of light.
This rocket here, not even close.
Say I do a spaceship now that travels
at 90% the speed of light.
And I have a pair newborn twins.
I bring one of them with me on this journey for 10 years.
When I return, one of them will have turned 23 years old
while the one with me will have only turned 10 years old.
While we have experienced 10 years on a spaceship,
23 years have actually passed on Earth.
This amount of time actually increases exponentially
as you get closer to the speed of light.
So we could potentially travel forward in time.
But what about backwards in time?
That's a whole other issue.
Now, remember our previous graph.
The time that passed on Earth was
asymptopic to the speed of light.
Looks like we're seeing maybe the secret to time travel
lies on the other side of the line.
In other words, we may have to travel faster
than the speed of light just to be able to travel back in time.
Now, when you do travel near the speed of light,
something called relativistic mass comes into play.
In other words, as your speed goes up, your mass increases.
As your mass increases, you require more energy
to move the same object.
This might mean that you need an infinite amount of energy
just to move an object beyond the speed of light.
The more energy you put into an object, the more likely
you are to increase its mass rather than
to increase its speed.
Therefore, to get an object past the speed of light,
quite impossible at this point in time.
So why are we still so obsessed with time travel?
Time travel does come with its own set of problems.
Take for example my party before.
If I were to send out my invitations after the party,
my friends would have come back in time to attend it.
And if they did come back in time to attend it,
I wouldn't have sent out my invitations.
And if I didn't send out my invitations,
they wouldn't be at my party.
It doesn't make any sense at all that they are both at my party
and not at my party.
This is what we call the grandfather paradox.
It's one of three time travel problems
that we currently have.
So it seems that we may not be able to time travel
yet, based on what physics tells us, at least.
For now, if you are planning a party,
be sure to send out the invites.
Your friends can't time travel yet.
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right, any comments from Kenneth first?
AUDIENCE: OK, I didn't know that the warp stabilizer on YouTube
was like that.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, you tried the stabilizer on YouTube.
AUDIENCE: Because I new I had to stabilize some of my footage,
and they were taking a very long time on Premier.
So I just popped it on to YouTube
and just let YouTube stabilized it.
But I didn't know that it did it very liberally.
So I realize a lot of my shots got like this warpy effect,
and some of my text got cut out, and what not.
But yeah, and I'm sorry that the audio for this whole chunk
just kind of got warped because I
had to use my other camera, which I didn't want to.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, you used your DSLR for the middle part,
right?
I mean it's a trade-off, because it
looks way better than the camcorders that we have.
But the camera that he has doesn't
have an input for the mic.
Yeah, it's really hard to understand that part.
Yeah, PJ?
AUDIENCE: With these scenes, though,
we were talking about doing this walking down.
It was just tough to have a ten foot tether
to do some of these.
And I thought that came out really good-- that video part.
AUDIENCE: Could you try a voiceover?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was thinking about putting that in.
AUDIENCE: Because it's far away enough
where I don't think it matters.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, you could try lip dubbing basically.
I have one pair of wireless mics,
if you do want to try shooting it.
I mean, it may be a little too much
to throw in at the last minute, because I
do agree that this part is--
[SKIPPING THROUGH VIDEO]
It's hard, but I mean, I also think
that having that wide of an angle
is important in that shot.
So I understand using the mic was sort
of not really an option there.
But I do think that voiceover is a good option.
And especially this part.
It's a long walk and talk, and--
MALE IN VIDEO: --example, my party before.
If I were to send out my message--
ELIZABETH CHOE: And the audio is so distractingly unclear,
and this is such a crucial sort of inherently
hard to understand portion anyway,
that I think that it's really important to have clear audio.
And I don't know if you can just shoot B-roll to do voiceover
for this.
Because it's a little-- the setting and what you're saying
don't necessarily match up to me right away.
But I also like the feel that you were going
for with this walk and talk.
I can tell that you were drawing a lot of Veritasium influences
with the beginning, and you did the whole Michael Stevens
Vsauce head up, which I think are fun.
Because you're taking something that is typically
a very robust science topic and sort of presenting it in a very
casual, like, I'm just your friend
talking about time travel type of way that makes
it a lot less intimidating.
Which I think is really nice.
It's a nice feel for the video.
Any comments from anyone else?
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: It's sounded really well in its complete form.
Even though-- like the script, there
was a lot of technical detail.
It didn't read like that at all.
The only part here was that when you were walking and describing
the grandfather paradox, I know we also shot the party.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was thinking of putting
that in split screen, but I--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, you actually shot a fake party?
AUDIENCE: Yeah
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think that it would be a really good option
to try playing around with that footage
and just using voiceover there.
AUDIENCE: I only put it at half a screen,
because I'm keeping to the left of the screen
so I have it on the right side.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
Is it super important that you maintain
this footage of you talking?
Or can you just cut to straight B-roll of the party?
AUDIENCE: I thought it would be a nice transitions
to walk into the last scene.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, yeah.
I mean, I can tell that you were very conscious of how
your cuts were being made.
MALE IN VIDEO: --the grandfather paradox--
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think that this opening one and some
of your pans are really slow.
So you could cut the clip right before it lands on you
and just speed up the pan.
This part especially.
It just feels very nice.
MALE IN VIDEO: --sci-fi films have depicted them.
We are, in fact, time traveling at a pace of one hour per hour.
ELIZABETH CHOE: The script is a lot better here.
It's really good.
MALE IN VIDEO: --speeds near the--
ELIZABETH CHOE: And this too is a really good visual reference
there.
AUDIENCE: I really liked whatever
you did to animate the graph.
I was like, mind blown.
I don't know if I could do that.
But it looked really nice because it followed your finger
and everything.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, how did you do that?
AUDIENCE: I kept a screenshot there,
and I imported for the shot that I drew everything over.
This amount of time actually increases--
ELIZABETH CHOE: But YouTube cut it off right at the bottom.
OK, that's what I figured what happened.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, it was supposed to be nice frame.
I don't know why they even warped this.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, I mean, take the stabilizer out
and just do a closeup shot of you.
Because that's really nice.
Are you going to do it for this part too?
AUDIENCE: I was thinking that I should.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think you should,
just because like you're throwing in the graph
and you have the asymptote, and it's just such a key part.
Something that I didn't know until you read the script out
loud to us-- really cool, the idea
of looking at the other side of the graph.
So, I know it's more work for you,
but I think it would look cool.
Who's commenting on Kennith's?
AUDIENCE: Yuliya and Andrea.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yuliya and Andrea, great.
AUDIENCE: I really like the ending.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, the beginning and ending, you book
ended it very nicely.
Very good.
I'm very happy with how people have taken their scripts
and really created a point and a story around it.
I don't think any of these drafts
are instructional videos whatsoever.
You've taken all these concepts--
and we talked a lot at the beginning
about tying specific examples and allowing
a specific instance to let you hit these bigger points.
And I think everyone's really done a nice job of doing that
with their scripts.
All right, next up we have Joshua.
You ready?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Any comments?
AUDIENCE: I haven't put in the animations yet,
so there will be a part where there's a blank space.
But the blank table is supposed to be the animations.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Hi, have you found it particularly difficult
to find a specific item in your house?
Let's say you're looking for a pair of gloves,
but you just can't find it and you spend your entire afternoon
looking for it.
Well, you've just encountered the same problem
that companies like Google or Microsoft
encounter every single day.
And that's the problem of search.
Just like a house, which stores thousands of different items,
Google stores 45 billion index pages of information.
When if every page was a sheet of paper
and we stick them up real high, we
will create a tower 600 times taller than Mount Everest.
Well can Google find my results so quickly
when I find so difficult to find a pair of gloves?
Well, searching on Google is kind
of looking for a person in a big school.
Let's say you're looking for James in the row of classrooms.
One of the easiest method would be
to go to every classroom nearest to you until you find James.
There's a better method known as binary search.
Let's say the students were arranged
from A to Z in an increasing number of the classrooms.
And let's say we head to the middle room first,
and if the person in the middle room isn't James,
but his name starts with a letter before j,
we head to the right.
If not, we head to the left.
We then approach the middle room in the newly sectioned area.
We rinse and repeat.
Eventually we will find James just like the first method,
but we find him in a much faster way with the second method.
How much faster would that be?
Well, that depends on the number of students in the school.
Let's say there are 500 students and we're looking for one,
it would take about 80 minutes in the first manner,
but one and a half minutes with binary search.
But let's say they are 1,000 students in the school,
it would take 160 minutes with the first method
but 1.6 minutes with the second method.
Now, that's a whole lot of difference.
So a name is just a word.
But Google searches a combination of words,
making it a little bit more complicated.
So just like how we identify the first letter of each alphabet
of the name, Google identifies 200 unique factors making
your search terms faster.
If you recall, the effectiveness of binary search
depends on the prearrangement of data.
And that's why computer scientist are actively
looking for ways to sort, manage, and eventually retrieve
data fast and better.
In the same way, the TV remote goes near the TV,
the shoes go to the shoe rack, the coats go into the cupboard
and the winter gloves go into the winter jacket.
Aha!
So that's where my gloves are.
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Joshua, what are the things
that you like about your cut, and what are the things
that you don't like about it?
AUDIENCE: I guess I like the opening.
But I realize-- there were times where
I realized I have a better take, but it's
because they clicked it but I started earlier.
ELIZABETH CHOE: So there were takes
where you got cut off just at the beginning
or something like that.
AUDIENCE: So I realize I should have much,
much more takes, because you never know what happens.
And I had to scrap out an entire scene
because I was in a location where they had just
started preparing for some event,
and then everything became very noisy.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, so there were like last minute things
that came up in your locations.
AUDIENCE: I do recognize that the one where
I'm supposed to do animations the sound is off,
and the visuals are not really there yet.
ELIZABETH CHOE: You mean the one where
you're looking at the desk?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, at the black--
[SKIPPING THROUGH VIDEO]
AUDIENCE: Yeah, there's supposed to be animations here,
but I guess this is not probably the best one.
ELIZABETH CHOE: You were going to have your animations come up
here with your hotel room-- or your--
AUDIENCE: If I have to redo a scene,
this scene is the most inconsistent among the rest.
ELIZABETH CHOE: This was one where you were filming later
in the day.
AUDIENCE: Yes, this one was my first day,
but later in the evening.
And then the next day the rest.
Everything else in the next day except this.
AUDIENCE: I think in this piece, because A,
we don't have the animation, but B,
your eyes are looking at the animation as opposed
to still talking to the screen-- and I
think, from my perspective, I feel like there's a little bit
more of balance at play there of connecting with the audience
a little with your eyes.
Like if you're going to reshoot it, for me,
I think balancing looking down and still looking back
instead of just looking down during the animation
and then looking back at the end.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Looking at the animation is good.
It's kind of fun thing to do.
But again, look and acknowledge the audience as well.
I think this one, it's really just a matter
of energy level here.
Overall, your delivery is very nice.
It's a very natural.
I love the script.
Again, you're taking something that's very hard to visualize,
and that's why--
You know, we were trying to figure out
what topic to do when you were brainstorming,
and there were just no videos on binary search, which
was shocking to me.
Or there aren't very many good ones.
And there aren't very many videos on how Google works,
period.
And it's because it's very hard to visualize.
And I think you've done a nice job.
The only thing is this last scene.
The delivery is great.
But I almost would like to see this done in a computer
lab or something instead of in front of the Microsoft Office.
I know that you were trying to work with sort of that Kendall
Tech area, but it reads like a little maybe product
placement-y.
So if you want to reshoot that one if you have time,
I would say there are computer labs here that I can
help get you into if you want.
Were you going to have animations in this scene?
AUDIENCE: This would be just a number that pops up
and then a number below.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think that sparing use of labels
will also help this video too, like when you first
introduce the term binary search, have come up.
When you talk about the numbers.
Numbers are hard to keep track of in a video,
so just having those pop up.
AUDIENCE: So it would just be first measure 80 minutes
and binary search 1.5.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, something like that.
Something really simple.
And you've got a good background for it,
so I would go and take advantage of it.
AUDIENCE: You have such a smiley presence that's
so engaging on the camera.
You have such positive energy up there.
It's like you kind of want to smile while you're watching it.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And again, you're
taking something that is a seemingly intimidating subject,
which again is why it's very hard to find videos on computer
science, and even more rare to find a live hosted video
on computer science.
All the ones that are out there are usually
some sort of voiceover animated tutorial,
and I think that having you on screen being
the guide for the audience with this is very, very nice.
It's very powerful.
AUDIENCE: Could you go back to the beginning of that, where
you're in front of the desk and about to point
at the animation?
MALE IN VIDEO: --find James.
There's a better method known as binary--
AUDIENCE: I feel like someone just told you a joke
and we missed the joke.
And you're like kind of about to die laughing.
I don't know if you guys felt that same way when you saw it.
Did someone tell you something really funny?
AUDIENCE: I couldn't figure it out.
I don't know why I behaved like that.
I do remember a joke.
I did remember a joke.
AUDIENCE: I wanted to be like, what was so funny?
There's something funny going on here?
AUDIENCE: I must have saw something that he was doing.
Maybe he was in an awkward position.
AUDIENCE: I mean, I think you're going
to refilm this one anyway, but if you
do-- it was funny because in this moment I was thinking,
there was something funny that must have just happened,
and I don't know what it is.
ELIZABETH CHOE: What was I going to say?
For the shots that you did at the Koch Institute,
I think you can just center this.
Center it close enough.
Because I know you're trying rule of thirds here,
but there's sort of like-- it's non-homogeneous distribution
of this pattern in the background,
so it looks a little weird to have all this extra space.
So I would go ahead and just center this.
What do you guys think about the music in this video?
It's good?
It's a little light-hearted.
It doesn't play into the whole computer science
trope, which is nice.
I would bring-- go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I thought it was like 1950s suburbia, middle America
thing.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I would bring down the levels
just a little bit.
In the opening it's fine, but as it progressed,
I would either up your recorded levels for your own audio
or lower the music.
Once the bass starts driving, it gets a little distracting.
Any final comments?
Who's doing the Google Docs for Joshua?
AUDIENCE: David and Nathan.
Also, just as a comment, I think you
did a really, really excellent job
with the pacing of your cuts.
We never explicitly stated it, but I
think Elizabeth and I said it in the computer lab last week.
You did a really good job leaving a little bit of space
at the end of something that you said for people to absorb.
But then when you starting your new scene,
you cut it right before you dialog.
And so the video itself just felt really, really well-paced
because of that.
There was never any point of it where
I was waiting for something to happen.
It was all just like--
AUDIENCE: If I were to add, they have
that actually I didn't feel-- I cut once,
and I felt it was awkward.
And then I cut again, until it reached so near to the audio.
So it was a few times I had to cut to realize that it awkward.
Like even for 0.3 seconds, it would be awkward.
AUDIENCE: You have really good instincts to do that.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And I know that I have said this ad
nauseum in the emails, but I feel like there's
this sense of fear.
And maybe it's just the training that we
have in our traditional educational system,
but we all want to measure like 20 times
because heaven forbid we cut more than once, right?
And here you're literally cutting.
But it's through the process of cutting and trying
different things that you learn what feels right
and what makes sense in the video.
And I don't know of anyone who has ever made
a video on their first try.
Even if they've perfected the shot list, gotten the best
script ever, have their production date down
to the second, something will ultimately
end up happening that makes you reconsider
how you're going to cut things.
And it should.
It really should.
I mean, I am really happy to hear that that's
what you discovered, because I think that that goes maybe
a little against how we traditionally
go through school.
So I'm glad to hear that you try different things.
It's OK, do not be discouraged by having
to try different cuts.
It's a productive process that moves you forward.
OK, any thoughts from PJ before we screen?
AUDIENCE: So there's parts of the audio that I'm
moving so I can get the--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, you hear a little bit.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: So yeah, after we do that.
And then it was really hard trying
to keep it-- there's no-- after watching it,
it's like two videos.
It's hard because it's in one setting,
and they complete their form.
And I couldn't find like--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Music is hard.
It's so much harder than you initially think it will be.
You think, oh you just like slap something on in the background,
it'll be fine.
But it's very time consuming.
So it's very like-- I don't know.
It seemed very inspirational at the beginning.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Like inappropriately inspirational.
AUDIENCE: Friday Night Lights kind of thing.
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right.
Well, let's see.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-When we take complex things and break them into smaller pieces,
we find out that we know a lot more about things
than we think.
Now let's take this box-- ORCA I--
and create damage below the water line, which
I've indicated right here.
As we can see, we've damaged ORCA I right here.
Now let's put ORCA I on the water and see what happens.
[GURGLING]
The ORCA I sank due to the weight of the added water.
What if the ORCA I contained cargo, or oil, or even people?
Now let's take ORCA II and do the same thing.
So we can see that ORCA II did not sink,
although it is sitting on an angle towards the bow.
So why didn't ORCA II sink?
As easy as it sounds, this simple demonstration
is essential to the design of huge complex ships-- ships
that are responsible for carrying about 90%
of all our stuff.
As naval architects, how do we design
ships carrying our stuff to make it into port safely and not
sink?
Well, why don't we find out?
Here we have ORCA I and ORCA II from before.
Although ORCA I and ORCA II don't engage in international
trade, they behave just as a 1,000-foot container ship
would.
Now, let's take a look in ORCA I. We can
see that there's nothing in it.
It's just a box.
But if we look at ORCA II, we can
see that it's subdivided into these watertight compartments
by these transverse watertight bulkheads.
Now, what that means is that if we
were to damage this ship right here,
water would only flow into this compartment.
It would not go into this one, this one, or this one.
That would cause the ship to be angled or trimmed in the water,
but it would not cause the ship to sink completely.
We refer to ORCA II as being subdivided,
and we can see subdivision in many of these ship's plans.
It is unclear when subdivision first
started being used in ships, but accounts of 5th century
Chinese trade ships indicate that water
would be able to enter the vessel without sinking.
So let's find out why this happens.
Let's imagine a barge divided into 10 equal compartments.
One of them springs a leak from damage.
Since the ship is subdivided, only the first compartment
floods, and the ship remains afloat,
protecting both its people and cargo.
Although the added water causes a ship to trim,
it still has enough buoyancy to return to port for repairs.
Ships still sink, though.
It's both expensive and impractical
to try to design the unsinkable ship,
especially when these ships will never
see that amount of damage.
That's why, as naval architects, we
use computer programs to help us out with subdivision.
Computers make it easy to simulate certain damage
cases in practically no time.
With different software, we can damage certain compartments,
and see how the ship responds to it.
This gives the naval architect a good idea
of what parts to improve on the ship, if any.
So even though ships seem like these intricate, complex
things, they're really just based on principles
that we all already know.
[APPLAUSE]
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Just out of curiosity,
did you shoot this video in sequence?
Like, you shot the first scenes first, second--
AUDIENCE: So the first scenes were second.
The second scenes were first.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Really?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
That wasn't out of design, it was
just because the the only time we could go there was day.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, it's a location practicality there.
Any comments for PJ?
AUDIENCE: I didn't feel the change of music,
as in, it was natural.
I didn't feel like there was a sudden change.
AUDIENCE: OK.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I liked the second song.
I agree that the first one is a little Friday Night Lights.
[LAUGHTER]
ELIZABETH CHOE: The thing with-- just like comedy,
pulling off drama is also really hard to do in YouTube videos,
because you're not working with, like, a sweeping epic
or a documentary.
It's like a little YouTube blurb,
and we had trouble with that with Farts
when he talks about how Clostridium difficile kills
some thousand Americans a year.
We didn't want to have grandpa's banjo playing in the background
when he says that, obviously.
But it's not like we were going to insert music
from Gone with the Wind in the background either.
AUDIENCE: Well, one thing that I wanted to try music
because a lot of the places I was in, there was-- you
can see there's a lot of cuts, so where it goes to,
and if there's not anything underneath,
it's very pronounced.
And I tried editing a lot of it out.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Let's see.
So I know that you were hesitant about being
in front of the camera too.
AUDIENCE: So natural.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And I'm surprised
that you said you filmed them in the rivers,
because I feel like the stuff that you have in the end
is really, really natural, and I thought that you would
have maybe done that second.
It's hard to host while you're doing a demo.
You just have a million things to think about.
But in general, the hosting is really nice.
It's really, really natural, especially this part.
I can tell that Yuliya and-- who was it--
David was filming with you?
AUDIENCE: Kenneth.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Kenneth was filming with you.
They probably tried to make you laugh in some of them
and smile.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, they were really good at doing that.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
I think this scene is your strongest hosting.
Just, like, going back and forth between the computer,
this scene just plays out very nicely.
And again, taking a seemingly intimidating subject,
and welcoming and inviting the viewers in.
It's very nice.
I would say, in general, the cutting advice
that [INAUDIBLE] gave, which is to leave
the room at the end of cuts-- or at the end of scenes--
and cut very close to when you start
talking at the beginning of scenes, might help with this.
There was one--
AUDIENCE: Is it the moment where Yuliya's in the picture with--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh, yeah.
That's, like, a weird insert thing.
AUDIENCE: I was, like, who is she?
What is she doing here?
She needs to get cut out.
ELIZABETH CHOE: In general, I love the speed up walk,
and how you open the door into the lab.
I love seeing the background.
It's very cool.
I think you can speed up you damaging ORCA I.
AUDIENCE: OK.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And I think, you say something like--
AUDIENCE: Let's take this box-- ORCA I-- and create damage
below the water line, which I've indicated right here.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
I think you can actually cut that part out completely,
because after you cut it, you say, as you can see,
we've damaged ORCA I, so I think that's enough information.
And I get what you're saying with the water line,
but I don't think it's super relevant to the point
of the video, so I think it's OK if you cut that out entirely.
Oh, yeah, when you go from this scene--
AUDIENCE: --in the weight of the added water.
What if the ORCA I contained cargo, or oil, or even people?
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
The music here is, like, it's like trying
to pull out my heartstrings.
AUDIENCE: Now let's take ORCA II and do the same thing.
We can see that ORCA II did not sink-- ORCA II sink.
As easy as it sounds, this simple demonstration
is essential to the design of huge complex ships.
So why didn't ORCA II sink?
ELIZABETH CHOE: So this is an example--
it happened one other time where you leave a gap in between some
of your sentences, and the gap is a little long.
So you can cut to a digital zoom of the same shot
to clean up the gap a little bit.
Because I think that you were doing it to help you host,
and, like, help you get through the lines, which
is totally OK and understandable,
but I would just hide that gap a little.
AUDIENCE: I stuttered here, and I kept looking back
to the boat, so it was weird, like I
was using that almost as my crutch,
that I had this prop that I could kind of like square up.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think you actually were--
your delivery was fine here.
I wasn't distracted by it.
AUDIENCE: --II did not sink, although it is sitting
an angle towards the bow.
So why didn't ORCA II sink?
ELIZABETH CHOE: I like the way you ask the question.
That's, like, how you would normally.
AUDIENCE: As easy as it sounds--
ELIZABETH CHOE: And see how that gap feels just a little bit
too long.
AUDIENCE: --this simple demonstration is essential
to the design of huge complex ships--
ships that are responsible for carrying about 90%--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Do you have B-roll or pictures
of some of these ships?
That was the one thing I was thinking
throughout this video was, like, I
would love to see what the things look like in real life.
AUDIENCE: I could probably do something like that.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think this would be a great place
to cut to B-roll or pictures.
You can just keep the audio, but that would help mix
up the visuals a lot too.
AUDIENCE: --of all our stuff is--
ELIZABETH CHOE: OK.
So this cut was a little-- this was
what I was talking about with the line of sight
when I gave the editing lecture.
In the one scene, you're kind of sitting like this, right?
And you have, like-- this is a terrible drawing.
But you have your boat in the water, and it's sort of, like,
a weird semi-bird's-eye.
And then you cut, and you're not quite
in a different enough position, so it feels
just, like, slightly jarring.
It feels like someone just tipped the camera
over a little bit.
So either cut to a closer shot of you
like that, to hide that a little bit, or do B-roll there.
If you're coming out of B-roll here,
then this transition won't be as weird,
and my comment is totally irrelevant, but just
something to think about.
AUDIENCE: I mean, so-- sorry, I'm,
like, 10 steps ahead of my head, where I am in actual reality.
You never put your Coast Guard outfit on.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I felt like if I wanted to try to make
it seem like less, like, me talking,
that would have just put on a whole different persona.
So I kind of, like, I'm wearing boat shoes,
so that's hard to do.
AUDIENCE: OK.
I just wonder if at the very, very last scene, where
you have your finale comment about a very simple concept
as floating, if ever there were a moment
to put that hat on, and have your awesome Coast Guard
outfit on, that would be it.
ELIZABETH CHOE: If you don't want to shoot it now,
we're going to make you do it next week when
we shoot season 3, OK?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
Got to go to the dry cleaners.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah, that's a good comment.
AUDIENCE: The thing that you have
that's so cool is, I mean, we talked about the fact
that you actually, legitimately, are out there
in the Coast Guard.
And you say that, but showing us that in your film
is really powerful.
And even if, at just the very end,
you tie that real life application back,
I think that would be really, incredibly cool.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Just for the last sentence too.
And again, like, time permitting, right?
Because I know that you guys don't have a ton of time
to incorporate all this stuff.
You've already gotten plenty of footage
of you talking in this setting, so it
wouldn't be very jarring to have you
say the last sentence, like, out by the sea, or by the boats.
AUDIENCE: Or even if when you say, like,
I'm a Coast Guard, whatever, even if you quickly
have a picture of even photos of you in uniform, to just put-- I
don't know.
I don't know how that would look.
But just something that shows us, and doesn't tell us
this totally authentic side to yourself would be cool.
AUDIENCE: So do you have access to the base here?
AUDIENCE: To the one in North End?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Because one of our--
AUDIENCE: They have shirts there.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I mean, one of the Sloan fellows is also an officer.
AUDIENCE: OK.
[INAUDIBLE]?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: No.
He's based in there.
ELIZABETH CHOE: So again, I know it's
short notice-- you'd have to do it between today and tomorrow,
basically, so it's OK if you can't do it,
but something to think about, if you want
to do it for Science Out Loud.
All right.
Yuliya, you ready?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
So there are-- the beginning and the end, we filmed outside.
There's a lot of wind, and I couldn't connect the mike,
because I was standing far away.
So I tried to do voiceover.
I don't know how it sounds, because honestly, I
was just tired of hearing my voice at that point.
And then, there is this, actually, like the thumbnail,
this is where the animation is supposed to be.
So the white screen is animations.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah?
AUDIENCE: David and Kenneth are the ones
who are Google Doc commenting on this.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Thank you.
And we'll go through it again if you guys forget.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-Hi.
What do snowflakes and cellphones have in common?
Well, let me start by drawing a snowflake first.
I draw an equilateral triangle, divide each side
into three parts, and draw another equilateral triangle
on top of each one.
Then take out the middle, and repeat
the process, this time with 1, 2, 3, 4 times
3, which is 12 sides.
Eventually, the shape will start looking something like this.
In mathematics, this is called a Koch snowflake.
If I repeated my process again and again,
I would see this same pattern anywhere I looked.
This is a Koch snowflake, this time drawn on a computer.
Such neverending patterns, that on any scale,
on any level of zoom, look roughly the same,
are called fractals.
Computer scientists can program these patterns
by repeating an often simple mathematical process
over and over.
In the 1990s, a radio astronomer by the name of Nathan Cohen
used fractals to revolutionize wireless communications.
At the time, Cohen was having troubles with his landlord.
The man wouldn't let him put an antenna on his roof.
So Cohen designed a more compact fractal radio antenna instead.
The landlord didn't notice it, and it worked better
than the ones before.
Working further, Cohen designed a new antenna,
this time using a fractal called the Menger sponge.
The Menger sponge is not really the sponge
you'd be scrubbing your back with,
but you can still think of it like that.
Imagine both water and soap getting through your sponge's
holes, except the water is Wi-Fi, and the soap is,
say, Bluetooth.
The fractal's infinite sponginess
allows it to receive many different frequencies
simultaneously.
Before Cohen's invention, antennas
had to be cut for one frequency, and that was the only frequency
they could operate at.
Without Cohen's sponge, your cell phone
would have to look something like a [INAUDIBLE]
to receive multiple signals, including
the one your friends use when they call.
Cohen later proved that only fractal shapes
could work with such a wide range of frequencies.
Today, millions of wireless devices,
such as laptops and bar code scanners,
use Cohen's fractal antenna.
Cohen's genius invention, however,
was not the first application of fractals in the world.
Nature has been doing it the whole time,
and not just the snowflakes.
Natural selection favors the most efficient systems
and organisms, often of a fractal form.
The spiral fractal, for example, is
present in seashells, broccoli, and hurricanes.
The fractal tree is relatively easy to program,
and can be used to study river systems, blood
vessels, and lightning bolts.
So many natural systems previously thought off limits
to mathematicians can now be explained in terms of fractals.
Mathematics allows us to learn nature's best practices
and then apply them to solve real world problems.
Much like Cohen's antenna revolutionized the field
of telecommunications, other fractal research
is changing medicine, weather prediction,
and building design here at MIT and everywhere in the world.
Look around you.
What beautiful patterns do you see?
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right.
Any thoughts from anyone?
Should we dive right in?
Yuliya, what are your favorite and least favorite parts
about this cut?
AUDIENCE: Let's see.
There was some scenes that I liked better than others.
That's mostly because of the lighting and the sound.
I think the one in the classroom had
a nice sound and nice lighting.
So I guess the indoor scenes were a lot easier to shoot.
ELIZABETH CHOE: So I think, in general, again,
very nice script.
This came such a long way from the initial ideation phase,
and I think it is, like computer science-- I mean,
my favorite thing about all the videos that you guys have done
is the topics are so unique, and so different than what
people normally get in school.
And they're taking all these concepts
that they've learned in school, but just putting it
in a very different context.
And it's hopefully because you're talking about the things
that you're excited about.
And so I'm really happy with how you've transformed, like,
math, which is, again, a very hard video
to do if you don't do it in the style of Vi Hart,
and putting your face and hosting it.
It's done nicely.
I think, in general, the video has a very fast pace to it,
and I don't know if it's because the cuts are happening
so frequently, or you're naturally a very animated
person, which is nice, but leave a little bit of room,
like, a little bit of breathing space to compensate for that.
I think maybe the reason why it was hard for me
to follow a little bit was the opening
seemed a little too short.
And I know that you had edited it from the last time I had
seen it, but let's--
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-Hi.
What do snowflakes and cell phones have in common?
Well, let me start by drawing a snowflake first.
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
It seems like it's so overly condensed.
And I know you had brought it down from something that
was a little bit bigger, but I think
that it's just so, like, it comes out of nowhere, like, hi.
What do these have in common?
It's like, wait, what?
Like, I wouldn't have had that question.
And even getting rid of the hi helps with that.
It's a nice question.
What do snowflakes and cell phone antennas have in common?
But there's not enough of a lead into you
going into describing what a fractal is, yet
fractals is on the title.
I think that maybe you could do a little bit
with the transition there, and I'll
brainstorm with you, because I can't think of anything
off the top my head.
Do you guys have any suggestions for that opening?
Yeah, Andrea.
AUDIENCE: Maybe like, I don't know exactly how
you could do it, but almost like the first shot, where you're
saying, what do snowflakes-- and then you see, like,
sort of an image of a snowflake and cell phones,
and then it sort of zooms out, and you
realize that the picture is on the cell phone.
AUDIENCE: Maybe.
AUDIENCE: Sort of have in common.
And then, you're-- and then you.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I mean, I think it's
OK to introduce the idea of fractals,
as long as you set it up a little bit more.
So something like, what do snowflakes and cell phones
have in common?
Neverending repeating patterns called fractals.
And then do a little bit of a slower transition
into you at the blackboard here.
Something a little bit more like that.
I think the visuals help a lot.
I know that you had filmed up in Stata, because eventually you
talk about how it affects architecture,
but I don't think that this location is super
vital to the opening, and I think
you can get cleaner audio if you do VO,
or if you just re-shoot it with you on the table,
and then you have a picture of a snowflake that comes up
in a picture of a cell phone, or something like Andrea said.
But I think having the audience onboard from the get-go
will help with the pacing of the video as it continues.
I know that you had struggled with the music too,
and I think-- I don't know-- so much of music
is personal taste.
To me, all I can think about when
I hear this music is, like, old Korean soap operas.
And so I don't know if it is, like,
the most appropriate tone, and maybe I
feel that way because of experiences of my parents
watching them, but I think you could play around
with some other pieces.
I like the general tempo of the music,
and how it's sort of this same melody on loop
in the background, so it's not super distracting,
and it's a good volume.
But I would play around with a couple other songs,
and I can help you with that, if you
want to run some options by me.
AUDIENCE: I wanted to use this one because it
was kind of calming, so kind of to offset the general fast pace
and animated talking to something
soothing in the background.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah So I think it's a good tone to start with,
and again, maybe it's just my personal preference,
but something about it made me fixate on the music
more than on the text.
Did anyone else have-- maybe it really
is, just, like I can't get over how much it reminds
me of Korean soap operas.
AUDIENCE: It stood out for me at the start,
like, especially for this scene, it
gave me the feeling like it was going to something romantic.
I don't know.
ELIZABETH CHOE: It's very sentimental,
like the music evokes something very sentimental,
just like the opening of the ships one
evokes a mood that's very different from what
you're about to go into.
And especially if you open with something like that,
if you'd open with a banjo thing-- or not the banjo--
whatever you had for the second piece,
I think it would have been fine.
But something about opening with music
that sets a tone that's very different from what you're
intending to achieve, it threw me off a little bit.
But luckily, it's something that it's easily fixable.
You can easily play around with different types of music.
AUDIENCE: Because for me, you give us,
because there was a Digicom video,
and there was the idea that you could use something calming,
so I tried to use something calming,
but as you see, I didn't choose that,
because I realized the calming one will make
my video feel very monotonous.
But when I observe the Digicom audio closer,
I realized there was some percussion notes,
so that helped.
So maybe you could find something
similar to what you have right now, but with a little bit--
not too much-- percussion here would help with the pacing.
ELIZABETH CHOE: That's really good.
And again, with music, there's no hard and fast rules with
what works and what doesn't.
I mean, a lot of it is just, like,
your gut feeling when you hear it, if it makes sense,
or if it doesn't.
And obviously, my gut feeling was very different from
everyone else's.
Yeah, Jamie?
AUDIENCE: First of all, compared to where we started, this is
isn't, like, oh my goodness.
This is way, way more awesome than I ever thought
was possible, with our first conversation
about it's not real, so this is like--
and what I loved with the fractal piece at the beginning,
where you really explained, because we gave you
that feedback in the last time, was
you need to set us up for success in explaining what
a fractal actually is, and I thought
you did a really fantastic job.
One think that you may want to think
about is you have a very sing-songy voice.
Your voice is high, and it's kind of sing-songy.
And at the beginning, you set up this--
I don't know if you've ever seen Mrs. Doubtfire,
but it's this movie where Robin Williams is dressed up
as this old grandmother, and is just
kind of this hilarious figure.
And I think there's an unintended humor
to your sing-songy-ness at the very beginning that
makes me feel less credible wanting to watch you.
And I think there's a very simple fix, which
is just grounding your voice in a lower register.
When you talk with your voice later on,
just listen to that as you watch yourself.
I notice that the times when your voice is a little lower
is when I don't notice that as much, and so since you are
thinking of reworking this first scene,
you may want to think about consciously grounding
your voice a little bit more in your chest,
so that we don't, like, unintentionally
think it's funny when it's not intended to be.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And I know George
had said the camera calms you down,
and in general it does, and you compensate with higher energy,
but again, this is what I saying before, and oftentimes,
hopefully, this stuff that we were saying earlier
in the class makes a little more sense after you guys have gone
through it, but sometimes the tendency is to compensate
or equate higher energy to higher pitch, higher
volume, like, higher everything, and it's really not
that at all.
A lot of it is just the mentality of,
like, I'm going to be really present here, right now,
and really give it 100% here.
AUDIENCE: There's actually a really good TED
Talk that's about how to speak to be listened to.
And it's basically, you do these little vocal exorcises,
and they both relax you, and they'll
drop your register down, like, just going through them.
And I had to do those prior to doing--
I learned something similar when I was first
learning public speaking.
ELIZABETH CHOE: It's a great thing
to think about not just with making these videos,
but when you're giving talks later on.
Again, like, when you're nervous or excited,
your tendency is to talk a lot with your hands, which
I know I do, and talk really high pitched.
So it's just a good thing to think about, in general,
after this class.
AUDIENCE: Number two.
AUDIENCE: At the beginning of those voiceovers,
I was trying to match the video in my room.
And it did feel a little bit off as well.
I wasn't sure how to--
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think you could do the opening,
like, just you set up a tripod, and sitting
in your room or something, just something really simple.
What do this and this have in common?
Well, it's actually neverending repeating
patterns called fractals, and then you go into fractals.
AUDIENCE: On a very practical level,
like, I do a lot of helping of people get ready for talks
in my lab, and just, like, grounding your feet wherever
you are, feeling like you're grounded to the earth,
and then getting a really deep breath, like way from in here
before you speak, that will help you fight that tendency
to go way up high.
ELIZABETH CHOE: And I think the animations here
will look really good.
Again, like, visual cues, anything
that you're going to add, even if it's just still pictures
will make a big difference.
And I would play around with the ending too.
I like that you do the review, but again, the audio is hard
when you're that far away.
And you may be able to shoot this in the same room
that you shoot the opening in-- or you re-shoot it,
and then, I don't know, have a picture of Stata
just pop up next to you.
I think that's a way to compensate pretty easily.
What is the world background for?
AUDIENCE: It matches the world at the very end.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And it was just a nice background for titles.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Oh.
I would just go black, honestly.
Just a black background.
In general, I think simple reads more professional.
Oh, I don't know.
Professional's not the right word, but simple is better,
I think.
And I didn't make the connection of, like, look
at the world when I saw the background.
It's such a minor thing, though.
I mean, it's just your credit, so it's OK,
but just something to think about.
Any final comments for Yuliya?
AUDIENCE: I thought that one scene in the dorm
was really good, where you inadvertently
had all the stuff behind us.
I didn't know that it was going to turn out like that.
AUDIENCE: Oh, the one in the lounge.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And I think it was the best lighting, too, of all of them.
AUDIENCE: That's great.
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right.
So who's going to comment on Yuliya's?
AUDIENCE: PJ and Josh.
ELIZABETH CHOE: All right.
Last one, and then we'll take a break.
David, do you want to say anything before we screen?
Your video will just speak for itself.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-If I went out for a run now, dressed like this,
you'd probably call me nuts, right?
Because it's so cold outside that
I'd probably die of hypothermia.
However, in 2009, Wim Hof managed
to run a full marathon in minus 20 degrees Celsius,
wearing nothing but shorts.
While most people would probably die, Wim Hof has survived.
So what makes Wim Hof able to survive where others can't?
The research team were suggesting
that they subjected him to an icy bath for almost two hours.
While most people would have their core body temperature
drop to below 35 degrees, causing hypothermia to kick in,
Wim Hof's body temperature dropped
to a merely 37.4 degrees Celsius,
staying surprisingly warm.
And the funny thing is that the researchers couldn't
find exactly what had happened.
Maybe it's his genetic ancestry that saves him.
In a sample study, studies have found
that individuals with cold-climate ancestry,
have been found to have mitochodria
that can produce more heat and less chemical energy.
Mitochondria is like a mini-furnace
that burns the sugars from the food you eat
into chemical and heat energy.
Individuals like this are better able to survive the cold,
however, scientists haven't fully studied Wim Hof's genome,
so we don't really know.
Wim Hof practices g-tummo, a Tibetan form
of meditation and breathing, which allows
him to double his metabolism.
Remember those mitochondria I mentioned before?
Wim Hop can produce enough heat through these mitochondria
with special breathing, and massive contractions that
can produce enough heat to body warm.
Well, you might be tempted to believe that this
is wishy-washy nonsense.
However, participants in a study at NUS
have been shown to increase their core body
temperature using g-tummo, and they had no prior experience.
Now, why is it so?
Strong increases in brain waves were noticed,
and many have theorized that this enables the body
to effectively heat the center as well as distribute it
to the extremities.
We do not fully understand Wim Hof's methods.
Although some have tried to follow in his footsteps,
you would be unwise to do the same.
And Wim Hof even claims that he can control
other parts of his body.
Now, if this is true, and scientifically a fact,
who knows what doors could open.
And since science hasn't figured it out yet,
and I, myself, don't practice these methods,
maybe I'd better be off donning more jackets.
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: David, what was the hardest
part about filming this video?
AUDIENCE: I think it was following the script.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Following the script.
Just, like, remembering it when you were shooting.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I really think that was the hardest,
because trying to say everything while looking at a camera
felt very, very real.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yep.
That makes a lot of sense.
And again, like, using your partner to the fullest
extent when you're filming can really
help with that sort of humanizing
the mechanical element of production,
trying to talk to the person behind the camera.
I think that you didn't look uncomfortable on camera.
The only thing is, in general, you talk really fast,
and with the music that was in it,
I think that you can take some of the music
out, or drop the volume a ton, or play with, like,
less busy music.
But having someone who talks naturally fast, and then, like,
very upbeat music in the background
is just, like, exacerbate, it's, like,
constructive interference.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] calm music,
but I felt like I put calm music in.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
I mean, you can also experiment with not using music
in certain parts of the video.
You guys don't need to have music the whole way through.
It's OK.
And I think because you talk so fast naturally,
the music can be-- remember, with music, first do no harm,
right?
It can be hard to understand just the sheer amount
of content that you're saying when the music is
so upbeat and so loud.
AUDIENCE: I think the music was, at least for me, personally,
it had the same effect as when Elizabeth was showing
the choices for the heart video, where at the beginning,
it was a little bit too much for me, and I got the giggles.
I don't know what about you putting on running shoes,
and, like, just the loudness of that music,
it just seemed a little bit ridiculous,
that I wasn't mentally ready for some serious facts
at that point.
AUDIENCE: I wanted to make it upbeat.
I wanted it to be like I was going to run in the cold.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[END PLAYBACK]
AUDIENCE: It's good, like, until the point
where you ask the question.
From, like, instead of being, like, oh, OK, it's OK to be,
like, oh, this is me when I'm running in the cold.
But then as soon as you switch to actual explanation--
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
I would just duck it out after you ask the question.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-If I went out for a run now dressed like this,
you'd probably call me nuts, right?
Because it's so cold outside that
I'd probably die of hypothermia.
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: And also there, I
mean, everyone's done this, where they take
pauses in weird parts of their sentences-- I mean,
if you wanted to make it funny, I don't know if you do.
AUDIENCE: She's making--
ELIZABETH CHOE: I am so sorry.
AUDIENCE: I think it's one of my favorite things--
ELIZABETH CHOE: The last time this happened, I was thinking,
oh my gosh, this happens to be more
than I would like to admit, but I was, like,
I hope this doesn't happen during the class,
and it ends up on the internet, but now it's going to anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
If you wanted to make it funny, you
could zoom in-- as you-- nevermind.
Don't make it funny.
AUDIENCE: So if you wanted-- I was
going to say-- every time you pause, cut out that pause,
and then maybe a little bit closer to your face, like,
what if I die?
And then, like, zoom in, I'm cold.
That's really comedic.
ELIZABETH CHOE: It's kind of like the thing that we did,
and it's not very good, like the extreme zoom,
and you could make it, like-- with comedy,
going big or going home works the best, because you really
have to commit to it, so if you want it to have
a huge comedic effect, you would, like,
zoom in really close, and you would have, like,
a weird sound effect.
I'm so sorry, you guys.
AUDIENCE: I think it's really funny to you.
ELIZABETH CHOE: But if you don't want to make it funny,
which I would recommend, either cut out the gaps and alternate
between zooming in and out like Hank Green does on SciShow.
There's one other time that happens, like, right here.
In general, like, if your gaps are happening
in places that are not at the ends of scenes,
really be conscious of how long those last.
And having two other people look at your video today
will help, because sometimes it's
hard to tell when you're watching yourself
if something looks like it's lasting too long or not.
But if you have gaps that are too long that
are in the middle of your scenes,
you can use the trick of digital zooming
in and out to hide the cuts.
Does anyone have general comments?
Yes, Yuliya.
AUDIENCE: I like the delivery.
It was really natural.
And the music was sometimes distracting.
Another thing that had that effect
were some of the backgrounds, so like the one where you're
holding a trashcan, and there's a person,
and then there's a trashcan.
So I wasn't sure, like, did that mean
the person was in the trashcan, like, what happened,
and, like, yeah, like, this scene.
And then there were some others, like the lab.
I wasn't sure why the lab was there.
Even though it was really cool.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I know that you held up
the trashcan because you were trying to say,
like, he was in a bucket.
But again, with the music, it's hard to hear that you're
explaining the bucket thing, so I would just
cut to the picture of him before you hold up the trashcan.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- --team were suggesting that they subjected him to an icy
bath for almost two hours.
[END PLAYBACK]
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
I mean, in general, that line is spoken
so quickly that it's hard to follow what you're doing.
AUDIENCE: And it's not just the speed.
I think you need to put a little more diction
in between your words, so that, like, what I hear happening
in they're kind of slurring all together,
so it's not just a matter of speed,
but it's that I'm having trouble actually separating
this word from this word, and therefore, there
are chunks that feel like one big long word,
that they're actually made up of four or five words.
I think there's a piece of slowing down, but then also,
forcing yourself to use over-diction to clarify
your words.
That'll help a lot too, more so than you
think, because it will help clean up those little spaces
in between the words to then provide me with a little more,
like, OK, I'm with you every single step of the way, if that
makes sense.
So if you are going to do any retaking of videos,
try really hard to really tighten up the way
that you say the words, in addition
to slowing down a little bit.
I think that'll help people.
ELIZABETH CHOE: I think if you do that, that'll inherently
help you slow down, because you're going to think
about each word at a time.
I like the use of pictures here.
It's really helpful, because this
is an instance where we just don't have access
to shoot any of this.
I would play around with, in general, zooming in and out,
when you're doing long takes.
I forgot to mention this, but I thought
that was a really nice thing that Yuliya did in her video,
was-- because we had talked about this last week--
how to clean up some of the gaps--
and she does some nice work with cutting into,
just like her hand drawing the fractals,
and I think that, in general, people
can take more advantage of that technique.
Oh.
So here you're cutting in between closeups,
but this is another thing with the iTrace, where
in the first scene you're on the left, and on the second scene,
you're on the right, and you're also not
in the same 3D plane of field as you were before.
So in the previous scene, you were close to the bench,
and here, did you scoot up forward?
So it's not terrible-- it's not like the end of the world
or anything, but it's, like, a little jarring,
and I guess I'm subconsciously taking time
to adjust my sense of space and where
you are when that cut happens.
I don't necessarily think you have to re-shoot it,
but I would either-- let's watch it.
AUDIENCE: And they had no prior experience.
Now, why is it so?
Strong increases in brain waves were noticed,
and many have theorized that this enables the body
to effectively heat the center as well as distribute it
to the extremities.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Is there a B-roll
that you could use there?
Because I think that's a really good opportunity to-- it's
a key point that you're connecting
what someone is doing with their mind,
and how that's legitimately connecting
to the rest of their body.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
ELIZABETH CHOE: Could you even just use pictures of the brain,
and then, like, the human body?
Again, this is a really hard thing to visualize,
and I know you're not working with a ton of resources,
but I think that's an opportunity
to maybe try voiceover with the technique
that Jamie was talking about, because it's such a crucial bit
to the video, actually.
That's where you're actually tying the science
into something that seems a little pseudo science.
AUDIENCE: Keeping that in mind, as you watch your video--
and whoever's talking over with you,
really connecting it and grounding it
in the real science too.
Because I liked your furnace metaphor,
but then I was distracted by the burning exploding boxes,
and if I've never heard of mitochondria before,
or cellular respiration type things,
that wouldn't be very distanced.
I would think explosions rather than this is grounded
in my biology type things.
And so maybe think of places, where
you can include images like the circulatory system, things
like that.
Just, like, keep grounding it.
AUDIENCE: When you cut from the guy doing meditation
to you sitting cross-legged, was that purposeful?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
I'm supposed to be doing meditation.
AUDIENCE: OK.
That's what I thought.
Because I was like, not 100% sure, but I was pretty sure
that was a choice that you made.
There's no comment.
I just had a question.
ELIZABETH CHOE: Any other thoughts for David?
So you guys want to do Google Docs versus just talking one
on one with people?
Is that the consensus?
AUDIENCE: Could we do both?
ELIZABETH CHOE: Yeah.
You can totally do both.
So the rest of class time is for feedback for each other,
and this is a super, super crucial, critical part
of the production process.
During the break, I will post a link
onto the Tumblr that has all the Google Docs that I will
finish making for everyone.
So for example, Yuliya, your two commenters are Joshua and PJ.
So Josh and PJ, just go into your corresponding page,
and on the time code, just leave your comments.
I will comment on everyone's rough cuts as well.
And again, don't worry if you're repeating the same remarks
as other people are doing.
How about we spend-- after the break-- doing the Google Docs
stuff, and then whenever you guys finish,
I guess, in the order of people finishing,
group up, and give one on one feedback as well.
And we can help facilitate that too.
Does that sound good to everyone?
The hardest part is over.
The hardest part is just getting the first cut.
It's getting the first script out there.
And hopefully, moving forward, going to Thursday,
it'll be easier.