SCIENCE VIDEOS MADE SIMPLE
A short guide to making simple whiteboard-style videos for scientists
OVERVIEW
This guide was created in early 2017 to guide a bunch of graduate students through the process of creating simple science videos for general audiences using whiteboards, stick figures, and video capture devices like smartphones (we used Apple iPods, which are no longer available, but the techniques still stand).
Since then the available technologies have improved – for instance, most smart phones will record good audio without the help of an external microphone, and recording apps have evolved. But the basic approaches and principles remain the same. For a more in-depth article on the underlying ideas and process, see here.
Back in 2012, I started playing around with simple yet effective ways of communicating science using YouTube videos. Inspired by the early videos from Kahn Academy, Minute Physics and others, I was intrigued to see what could be achieved by experts who knew a lot, but had little talent and less time.
The result was the YouTube channel Risk Bites – a channel that uses simple whiteboard-style videos to explore and make accessible the science of risk.
For a scrappy channel created by an academic who definitely does have little time and less talent, Risk Bites has been a great success. When these guides were created in 2017 the channel was approaching a million views, our top videos had been seen well 50,000 times each, our videos had been used used by major news outlets as explainers, and each week, visitors to the channel are viewing over three hundred hours of content.*
Despite its sizeable reach and impact, Risk Bites was not a high-cost time-intensive enterprise. Over the course of the past several years I’ve learned how to streamline the process, where to focus on production quality and where to lean into my limitations, how to embrace authenticity, and how to produce high-value content with little turnaround time and no funding.
This isn’t to say that making videos using the techniques behind Risk Bites is easy–it’s not. Yet with perseverance and a commitment to quality where it counts, most experts (scientists or otherwise) are capable of doing a surprisingly good job with only a smart phone (and tripod), some basic video editing software, a clear workflow, and a good dollop of humility and imagination!
To help others achieve this, I put this short guide together back in 2017, based on a two and a half day workshop organized through the Arizona State University Risk Innovation Lab.
The guide is built around eight modules, which cover:
Through the modules, the following two videos are used as examples of what can be achieved using a smartphone and some basic equipment:
Science videos made simple: pencil and paper technique
Science videos made simple: whiteboard technique
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.
Next …
Modules:
Back to the OVERVIEW
*As of September 2024 the Risk Bites channel on YouTube had over 5 million views averaging just under 1,000 views per day, with the top-viewed video exceeding one million views.