Assignment 1: Why I love science
Martijn Luinstra 11 Feb 2021
For the first assignment, I had to make a video explaining why I love science and what gets me excited for my discipline.
The story I wanted to tell was how I got interested in computers as a child and why I’m still excited about their potential after so many years. From the beginning, I started thinking about the visuals that would accompany the video. One of my ideas was to include the old “word art” feature of Microsoft Word, that is still cherished by many and the old Solitaire that was included in early versions of the Windows operating system for which I knew I still had the binaries lying around on a hard drive.
When trying to write the script, I got distracted by collection footage of the Solitaire game for a lot longer than I should have. This took a much bigger chunk of my time budget, so the rest of the project unfortunately turned into a rush job.
To save some time, I combined writing the script with filming myself working on my laptop. I quickly collected the other footage using the screen capture tool built into Windows 10 and finally stitched everything together using DaVinci Resolve, a video editing application that I have some limited experience with.
In the end I’m not really satisfied with the result. I wish I finished the script quicker and wouldn’t have wasted time on collecting a few seconds of footage from an old game (and getting distracted by it). That way, I would have been able to spend much more time collecting interesting imagery to accompany my story, and I could maybe even have found some music to tie it all together.
There are still a few things I like about the video. I’m quite happy with the way I integrated the script into the footage of Microsoft Word, even though the timing is a bit off. The part I like the best is where the images shown to illustrate applications of data science, are revealed to be search results, which ties in with the final part of the story.
Maybe I will revisit this project some day, making sure I won’t waste my time on playing a virtual card game.
Comments
Comment by Marloes
12 Feb 2021 at 09:36Op het filmpje zien we hoe je computert en kijken we mee op je scherm. Vooral dat tweede maakt het een dynamisch en interessant filmpje. Leuke afwisseling en leuk einde, maar misschien is het een idee om in een volgend filmpje wat vrolijker te kijken en wat minder beelden te herhalen.
Comment by Aafke
12 Feb 2021 at 09:46I see a video with someone working on the computer and explaining what is so interesting about computers. This makes me interested as well, and also thinking ‘Hmm I really don’t know much about programming and other difficult computer stuff’. What I really liked was that you changed betweet you working on the computer and what was on your screen, and the fun facts (about the telescope and the MRI, I did not know that). A suggestion to further improve your video would be to add some music.