Not boring!
February 2007
NESTA's Planet SciCast competition for short films about science demonstrations
Kim Thomas
Planet Science is one of the more joyous places on the web. Launched in 2001 as part of the Government’s Science Year, the website is packed with resources and ideas for making science fun. These range from a ‘Stump the Scientist’ section, which has difficult questions sent in from users (“Does wind make a noise?”) through ‘Activity of the Week’ (such as removing the eggshell from an egg but leaving the egg intact) to ‘Out there’, which contains numerous interactive games and suggestions for experiments. It’s all “terribly practical,” says Katie Walsh, the site’s project manager and editor: “We don’t want you to be sitting in front of your computer, we want you to be going out and experimenting with different things, but there are also a lot of interactive experiences and games. It’s almost like an entertainment site that features science rather than a science site.”
As such, it’s enjoyed by teachers, pupils of all ages and parents, so it’s not surprising that during a typical weekday in term time, Planet Science receives 6,000 visits.
Now Katie has decided to take user involvement one step further by launching Planet SciCast: a competition that will result in a video database of scientific experiments. The idea, says Katie, came from Jonathan Sanderson, a television producer who makes science programmes for children such as How2 and Mechanibals.
Planet SciCast has four elements: some training in schools on how to make short films of science demonstrations; a huge competition to find the best film of a science demonstration; a web resource of all the films, with the experiments written up; and a discussion about whose job it is to inspire the next generation of scientists with entertaining science-related material.
The core to all this is the competition, which Katie hopes will launch in March, as part of Science and Engineering Week. (SciCast is being run by NESTA, in conjunction with the Engineering Technology Board, but the timing is dependent on attracting sponsorship.) The winners’ ceremony will be held in March 2008, and there will be a panel of expert judges (as yet unchosen) from the worlds of science, engineering, TV and film-making.
Initially, Jonathan will spend three months visiting schools all over the country, showing children how to make films of scientific demonstrations. Once the films have been made, they will go onto the website as inspiration for people wanting to enter the competition. The prototype days have already been successful, says Katie, who watched Jonathan on one of his school visits: “The kids loved it. They really got into the science stuff as well, but the idea of SciCast is very much that the films are good in their own right and they put some imagination towards making a film. It is about film-making; it’s not just about filming a teacher doing a science experiment because that wouldn’t be that interesting.”
Anyone can enter the competition, and there will be different categories to make it fair. These will include things like ‘Best film by a family team’, ‘Best film by a primary school team’ and ‘Best film from a science and engineering company team’. Katie is keen to make it as accessible as possible, so there may even be a category of ‘Best film made with a
“We’re not really being specific about the age range because we’d like everyone to make a film,” says Katie. “We’d like primary schools to make a film, we’d like groups of teachers to make a film, we’d like groups of professional scientists to make films – anyone we can get interested, and the more the merrier.”
Films must be no more than two minutes long: the films don’t have to be slick or professional-looking but they do, in the words of the competition rules, have to be “entertaining, not boring”, “interesting, not boring” and “imaginative, not boring”.
People are free to film any kind of experiment, says Katie: “We’re not being prescriptive about it. As long as there’s something scienc-y in there that we can write up and other people can try, it’s really an excuse to get an enormous database of science experiments for people to dip into in the future. The competition is going to be very exciting but I think in the end it will be something people can access.”
The competition will help children learn about devising scientific experiments, but it will teach them other skills too, says Katie: “Obviously the children will have a lot of fun carrying out the experiment and filming it, and that’s a good way to get together and make a team. On the prototype day I was horrified to see a team of Year 8s who couldn’t get it together at all. But that was only at the beginning of the day. An hour later they completely looked like a film crew; it was quite amazing. They seemed to know how to do filming and editing without ever having done it before – they’re so media-literate naturally.”
For those interested in taking part, the site has a section of useful hints and tips on film-making, including advice on storyboarding, close-ups and genre. It also has a wonderful selection of films that people have already sent in. These include ‘Elephant’s Toothpaste’, a film made in the style of a silent movie by the Glasgow Science Centre, in which a mixture of ingredients creates a mountain of white foam; and the excellent ‘Vacuum Cleaner Bazooka’, featuring bubble-wrap pellets and a suction-powered shooter.
The films entered for the competition will be posted on the website throughout the year to create a useful, imaginative and free resource for teachers and others to use. While entrants to the competitors are welcome to film an established science demonstration, Katie has no preconceived ideas about what kinds of films she expects to land in her inbox: “If you want to do something that no-one else has done before, that’s fine – that’s what we want.”