Graph Theory Video
The brief was to create a video to explain a complicated topic in under three minutes. I chose a somewhat unknown field of study in mathematics because I know several people studying it at the PhD level, and they often struggle to explain it to friends and family.
Because I chose to talk about an academic discipline where people use everyday words in very different and specific ways, I spent a lot of time refining the voice-over for the video. I tested rough drafts of the video with voice-over several times with different audiences.
Equally important was choosing visuals that help make concrete the words in my voice over throughout the narrative. I thought at first that animation would work best for my topic, but later hit upon the idea of drawing diagrams and images as I spoke.
Early storyboards used a random placement of dots, houses, people, and computers to express multiplicity. However, the inconsistency in visual form wasn't so appealing to viewers. Ultimately, I chose to use the same layout for my three very different examples, which helped viewers see the consistency among them.
A storyboard I created for an animated version.
My original script, which covered too many topics to fit into two minutes.
A storyboard using props, drawing, and a stop-motion animation effect. It was considered too frenetic.
A storyboard approaching my final concept.
Using the same arrangement of icons for each concept provides continuity. It allows the viewer to focus on the voice-over.
I'm happy with the results of the video, since it was my first experience shooting video with a DSLR and editing audio and video with the Adobe suite. In the future, I'd like to record better audio and use better lighting and color correction for my images.