Here is the first of three awesome videos created by a group of teens who participated in the California Academy of Sciences' "Science in Action Summer Intensive" this July. This video "Collections: A Window Into the Past" was created over just a couple of weeks by Kirby, Toby, Aimee and Roman. Enjoy!
More about the video they created after the jump…
The video was created from concept to final cut by these four teens. They chose the topic, did the background research, wrote the script, recorded the voiceover, interviewed the scientist, shot b-roll, researched the historic images shown, and edited it all together in Adobe Premiere.
All of the teens in this year's Science in Action camp were really impressed with the Academy's scientific collections and the 500 million specimens carefully stored there. In fact, another group also produced a video on how a particular specimen is prepared for our collections, which I will share in about a week. Getting a behind-the-scenes tour of where our scientists store our "library of life" was really eye opening for these young people.
"I didn't realize how much I like dead things," one of them remarked at the end of the program.
This group was really fascinated with the background on how our collections got started, particularly the Galapagos expedition of 1905 that fortuitously helped the Academy to rebuild its collections after the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. It's a great story of human ingenuity and drive triumphing over disaster. And the kids really nailed the emotional beats of the story.
And I love how well they connect the long history of our collections with their continued importance today and into the future. It's not an easy story to tell, and they do it so smoothly and clearly.