Makers in the Lab: Cooking at 1000°C

Project Overview

The crystal lab at Ames is littered with the mistakes of undergrads past. Strange circles are burned into the linoleum. Bricks in the fume hood are blackened and charred. "Danger! Tuesday!" is hand-written on a sign just inside the door. It is the place where safety protocol is most-enforced, and yet the general public is most welcome, the PI often giving baggies full of high-end Spanish paprika as party-favors to guests, so that they too can do "material science" at home. How to fit all of this wonderful personality into an educational video about how new topographic materials are made?

Our Approach

I worked closely with the PI to establish a production timeline and expectations while I was in the lab. This meant a two-day shoot full of multiple takes of individual pieces of a process that I could then cut-together to make a sequence, and that he would narrate as he watched the video. It wasn't how I was used to producing videos, but it was what the PI was most comfortable with, and given his extensive public speaking experience I trusted his pacing to work well with what was happening on-screen.

Key Features

• By far the most popular video from Ames Lab on social media, with 10k+ impressions across all channels.

• Remains one of the most popular on our YouTube channel, years later.

• Crucially, improved the relationship between communications and the crystal lab as a whole, and lead to another video.