Treat Paine and Matthew Metcalf, who run the Youtube Channel MassComprehension, are making a video out of the first chapter of WEIT. I put up an earlier version before, but this one is now fairly complete and longer. They don’t intend to do the whole thing as a “videobook; ” as Treat noted:
My thinking was that this video series could be a “preview” of the book, and hopefully drive a new audience to buy the full book that would have never been previously interested. (a link to buy the audiobook on Amazon is in the description of the video, and will be present in each subsequent video). I hope you agree that this would be positive for book sales, as well as providing a “pro bono” educational video for the public to enjoy!
I’m not sure how many videos it will take to cover the first chapter, but surely at least four or five. In the meantime, the makers are really eager for feedback, so leave comments, positive or otherwise, in the comments below. I’ll direct them to what you have to say. Thanks!
Oh, and Professor Ceiling Cat makes a quick cameo appearance with his relatives at 8:43.
The accent of the “voice of William Paley” irritated me a bit… unconvincing. I’d rather the reader just use his regular voice or they got someone with a more convincing/authentic accent to read that part.
Sorry you didn’t like the voice. We only have the audiobook to work with, so I have no control over that. I personally like the difference in voice, since it denotes that it is no longer Coyne speaking in the first person and that he is quoting someone else.
Thank you for the feedback.
I’m not a native English speaker, but the Paley voice sounds American to me, not English.
I am a native English speaker, though I’ve got an atrocious ear for accents. The voice used is clearly American, to me.
I’ve always “heard” Paley as being a very nasal, whiney, thumb-up-the-bum accent, but that’s how I think of CoE ministers in general. Probably slightly prejudicial of me.
I note from Wikipedia that Paley was brought up around Peterborough (therefore he was “drug up”, past form of “dragged up”, not “brought up” ; I grew up in that area too) and schooled at Giggleswick (Settle, North Yorkshire ; caving country), so if you were to look for a suitable accent, something “broad” with drawn-out vowels would probably fit. Finding a “Yorkshire” voice actor might be simplest though – lots of Yorkies around in luvvie-ville. I think.
Giggleswick, for real?
I think I’ve got a pretty good ear for accents and I think Paley sounds like an American who hasn’t heard many real Brits
and is just using the all-purpose Charlton Heston in 10 Commandments olden tymes accent. Why did/does Hollywood assume that everyone, friends, Romans, countrymen of all stripes, spoke with pseudo- Englush accents.
That said, I don’t think the whole Paley accent bit really does much to detract from a great video.
Wikipedia thinks it’s real.
I was killing time in Settle one day – I think granddad was waiting for Cumberland sausage to be made for him in the butchers or something – and discovered there are several dangerously well-stocked second hand book shops at the Giggleswick end of town. Quite a lot for a country town, which I take as a side effect of the school – and a good indication of the intellectual standards expected of the kids.
(Not that I support the concept of private schooling at all. But “if it were to be done, ’tis best it were done well”, or something like that. Murdered MacBeth?
The video mistakenly states that bats use radar to hunt. Otherwise, I liked it.
Actually, it is generally believed that bats use a type of radar processing in their brains in conjunction with echolocation (called “coherent cross-correlation”). So they DO utilize aspects of radar. Absolutely crazy huh?
From Wikipedia:
“Since the 1970s there has been an ongoing controversy among researchers as to whether bats use a form of processing known from radar termed coherent cross-correlation. Coherence means that the phase of the echolocation signals is used by the bats, while cross-correlation just implies that the outgoing signal is compared with the returning echoes in a running process. Today most – but not all – researchers believe that they use cross-correlation, but in an incoherent form, termed a filter bank receiver.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_echolocation#Bats
Yes, that is interesting. Still, the first line of your referenced Wikipedia article refers to it as sonar and “bio-sonar.”
Cross-correlation is a term borrowed from radar, but applied to the sonar used by bats. The bats are using sound waves, not radio waves, therefore sonar, not radar.
Using an aspect of radar does not make it radar any more than putting windshield wipers on your computer monitor would make it a car. Radar is derived from “RAdio Detection And Ranging”. Bats do not emit radio waves. The power and speed required to generate and process radio reflections put radar far out of the reach of biological systems. Bats emit sound waves and (possibly) process them using techniques that humans also use for radar. That is sonar, not radar.
I am inclined to still recommend the term ‘sonar’ provided that the term is also correct in this context. The listener will expect to hear the term sonar, and it seems a good strategy to convince the reader by using what they know to be true. This was Darwins’ approach.
Disregard if I am wrong about the term.
Actually, I belatedly realized this is a reading from one of the great books on evolution. So do not change a word.
I withdraw from the field.
Sounds interesting. I think as long as people are being turned towards your work, it’s great. It may open up some lines of communication with folks that aren’t familiar with your book. It’ll add to the group that follows and loves you. More people need to know what your book has to say. There are a lot of young people that surf YouTube that aren’t familiar with this subject. It may serve to inform them. As long as you have some say in how it’s produced.
I love this book, but some aren’t “into” reading, this may be what helps them realize some facts. As long as, like I said, you have a say.
I agree with the above.
It moves a little slowly for my taste, but then video is not my preferred way to get technical information. I’m very visual but easily distracted, so I don’t process and retain speech all that efficiently. I’m a reader – and frequent re-reader to make sure I get each point before I move on. It’s a little harder to go back efficiently in video. The subtitles are helpful.
The other advantage a book has is the meta info: table of contents, index and footnotes. And of course a text book typically has an overview at the top of each section, and a review at the end. I could see using video material more if there were a way to incorporate the interactivity a book offers; I suppose what matters is the intended audience and context in which they would be viewing it.
Overall, a nice effort and I’m curious to see what is made of it.
Thank you for the feedback. I’m sorry you found it slow. We tried hard to keep it engaging with the visuals throughout. We have to work with the audiobook’s pace for the audio, so do you think we could make it more engaging with more frequent images or animations? Was there a specific point you lost interest and found it “slow”?
Nothing to be sorry about! I just mean literally, for me, the speed of information is slow and I get impatient. I wouldn’t say I lost interest.
I think the number of images and video and so on were congruent with the pace of the narration.
You’re putting visuals to the audiobook? (Haven’t got the audiobook, so I wouldn’t know.)
If the audiobook is simply a recitation of the book, then it’s not surprising that the pace suffers. The density of information in a spoken presentation compared to written information is very different. If you look back through your lecture notes from university, you’ll probably find that an hour’s lecture might only yield 3 sides of notes, and conversely when you’re having to make notes for a presentation a startlingly small pile of notes turns into a presentation long enough to need comfort breaks for the audience.
Different media need different presentations.
I’m of a different opinion. This format helps me to get a clearer understanding of what’s being presented. The speaker does a marvelous job and the pace is perfect. Granted, I’m not a gifted reader or thinker, so perhaps I require a slower pace, but I’d be willing to bet that for many young people first being introduced, not just to the book, but to the true science of evolution, the pace of this video will only enhance the experience. Kudos, gentlemen.
I 2nd the motion about the pace of the narration. At this pace, I can very comfortably multitask on concentrating on what is said, while also taking my time enjoying the generous helpings of lovely images.
Thirded.
The pace seems about right, the information flow (voice over) carries it along nicely. It all comes down to the shot selection, very important and very obvious I would say.. a big job researching and finding the shots to do justice to the book but, so far, so good. I commend their industry and effort.
Thank you for the feedback! I’m glad you enjoyed it 🙂
I haven’t read WEIT, so it’s great to watch this.
The nine minutes went by fast.
👍👍👍🐒🐳🐢🐙
😀
Hmmm, someone upping the stakes in the Unicode wars, eh?
So, I see that WP have a collection of their own glyphs. And you’ve embedded the images, such as (link deliberately broken up) http:// s0.wp.com/ wp-content/ mu-plugins/ emoji/ twemoji/ 72×72/ 1f44d.png
I don’t know where you found a techniques for getting them. Please share.
Slight WP error though. The Unicode reference implementation has this glyph as “1F44D 👍 THUMBS UP SIGN” using a RIGHT hand, seen in the palmar aspect, and links to glyph “1F592 🖒 reversed thumbs up sign” which is also a right hand, seen from the other aspect. WP’s glyph however, is clearly a left hand.
Other glyphs used are 1F412 (🐒 MONKEY
• ninth of the signs of the Asian zodiac), 1f433 (🐳 SPOUTING WHALE), 1f422 (🐢 TURTLE), and 1f419 (🐙 OCTOPUS).
So at least one regular here has his own symbol in Unicode. 1F41C 🐜 ANT (or as a proper HTML entity instead of a cut’n’paste jobbie, 🐜
This post is probably going to make WP bowf.
Well done, WP for not bowfing! And @Ant has his signature : “& #x1F41C ;” (without the spaces).
I honestly find it very dry.
My perspective as someone who does similar work for a living: I’m not big on taking and adapting the work of others (the photos, video excerpts, and graphics), even when its fair use.
If the producers are going to go forward with this, they could at least provide some attribution to the original works. It’s not required under fair use, but it’s the decent thing to do.
For what it’s worth it made me go on amazon to look for the audiobook. 🙂
If it encourages people to buy the book or audiobook, I think that’s great.
It’s just not my cup of tea. And the use of non-original content w/o attribution bugs me.
Check the description of the video.
All sources are attributed in the video’s Description. We also asked permission to use all content borrowed from other YouTube channels.
Cool, I appreciate its inclusion.
Of course. You’re right, it would be wrong to use other’s work without giving credit.
I’m sorry you found the video dry though. As someone who also does video work for a living, could you offer any pointers as to how we could make it more engaging? What segments could use improvement, and how?
Thanks for watching the video, and for the feedback. I really appreciate it!
Here’s how I would think about it: Rather than covering WEiT in general, think about ways the book can be augmented.
I’ll bet there are specific topics in the book that would be easier to understand with the aid of some dynamic visualization. As a great example of that I’d point to the animation in Cosmos that elegantly shows transitions from one form to another (it’s the one that has some baroque music playing IIRC – Vivaldi or something similar). That’s a trivial animation that wouldn’t require huge resources in people and time.
So I’d work with Jerry to figure out what those sequences might be – maybe there are a few per chapter – and that’s what you cover in the videos. You’d want to provide some context for the viewer of course – introduction and appropriate narration. I’ll bet Jerry even has cool ideas about how to visualize these hard to grasp concepts – or you can translate the concepts to appropriate visualizations. And this might be a cool opportunity to come up with some original content and rely less on existing material.
Like any good design I’d always be thinking about – what does this add? Does this make the concept easier to grasp? Am I adding signal or noise? This is a core problem with the current video – I find myself asking “what is the video adding to the book content?”
I’ll add that I really think it would be better with non-instrusive music, I know that’s not a popular opinion but again I’d use Cosmos as an example of how to do it right.
Regarding the dryness of the narration – the narrator’s voice is great but I want to feel something – get me excited about the topic, bring the awe that the topic should evoke.
I hope this helps and good luck.
Phenomenal feedback. I need to digest your suggestions fully, and will write up a full response.
I think it is very good and the pace is about right. The narration is also good and the voice very clear.
This has to be a lot of work to put together adding all the video but it should accomplish what we would want and that is to introduce tons more people to the information. Watch this and learn more by reading the book.
Very nice work and an interesting idea. Education is the thing and this should be a great tool.
A video series on WEIT would be a great complement to the Cosmos series and is sorely needed to counter all the TV bible story series.
I’m confident that the producers of this video AND ProfCC (a.k.a. Prof. Jerry Coyne ; I don’t recognise your ID. But I also know my judgement is impaired by booze) are fully aware that thery are n the territory of giants.
Much of this material has been covered, repeatedly, by Auntie Beeb and Uncle Attenborough
This is not to decry trynng to do it more … compactly, but there are giants in the territory. It’s the old problem of being unable to make the horse drink despite thhhe Koranically gushing fountains of available data.
I think that’s a first for me – referencing the Koran in place of the BuyBull. But given the adirity of the source ara, appropriate?
I recognize we are playing in the same space as giants, such as Cosmos. The emphasis in this series is to show REAL biology as much as possible – something that was unfortunately replaced by TONS of CGI in the new Cosmos series. Unfortunate – given that you just can’t beat HD biology no matter how good the CGI is.
Yeah, I watched a couple of episodes of the re-hashed Cosmos. Though I like NdGT, I can’t stand the programme. I guess I’m just getting too old for the “gee whizz” factor to do anything other than wash over me.
I’m a biology instructor and researcher. I’ve seen many videos* like this presentation for several reasons: narration, clarity of statements, and the illustrations.
*are digital presentations like this really “videos” or are they called something else?
my “I” got lost. oh well.
We’ve decided to call it a “Videobook”. “Audiobooks” already exist, so why not?
Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad you liked it.
Places like the Beeb’s Natural History Unit in Bristol will probably be able to give good data on the “screen-minutes” to “concept” ratio. But as they clearly know, text is denser than audio which is much denser than video. In terms of ideas per megabyte.
With a belly bloated with the products of cerevesiae (I forget the genus. Sacceromycces? hic!), I shall leave watching the video until hangover tme. tIme. hic.
Hmm, Lawrence at #9 … deserves reply.
The first Chapter is 45 minutes long. We’re planning on doing it in 4-5 segments. There are only certain places where it would be appropriate to cut videos off. We’re debating whether the next video should be 12 minutes or 6 minutes.
Any suggestions as to the length we should be aiming for?
How would you approach making it 6 vs making it 12? Could you make the 6 minute version first, see if it’s sufficient, and if not expand it? Or would you have to start from scratch again? Why 6 minutes or 12 minutes? Is there any other option, such as simply making it as concise yet full as possible and discovering what that time would be?
Haha no we wouldn’t have to start anything over. The first 6 minutes will be the same regardless of if the video is 6 or 12 minutes long. It has to be 6 or 12 since that is where Coyne finished describing Speciation and Common Ancestry respectively. Just wondering what would be the most digestible to viewers. I think we will go with 12 minutes. I agree with the comment below that short attention spans should not be encouraged 🙂 This video is for those who actually want to learn about biology and are interested in the subject matter, rather than those seeking pure entertainment – although the two do not need to be mutually exlusive!
As I’ve indicated up-thread, I’m probably not in your target audience. When I was in school, what little we got in the way of video presentation was typically in chunks of around 30 minutes, to allow for hour-long timetable slots plus getting the class settled, having discussion time … and we were expected to pay attention and take notes during that 30 minutes.
The trend towards shorter and shorter attention spans is not something that I consider a good thing. I know it’s happening, but that doesn’t mean that I need to like it. But I’m not a teacher by training – when I’m doing instruction it’s to people who are being paid hard money to pay attention and are expected to be competent at the end of the session.
Who are your target audience? That’s probably going to determine how long a segment length to go for (bearing in mind the presence of natural breaks).
Video is nicely put together and I think it’s a fantastic idea. Victor Bevine was a great choice for narrator.
Makes me want to read the book again.
Maybe you can WATCH it instead 🙂
Yes, I would watch it. I have read WEIT about 4-5 times (I had used it in a class a for a few years). But watching it is like a whole new product. I really like what you are doing here.
Thank you! Feel free to use this series in the classroom. It’s one of the uses we had envisioned from the beginning.
I admit that I also found it dry and I think the public, especially those who are unfamiliar with the material, will as well. I hate to say people need to be entertained…but…well, they do.
Thank you for the feedback. I completely agree. We live in an age where material must be entertaining/engaging from start to finish. Were there any specific segments that you found particularly dry? Likewise were there any segments that got it right?
Again, I appreciate the feedback, and I agree with your assessment of the public 🙂
I like it but would it be possible to be able to turn off the words? I find it is too much to look at the visuals, hear the words & read them. I can ignore the words on the screen, but ideally, it would be nice to remove them if I chose to do so.
I enjoyed it immensely. Very professional.
Maybe I will release a version without subtitles at some point, if it is requested enough.
These may be from the original material, but I would take issue with the following:
1) Failing to distinguish between “Darwinism” and modern evolutionary theory.
2) A single (albeit slightly long) sentence?? I count two sentences and a missing full stop after “ago”. (Also some missing commas.)
3) At the molecular level, it is probably not true that the mechanism for _most_ evolutionary change is natural selection. Presumably Jerry would object to dropping “most”, in which case it is necessary to clarify that “evolutionary change” refers to _phenotypic_ change (I for one would ordinarily interpret evolutionary change as referring to genotype).
Also, neutral evolution at the molecular level may be very clock-like.
I think it’s very good and the pace is just right ( not slllooowwww like Ken Burns’ productions). I have read the book and think this makes a nice companion. My one and only complaint would be thst the subtitles seemed to change font at around the 5-minute mark: they seemed to go from solid white to just outlined white and were thus harder to read.
And sub
After a couple of more looks I too wonder about the words on screen. If intended for the deaf viewers it would be useful but for the rest it is mostly ignored. There is no way to watch the movement and also read. The words are fine on the still shots.
At 6:14 you use a picture that is meant to be an ape-like hominin, descending into an early human, then that descending into a human. But the early human looks like a human. I recommend that this middle picture be more obviously an early human, like H. erectus or an Australopithecine.
Lots of good suggestions already.
I think mine would be to consider abandoning the audiobook source altogether. Go ahead and closely model the script on Jerry’s book, but also don’t be afraid to do whatever editing is called for to fit the video medium. Doing so should free you up from all the constraints you’re trying to work around, and open up all sorts of new possibilities — an entire soundtrack to play with, for example. And the timing becomes all yours…if you want to insert a sidebar of sorts, not a problem; same if there’s some point in the text that takes a couple pages to explain but that could be made in a few seconds with a quick animation.
Embrace the medium, in other words. Don’t twist yourself in knots to work within the constraints of somebody else’s audiobook, but rather make the movie version whose script is inspired by the book.
It’s definitely a worthwhile project…and also a freakin’ huge undertaking. You’ve got a lot of potential to create something well worthwhile. Have fun with it, and be sure to keep Jerry and the rest of us informed about how it goes!
b&
I believe it is meant to be a reading of Ch. 1, so in that spirit it would be…irregular to change the wording. Deleting a thing or two here and there for the sake of brevity would be ok, however.
A 2nd project, for PBS or Nat Geo. Channel (not the other gawdawful channels), would be a documentary series inspired by the book.
As the old joke goes, why drive yourself mad trying to stay sane?
I also find the video ‘dry’- flat narrative, no drama, no suspense, no humor, no background music, etc.. essentially no ‘hook’. Evolution is unbelievably intriguing and a video should be able to deliver a corresponding visual to its intended audience.
Very nice. I like the whole idea. I would suggest making subtitles optional.
I for one think that some light non intrusive music would be OK, but I guess it would highly increase the difficulty of the task.
Like others above, my question is whether it would be better/possible to have the text as subtitles which can be switched off, perhaps with a few key passages simply presented on a blank screen for emphasis.
That might be a good idea.
The subs were helpful to me, but it did take away some of the attention from the illustrations.
At 6:25 to 6:41 the graphic about the horseshoe crab and Ginko tree: The Ginko leaf looks right but the whole tree itself looks like some kind of fir or spruce not a Ginko tree. Am I right?
I like the rest and would use it in my science class.
I know this kind of project is a lot of work. I will say that I found the book to be very engaging and it made a big impact on me. Thus far the video representation is less engaging. While someone like me would enjoy it because the information interests me, I wonder if others would stick with it. It might benefit from narration that communicates a little more passion. The images and video clips are very good.
I think the idea of Evolution ‘itself’ (starting at about 5:40 in the video) can be improved by breaking it into three parts. There is Evolution as descent with modification (n.s., drift, and collateral process), evolution as ecological adaptation (n.s. on variation: protective coloration, freeze resistance in arctic plants), and evolution as exemplified in major transitions (n.s. on lineages that have come by chance to teeter on the brink of adaptive transitions) that seem to assemble complexity (new arrays of relations) and enable adaptive radiations or global ecological conquest (e.g., multicellularity, photosynthesis, wings, symbolic thought). The latter are, of course, cherry picked lucky successes and not evolution’s arrow popular with progressivists. The image of horses becoming bigger and better and of apes becoming executives teases on the erroneous idea that evolution has a vector and the vector may constitute a plan. This part of the presentation seems to need additional thought.
That said, I think the idea of a (snappy) WEIT video is excellent.
I liked it. I’m not a big video watcher, but I was totally engrossed and wasn’t ready for it to end.
I like the text on screen. Reminds me that this is the actual text from Jerry’s book. Also, there is that nice little bonus of hearing words pronounced I’ve often seen in print, but never heard aloud. (Coelacanth)
If I had one issue, it would be that sometimes I’m absorbing the graphic, or even reading the text on the graphic, rather than listening to the narration…therefore actually missing the main point of the WEIT text. (So, again, good to have the WEIT text on screen so I can focus on it when needed to make sure I’m staying on track.)
I give the video a general thumbs up, but like other didn’t care for the subtitles except in specific cases, like the Paley quote.