SEASON - KNOWLEDGE FROM BERLIN
The task for our film production was to produce the new season of the Youtube series "Wissen aus Berlin" 2023 for the Berlin University Alliance, the association of Berlin's largest universities.
We wanted to break new ground in format development together with the researchers. Our declared aim was to be informative and entertaining and in this way to reach a somewhat larger circle of viewers.
SCIENCE COMMUNICATION
Untold stories lie dormant in all research. Storytelling means passing on knowledge, research results and experiences in such a way that the target group remembers them for as long as possible and may be motivated to take action. Stories are good at passing on even very complex knowledge - just think of storytelling research geniuses like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking.
Given the sheer volume of videos on the web - and especially on platforms like Youtube - science communication is finding it increasingly difficult to reach its target audience.
However, this is important, for example, to mobilise a critical mass of viewers or participants for a conference or event - or to generate funding. Storytelling can be very helpful here, even if it is not a panacea and not every research topic is suitable.
WORKSHOP
Eight different fields of research - from social sciences to law, about 50 participants - and a multitude of hopes and fears associated with the production of the videos.
We find that the best start to a complex film project is often a joint workshop. Sometimes just a few hours are enough to clarify what should be told to whom - to achieve what effect?
In a one-day workshop we led, we explored the question of how storytelling can be used in the structuring of interviews and how narrative, dramaturgical and aesthetic means can be "playfully" adapted for the individual projects. Most important was the initiating impulse that came from this workshop and that carried us through the entire film production.
IMPLEMENTATION
Knowledge does not emerge in a vacuum, but always starts from concrete research.
In addition to several interviews, the visual integration of the initial situation of each research was the core idea of our implementation. Case studies are often not only more exciting than talking heads, but also have the advantage that they make the relevance of the individual research clear to viewers who are far removed from the research. In a period of about 3 months, eight visually and narratively exciting videos were created in this way - in which sometimes brittle research is told in an entertaining way to appeal to a new audience that has grown up with Netflix.