Quantifying the Effectiveness of Scientific Movies and Docs

qualitative and quantitative analysis of what makes a good cinematic scientific visualization in documentaries

How can we tell if a scientific documentary is having the impact on audiences that the visual designers and scientists working on the production expect?

Ongoing collaborations aim to delve into this issue using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Quantitative Methods

We are currently building on the work on quantifying the effectiveness of social issue-focused documentaries by Prof. Rezapour our group is using natural language processing methods to quantify the effectiveness of scientific documentaries based on the reviews left by viewers on the Amazon and YouTube platforms.

This work is ongoing so check back soon for updates!

Qualitative Methods

In work lead by Prof. Eric Jensen and (former) director of the Advanced Visualization Lab (AVL), PhD student Kalina Borkiewicz.

As the AVL focuses on cinematic presentations of scientific data (e.g. documentaries, IMAX movies), the first task was to define the field of “Cinematic Scientific Visualization” (CSV) as a unique subset of the field of scientific visualization (Borkiewicz et al., 2022).




Figure from our paper defining Cinematic Scientfic Visualization as a subset of Scientific Visualization (Borkiewicz et al., 2022; Jensen et al., 2022).

Ongoing work has focused on understanding how the choices that visual designers make impacts the enjoyment and understandability of a cinematic scientific visualization.

Designers must be careful about the decisions they make when translating an abstract idea to a visual for a lay audience. In this example a light particle (a photon) is depicted in four ways -- while no representation is scientifically accurate, each representation has different pros and cons in the appeal and understandability of the visualization by the audience (Borkiewicz et al., 2022; Jensen et al., 2022; Jensen et al., 2022; Jensen et al., 2023).

References

2023

  1. earth_to_scale.png
    Evidence-Based Methods of Communicating Science to the Public through Data Visualization
    Eric A Jensen , *Kalina Borkiewicz ,  J. P. Naiman , and 2 more authors
    Sustainability, Jan 2023
    Website

2022

  1. introducing_csv_1.png
    Introducing cinematic scientific visualization: a new frontier in science communication
    *K. Borkiewicz , Eric Jensen , Stuart Levy , and 1 more author
    Impact of Social Sciences Blog, Jan 2022
    Website
  2. new_fronteer_1.jpeg
    A new frontier in science communication? What we know about how public audiences respond to cinematic scientific visualization
    Eric A Jensen , *Kalina Maria Borkiewicz , and  J. P. Naiman
    Frontiers in Communication, Jan 2022
    Website
  3. Evidence-based science communication: through cinematic scientific visualization
    Eric A Jensen , *Kalina M Borkiewicz ,  J. P. Naiman , and 1 more author
    In ACM SIGGRAPH 2022 Courses , Jan 2022
    Website