Why PublicSpace video

Our achievement has been to create video that is engaging, relevant to practice, and grounded in the research evidence.

The illusion of good video is that it involved just pointing the camera at interesting people and events.  Yet just pointing the camera is why research on video is often so dull and unwatchable.  There are many examples in universities and online.

To regard the video-making as somehow separate from understanding research is like assuming an expert in word processing can write your journal article; the result may be nicely laid out, but it will not say what you need it to say.

As far as we know, PublicSpace is unique in combining social science and video documentary expertise for research dissemination.  We create high quality semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, practitioners and academics, who respect that we are genuinely trying to communicate the issues.  To interview with a camera actually increases the need for trust, engagement, clear informed questions and perceptive follow-up.

At PublicSpace the people who edit and design the video or document actually understand research, and understand the importance of getting the concepts, claims and evidence right.  That is why we are able to create concise and focused explanations of research concepts and findings from potentially hours of interviews.  We first engage in detailed discussion with you, and with potential audiences, to work out exactly what the issues and concerns are and what needs to be communicated.  We then trial the video.

Creating a video involves macro and micro decisions about combining images, graphics, voices and other sound in a multi-layered edit.

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Why PublicSpace video?  p2

The goal in creating a documentary is to articulate and show the research insights in a way that makes them visually and intellectually engaging and relevant to the audience.  It requires us to recognise core issues, subtle caveats and good examples, and work out how to connect them and communicate them.

It involves analysing and integrating interviews, events, artifacts and location shots to select brief clips that can together produce a coherent, focused and authoritative account of the research and its significance.  It needs to be carefully paced so that the audience can understand and process the information in real time.

In terms of technology, PublicSpace uses up-to-date professional video and audio technology throughout the process of filming and editing.  We edit on Mac Pro, using Final Cut Pro and other software in FCP Studio.  We use additional Windows hard-drives to ensure cross-compatibility.

If you would like to communicate your research through video, whether it is a simple presentation or a complex documentary, then contact us.  We show examples of our work on the Video page and under Projects.