Not only were we lucky enough to land noted scientist-turned-film maker, Randy Olson, as the producer of our short SciCheer video (which has exceeded 10,000 views and will be featured on CNN tomorrow, Saturday @3pmET), but it appears we’ve totally locked him in as a fan. He was an early adapter so it wasn’t a far leap!
Among other key messages, the SciCheer video is embedded with a not-too-subtle reminder to diss stereotypes. I guess that was easy for Randy to communicate. He’s been there. After earning his PhD from Harvard, he left his comfy tenured professorship and headed to Hollywood to make science-related films that demonstrate (in part) this: to the best science communicator goes the support.
Unfortunately for scientists, by and large, they aren’t quite the best communicators of their often incredibly important messages. Randy’s steppin’ in to help them tap their inner-orator via his book, Don’t Be Such a Scientist, and through his films (which my family enjoyed): Flock of Dodos, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and probably the one that will earn him that Oscar: The Science Cheerleader video.
So you can see why we are big fans of Randy. Now let’s see why he likes us, by checking out his recent blog post:
Randy’s an interesting character. He also helped me quite a bit with keeping things rolling in the booth or otherwise. I need to get caught up on his other work–soon!
/b