What time is it?

It's science time.

♪ Yo, it's science science science time ♪ ♪ Let's all stop and just unwind ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, here we go ♪ ♪ Learn so much your brain explodes ♪ ♪ Lessons so cool, so fresh ♪ ♪ Feats so great, you'll lose your breath ♪ ♪ Learning facts and real cool stuff ♪ ♪ Scream for more, can't get enough ♪ ♪ It's, it's science time ♪ ♪ It's fun, you best believe it ♪ ♪ Explore and learn new things ♪ ♪ Come and join me, please ♪ I'm Mister C, and this super smart group is my Science Crew.

Working together with my crew makes learning so much fun.

Actually, you should join us.

Let's give science a try with a simple DIY.

Today, we're learning about video.

What time is it?

It's Science Time.

Welcome to "DIY Science Time", my name's Mister C and I'm so excited that you're here to be part of our Science Crew today.

Today, we're gonna do something a little bit different.

We're gonna talk about the science of making a science show.

That's right, we're gonna do some activities that talk about video and animation, but I'm also gonna show you some behind the scenes things that show you how the show actually works.

And it starts here in my kitchen.

This is actually my kitchen at home.

Yeah, it's crazy to think about because this is where we make dinner and where we have fun with the family and all those things.

But when it's time to film, we shut it down.

We have some really cool stuff that makes the show possible.

We have lots of cameras, we have our main camera, and then when we wanna record something from above, we have a camera up there.

What's up?

And then, if we need a shot from this side, I can look over here.

Hey, what's going on?

Or if we want something really tight, whoa, super tight shot over here.

We use all of these cameras to capture all of the footage and all of the activities that we're doing so we can show you how everything works properly.

What's awesome about the show is we light it with all sorts of lights up here and behind me so that you can see everything happening right here on the kitchen table.

And just like every other show, we always have great action-packed activities for you to try, and we're gonna start today with getting ready for building a zoetrope.

Let's get to it.

Yeah.

Rolling on set, action.

Let's put our science into motion.

Grab these materials and let's build a zoetrope.

You'll need cardboard, a CD, scissors, markers, tape, straws, skewer stick, the zoetrope template, and as always, your star-studded science notebook.

A science notebook is a tool that every scientist should have because it gives us a place to record all of our learning.

Taking notes and being organized allows us to be better scientists.

A science notebook allows us to go back and review all of the data and information we've gathered during our experiments.

Plus it allows us to share results with other scientists who might be interested in learning more about what we've discovered.

Whenever you see the notebook pop up on the screen like this, it's a reminder that this is a good place for us to jot down new information during the show.

I've already added a title and a list of materials for today's activity, but our crew is still going to have lots of information to collect and organize as we go through our experiments.

Most importantly, the more you use a science notebook, the better you'll get at taking notes and recording data.

If you don't have a science notebook already, download a copy of Mister C's Science Notebook from the website.

Are you ready to take your art and make it move?

If so, this animation is the perfect activity for you.

We're building a DIY zoetrope.

That's right, if you don't have a CD like this, make sure you hop online to download the template.

This template is the exact copy of a CD and you can put it and transfer it onto a piece of cardboard.

You'll also wanna download this zoetrope template.

This is the wall or the animation reel that we'll use to actually make our art come to life.

So let's get to it.

First things first, we're gonna take our CD and we're gonna trace it onto our cardboard.

I'm trying to be really careful to cut it exactly on the line so that my template actually fits this really well.

I'm gonna take my CD and I'm going to mark the circle in the center so that I know roughly where the center of the cardboard circle is.

Okay, now that we have that, we're gonna take our zoetrope template, which this is the reel, this is the part that's gonna make your graphic come to life.

So we need to cut these two rectangles out 'cause we're gonna tape them together.

(upbeat music) There are these little white pieces that you have to cut out just like it says on the template, and these are going to be the windows so that we can see our graphic come to life.

And then I'm gonna flip it over and I'm gonna pull these little tabs down because I'm gonna cut these off and then I'm just gonna snip 'em off right there so that all my windows are pretty consistently the same size.

So when you fold it, you're gonna see the dotted line, you're gonna fold past it.

And that way, when I hold this up, all of the white here where we're gonna be putting our drawing has backing on it.

And that's going to allow us to have a more defined image so that you don't have the white light shining through, it'll make it easier for you to see your graphic.

So we do that once and now we have to repeat and do it again.

And now I'm gonna take some tape and I'm simply going to tape these up so that they stay in the place.

So we can now connect these two just like this.

And I'm gonna tape it on the bottom, but not on the white paper 'cause I might use that space to draw.

All right, so now we have our reel, and this is where it gets real.

We're gonna actually start our graphic and our drawing.

And so, you can do this with a pencil or a pen, I'm actually gonna sketch it with a pencil to make sure that I get the drawing the way I want, and then I'm going to actually retrace my drawing with a really dark marker or a black pen.

I think what I wanna do for mine is I wanna make my person jump, so like squatting and, whoo, jump up.

And I'm gonna start here and I'm gonna have the person jump up here and then they're going to come back down.

And I'm gonna try to draw and contain my drawing underneath each one of these windows to be consistent, so my drawing all has about the same size.

All right, here we go.

And I'm just gonna fill in the head.

The reason I'm doing this is so that it's nice and dark.

I am just gonna go over it with a dark marker also.

(upbeat music continues) All right, we have the drawing.

You can see my character is squatted, my character jumps up, my character's jumping high into the sky, comes back down and squats back down.

And because of this animation reel, once we put it onto the cardboard cutout, we'll be able to spin it and create motion.

It'll become an animation.

So what we're going to do is take a few pieces of tape and then we're gonna put tape on the bottom just like this, and basically we're getting the tape prepped so that when we put the reel around it, it's gonna be easier to place it on there 'cause it can get tricky sometimes because the reel is flimsy paper.

So now we're gonna flip this over, just like that.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to start right here, I'm just gonna set it down right on that tape and I'm gonna fold it up and that's gonna keep that in place and I'm just gonna keep it nice and tight around the edge and then I'm just going to tape it together.

And I think we're ready to put the skewer stick through.

But before we do that, I'm gonna take some scrap cardboard and I'm just gonna take a little piece, cut out a little cube, well, square, I'm gonna do two.

-(upbeat music continues) -(scissors snipping) And what I'm gonna do with this, I'm just gonna place this down on the center so that when I push the skewer stick through, it has more cardboard to grab onto.

All right, moment of truth, we're going to push this through, just be careful with your fingers on the other side.

I'm just gonna push through just like that.

Perfect.

And I'm not gonna really go through too far, I just want it on the tip, and now I can spin it.

Oh, I can already see it, but it's really hard to spin the way it is.

So grab yourself a straw, drop it through, and now you can look.

(laughs) It works so well.

My person's just jumping up and down, they're so excited, we did it, we built a zoetrope, ta-da, yay.

Oh, that's so neat.

But here's the thing, if you look at it from above, it doesn't look like anything.

But once you put your eyes below where those little windows are, you can see your graphic jumping, well, my graphic is jumping and moving because we have motion now, the animation reel is spinning and the little slits in the window allow us to see the motion or the animation.

You should give this a try.

Think of something you wanna animate and put it onto your reel and build a DIY zoetrope.

Let's talk slow motion.

When video is recorded, those pictures are called frames.

Most video we see online or on television is recorded with 24 frames per second.

Can you guess what happens when you record more frames in a second?

Collecting more images allows the footage to be slowed down, creating a slow motion effect.

What's even more amazing is that high frame rates allow us to see things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to see with the naked eye.

Smashing, isn't it?

Another really amazing thing that we get to do on "DIY Science Time" is use animations to show you really cool science concepts.

In fact, we have an animator who does all of that for us.

And how do we get started with that?

Well, it all starts with an idea.

And since we're doing a show about video today, I thought I'd start with a drawing or a sketch that I could send to Mary, our animator, to be able to create something really cool for you guys to watch.

So where do we start?

With this marker.

I'm gonna break my paper into four parts.

(bright music) The first thing we're gonna do is draw a projector.

Then Mister C is gonna come onto the screen and he's gonna turn the projector on.

Now that I'm on the screen as a cartoon, I can start talking about the things we're gonna watch today, because today we're watching a show about Mary, roll that footage.

(countdown beeping) My name is Mary Latocha, I'm a motion graphic designer, video producer for Alabama Public Television.

I've been working for Alabama Public Television for about 10 years.

I've been doing animation motion graphic design for about 15 to 17 years.

Motion graphic design is basically graphic design, but it moves, whether it be video or graphics or text, and I put them all together to communicate a message through motion.

With animation, you can show the audience things that they can't see normally in real life with the naked eye, like we can go up close to like the surface tension of water and show the molecules and how they're interacting together.

That or we can zoom out and we can show the universe and the planets.

And you can't do that with live video.

Our characters for "DIY Science Time" are voiced by young actors and they do voiceover sessions and then they send the audio to me and then I take the audio and I do lip sync on the characters.

Hey, guys, it's Lyla, I'm recording all my lines for the video episode.

Hope you guys enjoy it, bye.

Then I do the facial animations and then I do the body tracking animations.

Hey guys, it's Lyla, I'm recording all my lines for the video episode.

Hope you guys enjoy it, bye.

All this is live action animation, what I mean by that is the webcam is actually using my movements and my body to animate the characters.

(cool music) And sometimes, we like to have the actual character come in and animate themselves.

Oh, this is so cool.

Hey everybody.

Hey guys, it's Mister C, and Mary is an awesome animator.

She does all of this for all of you.

Whoa, my hands.

Guitar (imitates guitar).

What time is it?

Science time.

My eyes are going crazy down there.

(laughs) One of the things I have to do just being an animator is I have to think about how does the body move?

How does an egg being dropped into water, how is that gonna look?

You need to be able to study people, you need to study movement, physics, you need to know something about chemistry, like, what goes into making a water molecule?

You gotta have, you know, one oxygen, two hydrogen.

There's a lot of thought and process into creating all this stuff and how it's gonna look.

I love this job and there's not another job I would rather do.

Have you heard of Foley sounds?

Foley sounds are added after the initial video has been recorded.

Foley artists recreate sounds that didn't get captured when the original video recording happened.

For example, we could add the sound of rustling leaves -while someone walks.

-(leaves rustling) Sounds give the viewer a better idea of what's going on in a video.

(bottle whooshing) And provide more information than what video alone can show.

(bottle whooshing) I'm here at the McWane Science Center with my Science Crew and we're ready to have some fun because today we're building thaumotropes.

Are you guys ready?

[Crew] Yeah!

I am too, this is gonna be an awesome little experiment and we're gonna see if we can actually fool the audience with this visual optical illusion.

What time is it?

[Crew] Science time!

Let's build it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I picked a cow and a farm.

I picked that 'cause I really like cows and I really like farms.

My grandparents have a farm and I just really love going there, and I just really like the way it moo-ves.

(upbeat music continues) This is how it works.

You get a skewer and you get two pieces of paper.

You draw an object on one and you draw a setting on the other.

If you spin it really fast, then it'll trick your brain into thinking that it's only one picture.

(upbeat music continues) My favorite part was the drawing and the coloring.

And when it came together, it just looked really cool, it was really fun.

(upbeat music continues) Oh, that is so cool, isn't it?

-That is so great.

-Whoa.

It's amazing to be able to take two images, and then when you hold it still, there's a bird, there's a cage, there's a mermaid, there's a sea, there's a dinosaur, there's a tree, we have all these amazing different thaumotropes.

But when you put them into motion, it makes our brains think that what's putting it together and we see the image combined, so much fun, I think everyone at home should give this a try, don't you guys think?

[Crew] Yeah.

What time is it?

[Crew] Science time!

Give it a try.

Before there was color on television and in movies, film was in black and white.

Color television was invented in the 1950s, but color TVs weren't common in most homes until the 1970s.

Well, color me impressed.

My name is Van Gunter, I work at Boutwell Recording Studios as an audio engineer and a voice actor and also a sound designer.

A sound designer is a person who uses different kinds of sounds to bring to life video or movies or film using background noises, such as birds or wooded ambience or wind blowing or car noises and things like that.

So if you were to take those elements out of commercials or television, any shows that you watch, you would just hear dialogue and it would sound really strange.

So what I do is I add the background noise in, but at a level that almost you don't really notice.

You only notice it when it's not there.

The tools that we use here is the computer system is called Pro Tools, so it's what people refer to as a DAW or a digital audio workspace.

And one of the cool aspects working with Pro Tools is that I have so many different tracks that I can put things on so I can make it sound like you and I are sitting here in a jungle -or that there's a helicopter -(birds chirping) -moving from here to here -(helicopter whirring) -or a dinosaur, -(dinosaur roars) or a UFO, really, it's endless.

It's just fun because your imagination gets to go kind of wild and you can put things in different places to see if it works, and if it doesn't, you could take all those birds out and replace it with a rainstorm.

(thunder crashing) One of the projects that I've been able to work on the past couple of years is "DIY Science Time".

My role in that is the sound designer and the mixer.

So I wanted to play a couple of segments for you so you can see and hear kind of the effects that we've got going on.

So here it is with the voice and with the sound effect.

All of us did a great job today because we had such a sweet time doing sweet science, whether it was the stained glass, whether we had.

Now I'm gonna mute him and just kind of let you hear the sound effect and you can also see the action that's going on.

So here's a swish -of his hands, -(hands swishing) -and, -(bell ringing) -and the little magic.

-(magic twinkling) So what we're doing there is just adding a little bit more fun and having sound just kinda round out a little bit of that scene some.

So we also have another spot right here where we've got some pointing going on, so I've got very specific sounds for pointing that sound like this.

(points chiming) And what I did there was I gradually increased the pitch, just for comedy's sake, 'cause it sounds funnier to have the noise go up, up, up rather than it just be the same noise, so here it is with his vocal track Record all of your data -in your science notebook.

-(points chiming) This notebook allows you to keep track of everything that you've done, so you can go.

And then we round out that scene with a whoosh and a ping.

So here's the whoosh by itself.

(hands whooshing) And the ping by itself.

(hands pinging) And then, together, you have.

(hands pinging) And then, when we add Mister C back in.

Keep track of -everything that you've done -(hands pinging) so you can go back and check it out at a future date.

Well, guess what?

I want you to keep exploring.

I want you to keep learning, I want you to keep having fun, and I want you to remember that.

[Both] Science is wherever you are.

Take care, everybody, bye.

And I typically do wave at the screen too because I'm part of the show and it makes everybody feel like they're part of the show.

(upbeat music) It's just really fun to see it come to life, starting from one thing and ending in another.

And then you get to see the finished product on television and it just all comes together and it's exciting, it's fun to be a part of something like that.

And to hear the audio that you got to work on to add your part into this big scene, it's fulfilling and it's something that I love to do.

One of my favorite things when it comes to making videos is using this thing called a green screen.

Using chroma key allows us to take any color, like this green, and remove it from the video.

See, when I remove the green, I can put anything there in place of the green.

Say I wanna be at the beach, say I wanna be in the snow somewhere.

(wind whooshing) Say I just wanna be on a boat in an ocean or at an airport.

Having a green screen allows us to have flexibility when we're filming because we can add anything to the show that we want.

But I thought it would be fun if we created some puppets and had a little puppet adventure in front of the green screen.

Don't you think that would be fun?

-I do.

-(audience applauding) And this is something you can do at home, also.

A lot of cell phones, a lot of smart devices have the ability to do green screen or blue screen.

See, when it comes to green screening, you can remove any color.

Like my shirt, if I don't want this orange to be here, I can make it go away, I can turn it to any color I want.

We want it to be yellow, it's yellow.

If I want it to be orange, well, it's always orange 'cause that's my shirt.

If I want it to be light blue, it's light blue, that's the cool thing.

I can be really creative with a simple thing by color correcting or using that one color and making it disappear.

So let's make our puppets and let's make a little puppet show with our green screen.

(lively music) Hey Mister C, how are you?

I'm doing well, are you ready to green screen?

Yes, let's get rolling.

(laughs) All right, let's clean up really quick.

(whooshes) All right, now we are ready to green screen.

So the thing with green screening is you need to have, well, this one is gonna be green, but you wanna have it lit up really well and you don't want to try to throw shadows, 'cause when you throw shadows, it's hard to key out or get rid of the green.

So I'm gonna keep my character out about here.

There's a little bit of a shadow, but I think we'll be okay and it's not gonna be perfect and yours won't be perfect either, but half the fun is working on getting it lit well and playing and doing all the cool things to make your green screen even better.

Let's go to the moon.

To the moon.

(rocket whooshing) One small step for robots.

One giant leap for "DIY Science Time", ah!

(laughs) Isn't that fun?

Doing your own green screening is so awesome because you can literally go anywhere in the world, take a piece of cardboard, take some construction paper, build your green screen.

And remember, it doesn't have to be green, you can start with blue or red or any color.

But the key is, literally, the key is that whatever color this is is, that it's nowhere else, nowhere else on the screen because if there's green anywhere else, it'll also get keyed out and disappear.

Have fun, go on an adventure, build a green screen, make a puppet show, and remember, it's awesome.

Our thirst for video knowledge requires us to take a short water break.

Enjoy the slow motion flow of H2O.

(upbeat music) Whoa, video and animation are so amazing.

Check this out.

With Mary's help, I can do anything.

I can jump so high, I can roll back and forth on the screen, I can even dance like a pro.

Van really brings our science to life with his amazing sound engineering talents.

He can make my singing go from this to this!

We have so much fun collecting and sharing our learning with all of you.

You should try making science videos at your home.

Ready on set, Science Crew?

Let's roll.

What an amazing day today.

We talked about animation, we talked about green screen, we talked about zoetropes, we talked about sound engineers, we learned how these characters right here, hey guys.

Hey Mister C. They can be on the screen any time to be part of the show and share science knowledge with all of us.

It's awesome.

Oh, and by the way, if you haven't done so yet, hop online and download a "DIY Science Time" notebook.

It's a great way to capture your information and keep track of all the notes and things that you do while conducting experiments at home.

So much fun.

So much fun.

I love learning with my Science Crew and I hope you're at home learning with yours.

Hey crew.

Keep learning, keep exploring, keep having fun, and remember science is wherever you are.

All right, you guys ready to bounce?

Literally.

(laughs) That's pretty amazing.

Nice.

♪ It's science time ♪ So I'm here with Mary Lakota, did I say it right?

No.

I told you I get your name wrong constantly.

(Mister C whooshes) I've got my Mister C puppets.

Somehow my character's growing, it's just getting longer.

(laughs) And then we have an animator at Alabama Public... ♪ It's so much fun ♪ We have a big camera right in front of us, okay.

(laughs) ♪ It's science time ♪ Ah, that was a good one.