First Light / STEREO Missions to Study Sun (excerpt from digital content producer)
Sidebar on GSFC production from Digital Content Producer
(Sept, 2007)
digitalcontentproducer.com/hdhdv/depth/video_horizon/inde...
Visual Science Storytelling
Wade Sisler is the executive television producer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and he has also worked at NASA HQ and the Ames Research Center in California. Trained in journalism at Baylor University and Scientific and Technical Still Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he began working at NASA Ames in the mid ‘80s while finishing up his degree at RIT, and he says he never looked back. These days, Sisler is heavily involved in what he calls “Visual Science Storytelling.”
Sisler and other NASA Center employees around the nation use the discipline of television and video graphics to tell the story of projects, research, and missions created and managed by their particular center. The video, animation, and multimedia products they produce are for a variety of audiences both public and internally within the agency, and some of this content is also broadcast on NASA TV.
DCP: What brought you to NASA, and can you tell me a little about the background of video production at Goddard?
Sisler: For me, NASA was a great place because every time you turned over a rock, a mind-blowing story and often wonderful visual opportunity would crawl out. I liked that there were many new challenges and that many of the things I was to document had never been captured before. By the late ‘80s, I was dabbling in emerging multimedia, digital photography, and video, and while I hated the quality of the video image, I loved being able to go deeper into a story. Eventually, painfully, I made the shift to video and television just as the tools became affordable to small groups like the one we had at Ames. We felt lucky to be shooting on 3/4in. tape and were thrilled to eventually upgrade to Beta and then BetacamSP.
I transferred to NASA HQ in 1994 and then came to Goddard in 1997. At HQ, I worked on the IMAX films Mission to Mir and [Space Station 3D], and I also worked on projects with NASA TV.
How is Goddard different when it comes to the kinds of things you document with video?
When I came to Goddard, I found my true niche in scientific storytelling. Working here is a curious person's dream come true. The 9,000-plus scientists and engineers are literally changing the way humans see the universe and changing world we live in. NASA science provides insights into some of the most pressing problems and biggest questions of the day. Communicating the results of our missions is now woven into the DNA of our agency, and I think our team feels lucky to be working with an organization so passionate about sharing their story with the widest possible audience.
What are the main aspects of what you do?
There are really four main areas of challenge:
Visual science storytelling — translating complex stories with pictures, sound, and video
Creating or capturing absolutely compelling core content
Making that content widely available in multiple formats and multiple distribution channels
Doing all of the above very efficiently.
You've seen a lot of changes in the visual tools you use.
Sure. These days, the quality of the image is not an issue, of course. We now have end-to-end HD and shoot on Panasonic P2 and Varicam. A great deal of our work these days involves working with and directing animation and data visualization. Most of our important images are no longer shot with cameras, but are captured by satellites or are rendered in our visualizers' minds.
Interesting. And how do you share that content?
The biggest challenge we see is the fragmentation of the production/media world. We consider our customers to be a continuous spectrum of traditional print and broadcast media, web media portals, educators and students, museums, scientists, stakeholders — and, of course, the general public. The user community is fragmenting as the new media world carves up distribution channels into narrower and narrower slices. This fragmentation means that there are many more users creating many more products with our core content.
Can you describe the process of distribution?
Let's say we're producing material to illustrate the NASA mission objectives of a new kind of climate-observing satellite. Our work plan would usually call for creation of an animation illustrating the satellite at work. We would show it in action and illustrate how it works. We might also create contextual animation to help folks visualize the science behind the mission. Our producer will make sure to capture a few signature sequences that define a project.
These days, momentum has shifted to creating two- to three-minute reporter packages that can be used on places like NASA TV, web portals, and distributed via iTunes. The second part of our strategy is actively producing resource collections, which can be obtained via our fulfillment house or, increasingly, directly via online download.
Has HD and Internet streaming made inroads at Goddard?
HD has more than made inroads. Everything is HD. Even satellites are beginning to deliver HD. We've been shooting almost all HD for the past two years. It has been a little reach, but because we have such a high rate of reusing previous footage, it's been worth it. When the Solar Dynamics Observatory is launched next year, it will be sending down an HD image of the sun every second. Here comes the sun! We'll see all of the incoming space weather as never before. As far as web streaming goes, the new NASA portal will stream content and allow users to pull it down on demand. To get the uncompressed satellite footage and animations, producers will still need to go to the home centers like Goddard and JPL.
Can you tell me anything about Goddard’s work with stereo video?
We are working stereo video, but not with traditional cameras, for the most part. We do some work with the stereo pair of solar observatories. They produce essentially right-left eye images and we conducted our first press conference using the 3D images last April.
When NASA TV wants/needs programming from Goddard, is the footage sent via the WAN or via tape or hard drive, or another way?
We can send it via the WAN or directly via fiber. Goddard, like HQ and some of the other centers, is very connected to the various backbones. We conduct interviews with the networks and cable news outlet directly via the Bell Atlantic AVOC [a dedicated satellite two-way feed].
What can you tell me about the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center?
The Scientific Visualization Studio [SVS] turns raw satellite data into images. But this is much more than translating numbers to pixels. Frequently, these folks combine data from many satellites and sensors into a single comprehensive story. The mission of the SVS is to facilitate scientific inquiry and outreach within NASA programs through visualization. All the visualizations created by the SVS [currently totaling more than 2,700] are accessible to everyone through the website. More recent animations are provided as MPEG-1s and MPEG-2s. Some animations are available in high definition as well as standard NTSC format. Where possible, the original digital images used to make these animations have also been made accessible. Lastly, high- and low-resolution stills, created from the visualizations, are included, with previews for selective downloading [see svs.gsfc.nasa.gov].
Eric de Jong at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is probably the unofficial leader on 3D within the agency. He has done quite a bit of 3D camera data viz work. Visit him at science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/deJong.
If there was one thing you’d like to share about digital multimedia content creation at Goddard, what would it be?
Our goal, and our mini slogan: One message, in many formats, through many channels, for many users!
—T.P.M
First Light / STEREO Missions to Study Sun (excerpt from digital content producer)
Sidebar on GSFC production from Digital Content Producer
(Sept, 2007)
digitalcontentproducer.com/hdhdv/depth/video_horizon/inde...
Visual Science Storytelling
Wade Sisler is the executive television producer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and he has also worked at NASA HQ and the Ames Research Center in California. Trained in journalism at Baylor University and Scientific and Technical Still Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he began working at NASA Ames in the mid ‘80s while finishing up his degree at RIT, and he says he never looked back. These days, Sisler is heavily involved in what he calls “Visual Science Storytelling.”
Sisler and other NASA Center employees around the nation use the discipline of television and video graphics to tell the story of projects, research, and missions created and managed by their particular center. The video, animation, and multimedia products they produce are for a variety of audiences both public and internally within the agency, and some of this content is also broadcast on NASA TV.
DCP: What brought you to NASA, and can you tell me a little about the background of video production at Goddard?
Sisler: For me, NASA was a great place because every time you turned over a rock, a mind-blowing story and often wonderful visual opportunity would crawl out. I liked that there were many new challenges and that many of the things I was to document had never been captured before. By the late ‘80s, I was dabbling in emerging multimedia, digital photography, and video, and while I hated the quality of the video image, I loved being able to go deeper into a story. Eventually, painfully, I made the shift to video and television just as the tools became affordable to small groups like the one we had at Ames. We felt lucky to be shooting on 3/4in. tape and were thrilled to eventually upgrade to Beta and then BetacamSP.
I transferred to NASA HQ in 1994 and then came to Goddard in 1997. At HQ, I worked on the IMAX films Mission to Mir and [Space Station 3D], and I also worked on projects with NASA TV.
How is Goddard different when it comes to the kinds of things you document with video?
When I came to Goddard, I found my true niche in scientific storytelling. Working here is a curious person's dream come true. The 9,000-plus scientists and engineers are literally changing the way humans see the universe and changing world we live in. NASA science provides insights into some of the most pressing problems and biggest questions of the day. Communicating the results of our missions is now woven into the DNA of our agency, and I think our team feels lucky to be working with an organization so passionate about sharing their story with the widest possible audience.
What are the main aspects of what you do?
There are really four main areas of challenge:
Visual science storytelling — translating complex stories with pictures, sound, and video
Creating or capturing absolutely compelling core content
Making that content widely available in multiple formats and multiple distribution channels
Doing all of the above very efficiently.
You've seen a lot of changes in the visual tools you use.
Sure. These days, the quality of the image is not an issue, of course. We now have end-to-end HD and shoot on Panasonic P2 and Varicam. A great deal of our work these days involves working with and directing animation and data visualization. Most of our important images are no longer shot with cameras, but are captured by satellites or are rendered in our visualizers' minds.
Interesting. And how do you share that content?
The biggest challenge we see is the fragmentation of the production/media world. We consider our customers to be a continuous spectrum of traditional print and broadcast media, web media portals, educators and students, museums, scientists, stakeholders — and, of course, the general public. The user community is fragmenting as the new media world carves up distribution channels into narrower and narrower slices. This fragmentation means that there are many more users creating many more products with our core content.
Can you describe the process of distribution?
Let's say we're producing material to illustrate the NASA mission objectives of a new kind of climate-observing satellite. Our work plan would usually call for creation of an animation illustrating the satellite at work. We would show it in action and illustrate how it works. We might also create contextual animation to help folks visualize the science behind the mission. Our producer will make sure to capture a few signature sequences that define a project.
These days, momentum has shifted to creating two- to three-minute reporter packages that can be used on places like NASA TV, web portals, and distributed via iTunes. The second part of our strategy is actively producing resource collections, which can be obtained via our fulfillment house or, increasingly, directly via online download.
Has HD and Internet streaming made inroads at Goddard?
HD has more than made inroads. Everything is HD. Even satellites are beginning to deliver HD. We've been shooting almost all HD for the past two years. It has been a little reach, but because we have such a high rate of reusing previous footage, it's been worth it. When the Solar Dynamics Observatory is launched next year, it will be sending down an HD image of the sun every second. Here comes the sun! We'll see all of the incoming space weather as never before. As far as web streaming goes, the new NASA portal will stream content and allow users to pull it down on demand. To get the uncompressed satellite footage and animations, producers will still need to go to the home centers like Goddard and JPL.
Can you tell me anything about Goddard’s work with stereo video?
We are working stereo video, but not with traditional cameras, for the most part. We do some work with the stereo pair of solar observatories. They produce essentially right-left eye images and we conducted our first press conference using the 3D images last April.
When NASA TV wants/needs programming from Goddard, is the footage sent via the WAN or via tape or hard drive, or another way?
We can send it via the WAN or directly via fiber. Goddard, like HQ and some of the other centers, is very connected to the various backbones. We conduct interviews with the networks and cable news outlet directly via the Bell Atlantic AVOC [a dedicated satellite two-way feed].
What can you tell me about the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center?
The Scientific Visualization Studio [SVS] turns raw satellite data into images. But this is much more than translating numbers to pixels. Frequently, these folks combine data from many satellites and sensors into a single comprehensive story. The mission of the SVS is to facilitate scientific inquiry and outreach within NASA programs through visualization. All the visualizations created by the SVS [currently totaling more than 2,700] are accessible to everyone through the website. More recent animations are provided as MPEG-1s and MPEG-2s. Some animations are available in high definition as well as standard NTSC format. Where possible, the original digital images used to make these animations have also been made accessible. Lastly, high- and low-resolution stills, created from the visualizations, are included, with previews for selective downloading [see svs.gsfc.nasa.gov].
Eric de Jong at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is probably the unofficial leader on 3D within the agency. He has done quite a bit of 3D camera data viz work. Visit him at science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/deJong.
If there was one thing you’d like to share about digital multimedia content creation at Goddard, what would it be?
Our goal, and our mini slogan: One message, in many formats, through many channels, for many users!
—T.P.M