Put it on camera: How to get into scientific film- and video-making

It’s easier than ever to learn how to produce captivating clips that can boost your scientific outreach — or open the door to a new job.

NATURE – Roberta Kwok

Stephani Gordon has filmed squid in the Gulf of California, a nineteenth-century whaling boat in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands and a search for Amelia Earhart’s plane in the central Pacific. In 2017, she shot footage off the coast of Mexico of pelagic creatures such as the paper nautilus (Argonauta nouryi) and vampire jellyfish (Vampyrocrossota childressi).

Gordon, sole proprietor of Open Boat Films in Portland, Oregon, spent more than a decade working as a field biologist, studying seabirds, sharks and other marine animals. But from 2004 to 2005, while working as a marine-ecosystem research specialist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Honolulu, Hawaii, she served as a field guide for two nature photographers and was impressed by the large audience their images drew…