Chemistry Collaboration

In January Fourth Form students, Matilda Braje and Kate Sin, entered a European chemistry competition. The task was to produce a 90 second video based on an element in the periodic table. Matilda and Kate’s short animation on helium impressed the judges and they were awarded 4th place in the Under 18 category – an incredible achievement. CLICK HERE to view their animation and keep reading to hear more about how Matilda and Kate worked together on this project.

Teamwork, by Matilda and Kate

Given that each of our approaches to writing were like chalk and cheese, we each wrote a short draft of the script for our video.

As Matilda scrolled through her 111 unread emails some weeks ago, a banner that had previously been overlooked suddenly caught her eye. It advertised the EYCN chemistry video competition requesting video entries of no more than 90 seconds on an element from the periodic table.

The two of us buddied-up and headed towards the library, armed with a laptop, phone and whiteboard. Having considered a few other elements, such as krypton for its numerous manifestations in science fiction novels and uranium for its radioactive properties, eventually, we unanimously decided to do our project on helium because of some of its interesting uses and very funny voice changing effects.

At once, we set to work on writing the script. Given that each of our approaches to writing were like chalk and cheese, we each wrote a short draft of the script for our video. The two scripts were soon merged into one Franken-script, and this method proved to be incredibly successful as it resulted in a fun but formal and (hopefully) informative script. Kate shone in her role as head of animation and the arts department, whilst Matilda made her directorial debut and ran the post-production department for the project.

After four laborious hours of non-stop animating, the job was complete, and while we do cringe to hear ourselves speaking in it, we were happy with the end result. Recently we heard back that we had got fourth place in the Under 18s section and are both very proud. We both had a wonderful time and we are looking forward to our (surely) bright and illustrious future in the short-science- video industry.