The film crew for Particle Fever was in my office again last week. It’s a movie in which I, if I’m not cut, will play the role of Seth Zenz, a graduate student with a high opinion of himself who wants to be on TV. The filming this time was a rather fun and slightly surreal experience: the director has a bunch of us sit down and, well, act like ourselves. We get to have real conversations about things we’re working on, but there are a few things we have to do differently. We can’t take quite so much vocabulary and background knowledge for granted, in the hope that maybe the audience can understand us. We also have to try not to interrupt each other, which is a very big change indeed from how we usually have discussions! And we have to sit on tables and in other funny places so we all fit in a good camera shot. It probably really is the closest anyone get to reproducing a bit of our lives and thought processes for the public, but everything sure does feel different in front of a camera.
Note to self: make sure to replace the last part of the second sentence with “an earnest desire to explain the importance and excitement of his work to the public” before posting this!
Tags: outreach
