iGEM Project Promotion Videos: Why, What, and Insights on How in 2021
by Nemanja Stijepovic, Vice President of Creative Productions at iGEM Foundation
Last year during the pandemic, iGEM teams created 500 videos – videos about their projects, their teams, the problems they are solving. Even before the pandemic, we imagined that videos would be an ideal way for iGEM teams to present their work to the world.
For many years, iGEM teams have been presenting their work with wikis, posters, and live presentations. The iGEM community has grown. There are now over 350 teams, and your projects have gotten better and better over the years. They’ve become more needed and more useful for the world. You should show your projects to everyone. Not just scientists. Not just our own community. Everyone has to see the work that you do.
If you go back a few years, you’ll see that there have been more than 3,000 iGEM projects by now. You’ll probably want to search through them and find out more. To watch the presentations and see the wiki, you’ll need at least an hour per team. And to really see what all iGEM teams are doing, you would need months to go through all of the material.
2-minute Project Promotion Videos were a new Competition deliverable in 2020, introducing iGEM projects to the world in a whole new way.
Now we have project promotion videos: a 2-minute introduction to your project. There are 250 project promotion videos from last year, and we saw that the iGEM teams really exceeded expectations. They showed the amazing variety of projects, challenges and cultures in iGEM There are zoom videos, animated videos, explainers, action videos, all kinds of content. To watch all of these videos, you’ll only need about 8 hours and so you could binge watch them all in just a few days (or even one day if you want to).
The project promotion video is the official introduction to what you want to achieve this year. It’s the first point of contact people will have with your project. It will lead them to your presentation video and to your wiki, where they can find out more.
Here are some insights from last year’s videos:
“Last year I was one of the judges for the project promotion videos and I watched around 40 videos. It was crazy, but it was really nice because I got to know in a short time about the projects of so many teams. Before, it had been really difficult to get to know more than a few projects.”
- Carolina Elizondo, iGEM Global Ambassador Coordinator
“The project promotion videos are a first point of contact that has the power of a first spark igniting a fire making people want to see and learn more about a specific project. And it’s also a way to go outside our bubble – you have this very short video that is easy to watch and at the same time very inspiring, very powerful, and it delivers a great message. People who do not know what iGEM means, or what an iGEM project is, can see one of these videos and get really interested and want to learn more about synbio, about iGEM, about that project.”
- Guilherme Kundlatsch, After iGEM Ambassador alumnus and iGEM Producer
“Of the hundreds of videos that I watched from the iGEM Video Universe, the best videos that came out were the ones that told a story, the ones that had an impact on me. It didn’t matter if it was high production or not, as long as it told a story about your team about what you are doing. Something that a person like me, or someone all the way across the other side of the world can connect to, those are the best videos.”
- Justine Salazar, iGEM Alumni and Video Editor
Here are some examples from last year that may be helpful in creating your own project promotion video:
DTU-Denmark 2020
In this video, the team made their project visible using themselves.
UNSW Australia 2020
This video starts off as a story that engages the audience with what is happening to the Great Barrier Reef.
Ionis Paris 2020
This video is more like a documentary, starting with hard hitting facts.
KSA Korea 2020
This one shows the power of video explainers.
Vilnius-Lithuania 2020
This video from the Undergraduate Grand Prize Winner explains a lot of information about the project (in only 2 minutes!).
Remember, Project Promotion Videos are due by 11:59AM EDT on July 16, 2021. You can learn more on the iGEM Videos Hub, and find guidelines, recommendations, and inspiration on the deliverables page for Project Promotion Videos.
I’m excited to see the videos your team produces for iGEM 2021, and I’m certain your videos will help engage people across the world in synthetic biology, in iGEM, and in the work that you do.
Need help? Visit the Videos Hub on the 2021 Competition website for video resources.
