Unspoken Truths - Silbersalz Science & Media Conference

The current crisis of truth hits at a time when science clearly shows major threats to the web of life on earth. Audiovisual media is crucial in negotiating between science, false beliefs and the unknown.With its direct evocation of emotional reactions, videos can easily overpower written languages a mean of spreading what appears to be true. This talk looks at audiovisual technologies as a tool to mediate and explore ways of strengthening the bond of trust between science and public. How can we build trust through these experiences?

A video-based exploration into the conflicting nature of scientists, filmmakers and activists. Video Keynote from the Silberfest Science and Media Conference & Festival, Halle 2020.

Notes on 'Unspoken Truths - Science, Film & Realities'

As the second wave of Corona hit Switzerland right before the conference, I wasn't able to travel to Halle. Quickly, I decided to rewrite my original planned keynote presentation into a video-based format. As video offers quite a broader spectrum of narration formats for a keynote presentations, I decided to create a trialogue between the scientist, filmmaker and activist. These three (fluid) identities are naturally a part of my work and life, so it was obvious to distingish them into different point of views and create a critical discourse on the current bottleneck of Trust in Science, Film by Society.

The following script below was the draft for the production, and it's not verbatim of the video version as I had to improvise the speech (I didn't know the text by hearth) due the limited time of production. Several persons have asked me already, how long it took me to produce this video at home. Rule of thumb...

Preproduction: ca. 1/2 a day of re-writing the presentation into a trialogue video script, 1 person how gave feedback and corrected parts on it.

Production: around 2 days (as I did everything on my own, so I basically had to run forth and back to the camera, trusting my canon autofokus to do the job and so on). Usually in teamwork and with a prepared speaker I would say 1 day.

Postproduction: 1 day and 1 night ... nothing would ever get done without a deadline...: “I love deadlines. I [author's comment: DO NOT] love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt