Question: Can you explain more about your project Non-Fiction science?, it sounds like fun :D

Vicky Young answered on 10 Mar 2012:

Sure!

Swedes are a type of amateur film made famous by the movie ‘Be Kind Rewind’. In the movie Mike, a video shop clerk, and his friend Jerry, erase all the tapes in the shop by mistake. To avoid getting caught by his boss, Mike decides to recreate the movies using himself and Jerry as the actors hoping to fool the customers. Word of mouth spreads of the inadvertently hilarious results of Mike and Jerry’s filming, and soon the store is seeing more requests for such movies. Mike and Jerry quickly pass off the movies as being “sweded”, insisting the films came from Sweden and thus able to demand long wait times and higher costs for the rental.

Swedes are now a cult phenomenon with people around the word remaking their favorite movies which can be seen on the ‘Be Kind Rewind’ you tube channel.

Well we (Dan Steve and I) were inspired by this but thought it would be fun to build on top the idea and get people to recreate their favorite movie in a swede format but at the same time correct an element of science in it that is wrong. We thought this would be a great way to teach people about science in everyday life and inspire them to be more interested in science (hopefully).

We have just started the project in the last 3 months and we are currently preparing to take it to a science festival in the summer. After this we hope to take it to schools and we have some other ideas too, such as making scientists do it.

For the science festival we have re-written some famous film scrips to “correct” a part of the science that they got wrong. We are going to hold a one hour workshop where people of any age can come along. They will first try and figure out what science was wrong (We give lots of help) then they go about filming a short version of the movie with the science corrected. We will get everyone to act/direct/film and we will provide the script/props and equipment.

This is just some of our examples:

Example 1: Imagine showing how Aladdin and Princes Jasmine could really fly on their magic carpet and how different and intricate the contraption would look compared the Disney version? What would happen if you had no protection from the G-force?

Example 2: Inception entered peoples dreams to implant thought, which is impossible in todays world. However you can influence someone’s dreams by placing subliminal messages into their everyday lives. Would this work just as well?

Example 3: Dinosaurs lived in a world where the oxygen content in the air was much higher. If you recreated dinosaurs, Jurassic Park style, they would not have enough oxygen available to them to breath efficiently. Could you strap an oxygen tank to a T-Rex? Would the dinosaurs grow to the correct size if their oxygen was limited. How would a T-rex hunt if he could not run?

(That was really long)