#davidyam

    This course was really an eye opening and stretching one for me! As per mentioned during the showcase: The course was really a course of firsts! And hopefully I can carry on whatever I've learnt here to other portions.

    I'm glad to say that I've survived it and am actually pretty proud of my work! I won't say its perfect (or really good) and there's so many others in class who have more awesome work, but I think it was really worth it. XDD Through this I've learnt the nitty gritty dirty portions to short video makings. And can really appreciate and understand how intricate videos are.

    Really like to thank Elizabeth, Jamie and Ceri for their awesome work in shaping our scripts/ storyboards/ video editing and cuts. But more than that, for encouraging us to express our creative-sides and pushing up to achieve more. Like I had mentioned in the showcase: I really feel that all our projects are a combined effort of all the teaching staff as well as inputs from various students! Thank you everyone!

    One thing I would like to mention was that at the start I was torn between 2 problems to answer through the video:

1) What makes math problems too hard to solve?

2) How does one survive the cold?

I ended up doing qn 2 only after much debate because of feedback from the 6th graders, Elizabeth as well as finding a succinct and concise YouTube video on "P vs NP". I feel now that maybe doing the whole video on "cold" is not something within my area of specialty and possibly a further improvement would be to do one within that. 

    Another area of improvement would be delivery and hosting. I felt that certain other videos had better hosting compared to mine. One reason was that I was unsure in front of the camera, and I feel the answer to this is just more practice and keeping the script only to main points. The second reason was that at the start of the storyboard I was having a more "Ted-Ed" (voice speaking with animation) mindset to creating the whole video.

    Although I must say that I am unlikely to start another video on my own time, I do hope that these lessons can be brought forward when I do need to use them.

    Other than learning about video making/ hosting/ script writing, another lesson I have learnt through class is framing opinions/ feedback. I noticed how individuals in class, Elizabeth and Jamie especially, would give a precursor before stating their opinion. They said stuff like "This might be just me", or "Coming from... ", or "You don't really have to do this, but if I were you...". (This enabled the listener to better understand the context in which the opinion is aimed towards.) I felt that this really helped in the creative process. Also, framing the feedback didn't cause any unhappy moments, as is often seen when ideas get "shot" down in more direct manners.

    I'd like to end off by saying that I'm really glad to have gone for MIT 20.219 and for the friendships made. I would really like to extend the invitation to all students and teaching staff to keep in contact and visit us in Singapore if you can! Please do visit! 

    (P.S. - @Paul: All the best with the video! Hope to see it on Science Out Loud soon)

    (P.S. 2 - @everyone: I hope everyone is doing okay with the snow barrage and all!)

    With Best Regards,

I'd really like to thank all the teaching staff for all the work put into this video making process. Before MIT 20.219, I hadn't imagined the collaborative and creative effort required to piece together an ~3 minute video. Really kudos to all the people who made K12 videos before us. 

I strongly believe that the iterative process was what made our videos better and hopefully a success? Without it our ideas wouldn't be fresh/ flashed out in a proper way.

Really hope that the relationships/ experiences shared during this 3 weeks will continue in the long run! Hope you guys will contact myself/ Joshua/ Kenneth when coming to Singapore! We'd be more than happy to bring your around! XDD

How can I survive the Cold?

Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT

Hosted by: David Yam

Written by: David Yam

Additional scripting: Elizabeth Choe, George Zaidan, Ceri R, Jaime Goldstein

  Executive producer: David Yam

Director: Joshua Cheong

Editor: Paul Folino, Ceri R, Elizabeth Choe

Production assistant: Joshua Cheong

  Scientific studies:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058244

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2821041/

http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_2.htm

  Pictures:

Photo of Wim Hof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof

Brain image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PSM_V46_D167_Outer_surface_of_the_human_brain.jpg

Inuit individual: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit

Temperature: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Temperature_down.svg  &  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Temperature_up.svg

Mitochondria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion, ("Mitochondria, mammalian lung - TEM" by Louisa Howard)

Meditation Lotus pose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asana  &  http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo

Woman in blanket: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Helene_Menzeli_wrapped_in_a_blanket_during_a_snowstorm_-_photo_taken_by_Napoleon_Sarony.jpg&redirect=no

Fire: http://pixabay.com/p-295155/?no_redirect

Woman & Man: http://pixabay.com/p-312286/?no_redirect

Wooden stove pizza baker: http://pixabay.com/en/wood-stove-pizza-baker-pizza-stove-155822/

Videos:

The Last Book Burning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNx3vDSuzkY

Music:

Suspenseful and Victorious Underscore – Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVItZLYqQ_I

(Composer - Jake LaVallee, Owner of http://uncopyrightedmusic.net)

Tundra Caravan – Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeu5nUDJEFI

I thought that the comments given today at the table-read were brutally honest but right. When I was reading through the script that I had revised the day before I was also getting bored and uninterested. Duh. No-wonder I didn't have much good experiences with making videos before. The wordings weren't natural and had too many long sentences too.

I think what was most important was how Elizabeth was going through the flow for Videos as compared to Essays. In videos there really needs to be a hook to pull in others. Videos aren't thesis statements/ essays that others have to trudge through, and even so, the sentence structures for a script and an essay is so different.

Streamlining the story and putting the questions in context was a good way to keep everything in check and not seem to be a bunch of random information that is unlinked. Thanks Jamie for this good comment.

Really hope that this next script is something better. Started it from scratch, without looking at its predecessor, as advised. Kind of getting tired now from writing it again. I think tomorrow I'll look at it and read it again to make sure that the wording is better.

If I were to go out for a run now, dressed like this, you’d probably call me nuts right? Because I wouldn’t be able to withstand the cold, and likely die, of hypothermia.

However, in 2009 Wim Hof, a Dutch man, completed a full marathon in temperatures close to  dressed in nothing but his shorts. Where untrained individuals probably would die, when the body is too cold for normal metabolism and body function. Wim Hof, aptly nicknamed “Iceman”, is able to thrive in the cold. Now what makes “Iceman” able to survive whilst others can’t?

To study Wim Hof, researchers in Netherlands exposed Iceman to extreme temperatures in an ice bath for 1 hour and 44 minutes. Normally, a subject’s core body temperature would plummet below , causing hypothermia to kick in. However, while Wim Hof’s skin temperatures dropped by  to , which is very cold, but his core temperature stayed surprisingly warm. It merely dropped  to . The researchers couldn’t explain exactly what had happened.

One reason could be that Wim Hof is a genetic outlier. With greater ability to regulate his body temperature, producing more heat through higher metabolism. In a separate study, individuals with ancestors that lived in cold climates were found to have mitochondria that generated more heat and less chemical energy.[1] This enabled them to better survive the cold. Wim Hof is from the Netherlands, so maybe it’s his genetic ancestry that saves him? Hmm. But as a one of a kind “Iceman”, it doesn’t seem that genetics itself is enough.

Another possible reason is his physical makeup. With a large stocky body and shorter limbs, one has less surface area contacting the cold.[2] This results in less heat loss to the environment, hence individuals can better preserve vital heat. However, Wim Hof doesn’t have a usually large body or shorter limbs, at least not from the pictures I see. For all we know, he has normal proportions as anyone else. We could attribute increased levels of fat as more insulation to heat, however Wim Hof doesn’t have more fat than anyone else either. So really, after all this, what gives?

Wim Hof practices “g-tummo”, a Tibetan form of breathing, which enables him to double his metabolism. Effectively producing enough heat to keep his core temperatures warm. Well you might tempted to believe that this is wishy-washy non sciency-ish. However, studies conducted at NUS have confirmed that g-tummo is able to increase core body temperature.[3] The study was conducted on Western participants, all of whom had no prior knowledge of the technique no less.

To quote Wim Hof, “We have perfect mechanisms in our bodies, but we intervened with nature when we started wearing clothes. We need to reawaken those mechanisms.” In fact, he hopes to teach others the ability to harness the mind, enabling it to control areas of the body we never thought we could. Other than combatting cold, Wim Hof has shown control over his immune system. And with his techniques, trained individuals have been able to consciously activate innate immune responses.[4] Now if we were to fully understand his methods and how it works, who knows what doors it could open in our resistance to cold/ diseases?

(Yea, i think its still too wordy.

I'll add in the cutscenes/ camera angles/ go through the writing again tmr.)

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/us/ice-age-ancestry-may-keep-body-warmer-and-healthier.html

[2] http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_2.htm

[3] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408084858.htm

Why do some people handle cold better than others? Why is it that some are so fearful of the cold; they’d rather die than be caught outside without all the winter gear on, mask and all, while others can wear one layer for a morning jog? What makes all the difference?

  Imagine a giant furnace, to generate more heat we need to burn more coal.  Now imagine your body as this giant furnace, our metabolism is the fire and sugars are the coals. To generate more heat for warmth, our bodies’ burn more sugars. This is the first way we deal with cold.

  Our blood circulatory system acts like highways to the different organs, imagine our blood as trucks carrying oxygen and heat to the organs. As the speed of the trucks are higher, more heat falls out and is lost to the surroundings. Hence our body slows down the flow of blood by tightening up the blood vessels. This is the same as squeezing a lane on the highway.

  It turns out that our bodies aren’t always equally created. Some just have better genetic makeup than others, and are able to produce more heat from the same amount of sugars. Much like how some people never fatten up no matter how much they eat!

  Contrary to belief, size DOES matter, and so does body type! For one, smaller bodies have more surface area to volume ratio and hence more areas to lose heat. Secondly, bodies with stockier frames and shorter arms mean less distance for blood to travel. Lastly, people with a “healthy bulge” have an extra layer of “insulation” from the cold!

  But thankfully there is one way to increase our tolerance to cold: meditation!

Introducing “Wim Hof” from the Netherlands, In 2009, he completed a full marathon in temperatures below -20 degrees celcius dressed in nothing but his shorts. Wow. I’d probably not last 100metres. Wim Hof is aptly nicknamed “Iceman” for his ability to withstand extreme cold conditions by “turning up” his internal thermostat with his “mind”. Wim Hof practices meditation that allows his body to produce more heat than an average person, as well as shut down certain proteins to slow heat loss to surroundings.

In 2011, he spent 1hr 52mins standing fully immersed in ice. Now that’s just crazy!

  After understanding all this knowledge about withstanding the cold… perhaps there are mutants around us? These would be people that have evolved to better survive the cold.

Today was good learning how to edit and film and shoot in theory. I knew before that filming something and doing it well was not something that was easy, but I'd never been briefly exposed to the thought process behind all that goes through when filming something. Kudos to all those directors/ short-film-makers/ video editors throughout all the decades! Now I believe I get a better understand of exactly what it means when the director "brings you into his/ her world" whenever you watch a movie. Everything, (or if not almost every), that you see in screen is there for a particular reason: lightnings  camera angle, focus, sound, and all.

What was awesome was to be able to get outside and shoot for ourselves. I was paired up with Yulia, who was really helpful and positive about what was good within the scene and shooting angles and whatnot. I felt that alot more would have to be grasped to really produce something good. Maybe not something that we can achieve in these 3 weeks. But already coming to learn from everything up till now, and all the help and advice we've been given, will allow us to produce much better videos than we could have had previously. It was really great how Elizabeth told us how exactly she went through the process herself to kinda give us an example and a model to follow.