#deeplook

Zac Olivadese

CCRI COMM 1400-601: Social Media Communication

When I share my photography, I hope to show someone a world they’ve never seen before. The immersive world of insects and all things small, is rich with things to discover. You could read a book or have someone give you a lecture on the goings-on of these ecosystems, however with the right equipment, you can step right into it. I am deeply inspired by the nature documentaries I watched on repeat as a kid, over and over again. PBS Studios, a non-profit broadcasting organization, is a stranger to none. For many, PBS Studios brings back memories of grade school, with an encumbering CRT Television mounted atop a thin and rickety cart. 

The aim of a documentary is to be informational, and it can be easy to think this is a simple medium. Speaking from experience, if someone has decided they don’t like, for example spiders, you can’t just show them slide shows of spider anatomy and expect them to learn something. If the director or writer of a project truly believes that what they are showing is worth showing, it will come through. The knowledge gained from documentaries is almost tangible, and no knowledge is ever wasted. A viewer may walk away with a new perspective on the world around them, forever changing how they interact with their environment, and this feeling can be addicting!  With education in one hand and entertainment in one hand, the internet has dubbed this brand of media as “edutainment”. 

PBS Studios is a non-commercial and free to access library of multimedia education, this means they host several education focused projects. I would love to share my absolute favorite of these; DeepLook. 

Deep Look - YouTube

“See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world!”, is the motto of this series. Although this link is tied to youtube, this series is also featured on PBS’s streaming service;

PBS 

I prefer scrolling through PBS content on youtube, mainly because of the comment section and Youtube Shorts. DeepLook's youtube channel alone, as of February 2023, has over two million subscribers. The videos on this channel are formatted to short and digestible content. This proves to be synergistic with one of DeepLook’s other sponsors KQED, who will connect their science education articles with DeepLook’s videos. I obviously am biased towards visual media, but these videos lead me into the articles associated with them in the comments. This content “loop” creates a closed circuit of easy to digest edutainment, for readers, listeners, and viewers. I may begin on video on silk moths just to find myself eventually on a ‘behind the scenes” article on mosquitos. 

In fact, here’s a video to begin an etymology rabbit hole.

Silkworms Spin Cocoons That Spell Their Own Doom | Deep Look

Filming a Silkworm Time-lapse | Behind the Scenes with Deep Look

With these two links, you’ll get an idea for the storytelling techniques of deeplook, as well as how they capture the footage.

Cape Sundews, sticky shimmering carnivorous plants 

My First Documentary