Research films

Real research, made visible.

Short films made from real research: a study's own data, or its equations. Each one names its source, and labels what is data, what is worked out and what is staged.

Watch the films Researchers: a film of your study

How we label things

Data
Measured by a study's team: for example, where and when each firefly flashed.
Worked out
Computed by us from real physics or a study's equations: soap colors, how light bends, how baby starfish move.
Staged
Our choices for the picture or the game: drawings, color and glow, camera moves, speed, music, game rules.

The films

Four films so far

Each film is vertical, under a minute, and made for phones. Tap "Watch with sound" to play the whole film.

NewData from real recordings

Firefly Codes

A real firefly swarm, filmed for research published in Scientific Reports (a peer-reviewed journal), with its flashes measured in 3D by two cameras. Then seven firefly species, each flashing its own code, and a computer that learned to name the species from the flashes alone. It was right about 7 times in 10.

Data
Where and when each flash happened, over 32 minutes. The seven species' codes. The study's result (right about 7 times in 10).
Staged
One firefly seen up close (our drawing, in slow motion), the 32 minutes shown all at once, color and glow, camera moves, music.

The study

Martin, Nguyen, Sarfati, Chowdhury, Iuzzolino, Nguyen, Layer and Peleg, “Embracing firefly flash pattern variability with data-driven species classification”, Scientific Reports 14, 3432 (2024).

3D recordings: Sarfati and team, open data on Dryad, a public data library (2023).

NewData from real recordings, at real speed

Firefly Sync

Fireflies of a species that flashes in sync (scientific name Photinus carolinus), at real speed. In bursts, they flash together, every 0.7 seconds, even when they are far apart. Then they go dark, and the bursts repeat about every 15 seconds. Each flash plays one note.

Data
Where and when each flash happened, played at the speed it was recorded.
Staged
The glow, the night sky (one camera's daytime photo, darkened), and the notes' pitches. Each note starts when its flash really did.

The data

Sarfati and team, “Crowdsourced dataset of firefly trajectories obtained by automated stereo calibration of 360-degree cameras”, open data on Dryad, a public data library (2023).

NewData from real recordings

Where Beams Cross

Each camera only sees which direction a flash came from: a line, like a beam, from the camera toward the flash. Where the two cameras' lines cross, that's the firefly. But first a computer had to work out where the second camera stood. It made 46 guesses, checking each one against the same 5,000 flashes, and the film replays all 46.

Data
The firefly's place, the computer's 46 guesses and the 5,000 flashes, all from the team's own records.
Staged
The firefly, drawn 7 times bigger than life. Colors, sound and camera moves.

The data

Sarfati and team, “Crowdsourced dataset of firefly trajectories obtained by automated stereo calibration of 360-degree cameras”, open data on Dryad, a public data library (2023).

Worked out: a simulation of a real study

Living Crystal

Starfish embryos (baby starfish) spin, pull each other together at the water's surface, and hundreds settle into a crystal that turns. Waves ripple through it, and as the embryos grow, it breaks up. The study's computer program isn't public, so we wrote our own from the paper's equations and ran it.

Worked out
Each embryo's path and spin, and the flow of the water, from the paper's equations, with a weaker pull than the study measured, so the gathering is easy to watch.
Staged
How the embryos look, the waves (drawn to match the study), the crystal breaking up, and the speed: 100 times faster than life.

The study

Tan, Mietke, Li, Chen, Higinbotham, Foster, Gokhale, Dunkel and Fakhri, “Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals”, Nature 607, 287–293 (2022).

For researchers

Your study, as a short film

We make video abstracts: short vertical films that show one result of a paper, made from its real data or its equations. They're built for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, and they work in talks and on lab websites too.

How it works

  1. You send the paper, and its data and programs if they're public.
  2. We pick one result anyone can follow, and build the picture from your numbers.
  3. You check every word and number before the film is shared.
  4. The film ends by naming your paper, and labels what is data, what is worked out and what is staged, like the films above.

Get in touch

Tell us your paper's title and what you'd like people to see.

Message us on Instagram

You get the film (1080 × 1920 pixels) to share anywhere, and text to post with it that names your study in full.