Natural History Videos

The Backdrop

Since 2022, we have been conducting an Eco-Evo practical course for interested students of BI2113, the third semester ecology and evolution course. This practical course is outside the IISER Pune curriculum, carries no grades, and requires a lot of work. Only those who are seriously interested in Eco-Evo participate in this, as it entails a lot of work. 

As part of this course, the students have been making short natural history videos on a topic of their choice. The plan is to showcase these videos here. 

Rules

The following are the actual set of rules by which the students have to abide. These videos need to be watched in this context.

a) You can only use your own footage / pictures and NOT borrow anything from other sources.

b) All footage must have been shot on the campus or surrounding areas. Thus, shots from exotic places like wildlife sanctuaries, even if they are your own, are out. 

c) Each piece must have a story / topic and must be self-contained. Thus, random beautiful videos of the campus or some place are out.

d) Minimum duration: 2 minutes. Maximum duration: 10 minutes.

e) Obviously, most of you would not have the kind of camera and lenses that the professionals use, and therefore, your shots would not be of the pro level. That is perfectly fine. Like evolution, do the best with whatever you have got.

f) You can work in groups, but the group size should not be greater than 5. You can of course take help from as many people as you want and acknowledge them in your video. 

g) All videos must have a  section in the beginning or the end where you are going to state the video's name and credits.

h) The video should strictly be about non-humans (i.e. an animal or a plant or a eco/evo related phenomenon). You can use humans for your story, but do not make the video on a human-related story. From a safety point of view, avoid things like snakes and scorpions as a subject. If you absolutely want to work on "dangerous" stuffs, you have to take my explicit permission and convince me that you know how to handle such things.

i) If you are planning to shoot outside the campus, get a letter from me certifying that you are doing this project. That will be helpful in some situations.