Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary, fun, games

Game Voice

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This One is SO Not About Astronomy

Being involved in production for videos (as you might see from my Videos and ‘Casts page, or if you’ve seen any of my fulldome video shows), I occasionally get to work with voice-over actors — those folks who you HEAR in games, videos, on TV — in general, narrating things. Theirs is a demanding and interesting job, and for some folks it pays very well. They also have a lot of fun with it. I won’t name-drop here, but wanting a perfect voice for our work has given us the chance to employ some very famous names (and some not-so-famous, but still darned good ones) to narrate our work. (If you want to see who, run on over to Loch Ness Productions and check out our show links.) For me, getting a good voice as a narrator is what makes the astronomy programs I write as approachable as they are. And that’s important when you want to communicate with audiences that often contain people who are afraid of (or even hate) science.

I got intrigued with the mechanics of voice-over acting over the years, mostly because I wanted to make sure my scripts were something that actors could work with easily (or, to put it another way, to make sure they could give a good performance USING the script, rather than “in spite of” it). So, I decided to take a voice-over class from a very classy lady named Wren Ross, who is an actor and voice-over talent you have probably heard in a variety of places. I figured I’d learn to look at a script from the point of view of an actor and that would help me write even better scripts than I already write.

Well, along the way, I got sorta hooked on doing voice-over. And, I started doing a few voice-overs of my own, beginning with making “scratch” tracks for planetarium shows so that we can test out timings, voicing, etc., before we send the script to a “talent” (as they’re often called). The folks at MIT Haystack Observatory liked what they heard and so I began voicing over some podcasts for them. I’m also in a series of short videos that are being shipped with Software Bisque’s Seeker product.

Recently I worked with a German game designer on a game called Dirty Split. (There’s a nice intro video here.) It’s a stylish take-off of 1960s spy movies and more recent films like the Godfather series and “Ocean’s 11” but with none of the overt violence you see in the Godfather.

In Dirty Split (which is a free download) I play two parts: one is a caricature of a haughty society matron; the other is a take-off on a 60s nightclub singer. It was a lot of fun to do and nothing at all like the science material I’ve narrated thus far. It’s a very tame puzzle-solving murder mystery and it has quite a few little “in” jokes in it. One reviewer said he thought it was an excellent game for beginners and he was going to recommend it to his grandchildren! (Although, I wouldn’t give it to very little kids… ) I’m oddly proud of my work in it, mostly because it was so unlike the work I usually do. Now I’m wondering if I could do a science game…

Astronomy outreach, Commentary, communicating astronomy

Communicating Astronomy

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Why I Do It

Talking and writing about astronomy is a fun gig. I’ve been doing it since the early 1980s, when I got to write a few things for The Denver Post. That was an exciting time. I started out there as an editorial assistant, but ended up writing things almost as soon as it occurred to me ask if I could. Several years later I decided it was time to head back to school and learn more astronomy. The fact that I ended up not only DOING astronomy but also getting a masters’ degree in science journalism is, in some measure, attributable to my love of both subjects.

If I could, I’d go back for that PhD in astrophysics (given enough time and money), but I have found a niche subject I like to write about and, thanks to a number of undergraduate and graduate classes in astronomy and planetary science, plus the chance to work first-hand with a couple of space missions, communicating astronomy is a full-time career. It has taken me from writing articles for newspapers to working as an editor and writer for Sky & Telescope; writing documentary scripts for planetarium shows to creating copy for an entire observatory full of exhibits (at Griffith Observatory). Lately, the rise of “new media” (podcasts, etc.) has taken me off in some new directions, creating podcasts (which you can see on my Video and ‘Casts page and also at Haystack Observatory.

I like to keep tabs on what’s new in astronomy communications–what they like to call “outreach” these days. Last fall I went to Athens, Greece for a meeting called “Communicating Astronomy to the Public.” It was an eclectic mix of people from around the world, all gathered to talk about how writers, producers, and astronomers can go about spreading the word about the sky and what we study in it.

Okay, so why communicate about astronomy? I’ve given that a lot of thought. In a time when there are so many things claiming our collective attention around the world (war, politics, religion, environmental concerns, and so on), it’s a fair question to ask. Sure, astronomy’s got a built-in “cool” factor that you can’t discount unless you’re a cost-cutting senator from a state that has no observatories. But, looking beyond that obvious fact, astronomy is also one of those sciences that gives you a toehold on a whole range of scientific interests. Want to know more about how stars work? Physics will get you started on the journey of discovery in stellar anatomy. Want to know about how planets form? You need some more physics. And geology–lots of geology. And chemistry, since planets (and stars) form out of mixtures of chemical elements in various states. What about life on other worlds? Put in a call to the astrobiologists (who combine biology, life sciences, and astrophysics for their work).

 

A distant solar system

A distant version of the solar system? Astronomy tells us perhaps so.

courtesy KASI,CBNU; ARCSEC, ;NSF.

How to study all this? Well, you need to know something about how to build the instruments of science (telescopes, radio dishes, orbiting satellites, geological sensing equipment, and so forth). Just about any science has a backwards-compatible link to astronomy. This is why we often refer to astronomy as a gateway science. And, beyond the pretty pictures that make science communicators’ lives easier, there are some really compelling stories in astronomy that blow people away (once they hear them).

That’s why I communicate astronomy–to tell really excellent stories about the cool stuff in the universe, and the people who discover and explain them. And, like I said, it’s a fun gig!