All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup

Last week I got an email from someone at Emory who is making a promotional video for the School of Public Health. They said they wanted to get some B-roll of laboratory work, and asked if they could shoot in our lab. I said yes, since I've gotten pretty good lately at doing lab work for show. I figured that they would send some guy with a camcorder, he would videotape me doing something lame while wearing a lab coat, and that would be the end of it.

So yesterday the lab doorbell rings and I answer it to find this guy has a whole TON of camera equipment. He had to set up lighting and a giant camera and everything. I had been given specific instructions by my boss not to have any pathogens out while he was here, which pretty much rules out nearly all of the work that I do, so I figured I'd just do some plasmid preps for the video. The cameraman seemed pleased with that, saying that repetitive motions work well for his purposes. So there I was, trying to do some simple plasmid preps, but I've got lights and crazy camera angles and a guy asking if I can make certain parts last longer and if I can hold the tubes up higher.

Anyways, in the middle of the shoot, it dawned on me. You know when you watch the news, or CSI or a show like that and they cut to a shot of a "Scientist" doing "Science" where they're wearing gloves and a lab coat and dropping solutions into a test tube or something? Well, now that's gonna be me. Cameraman got extended footage of me in a lab coat and gloves, squirting solutions into tubes and then holding them up to the light while turning them upside down, doing my best to look like I'm intently interested in the major discovery I'm about to make for science.

I'll admit, I was aiming for something like this:





But the footage I saw looked almost exactly like this instead.