Entry Formats

This year competitors are asked to submit a written project details with images entry or a short video about their project.

When completing your written entry, please ensure you cover the assessment criteria. If you are submitting a written entry, please keep these word counts in mind:

• Project overview: 150 words max
• Project concept: 300 words max
• Project process: 400 words max
• Project outcomes: 400 words max
• Next steps and reflections: 350 words max

If you are submitting a video entry, videos should be no longer than 5 minutes, and files should be no bigger than 1GB.

To enter The Young Scientist Award, you can submit a three minute video to introduce yourself/your team and give a brief overview of your work. You can highlight any demonstrations, or elements of your project that you would like the judges to see.

You can use any device with a camera and microphone to film/record your project presentation, including phones, tablets and laptops. Judges will not be scoring your film quality, so do not worry if you do not have the best equipment or latest editing software – this is not what we are looking for! The most important thing is that judges can hear your presentation clearly and see any posters, diagrams, and demonstrations you would like to show them.

METHOD

We welcome the following types of videos:

In front of camera – students talking to camera. They could be running through a poster or PowerPoint slides, or demonstrating their experiment/products.

PowerPoint recording – students recording a PowerPoint presentation with voiceover.

LENGTH

Your video should be no longer than 5 minutes. Judges will not review any videos past the 5-minute mark. You will need to be concise and
ensure you cover the relevant information during this time.

FORMAT

Please film in landscape mode and at 1920×1080 resolution if possible and export your video as an .mp4 file. Your file should be no larger than 1GB

AUDIO

It is important to make sure our judges can hear you clearly throughout your video, as it’s your voice they want to hear the most!
Try to make sure there are no background noises, and that you are not too close to the microphone.
Your instinct might be to talk as quickly as possible about as much as possible as soon as you start recording.

This might make it harder for our judges to follow your presentation. Take a deep breath and speak clearly and slowly and ensure you get all your important points across

CONTENT

In your video you should introduce yourself/your team to the judges and give them a brief overview of your project including what you set out to achieve, whether you were able to achieve it and whether there were any surprises or challenges your encountered on the way. You can also highlight any elements of your project that you’d like the judges to see, such as demonstrations or models.

If you choose to highlight any printed or written materials, remember to ensure the camera remains in focus so judges can clearly see and read what you want to show them. Remember, you can also upload any diagrams, graphs or other images you would like judges to review on your project entry form. If you choose to go down the PowerPoint film route, please make sure your slides are concise – they should not feature too much content.

EDITING SOFTWARE

If you are working as a team but are unable to come together to film your presentation, you can still all be part of the video! You can bring together different film clips and merge them into one longer video.

For creating on a PC, videos can be edited in the built in Windows Photos app which has options for structuring video clips on a timeline, with options for adding voiceover, music and text. On a Mac and iPhone, iMovie is included for free and has the same capability. Adobe Premiere Rush can also be downloaded for free on a PC/Mac as well as being available on an iOS and Android phone – it is also a great piece of software for editing video. The free version has all the features of the paid software but only allows three exports

RECORDING A VOICEOVER FOR YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATION

Open your PowerPoint presentation and head over to the “Slide Show” tab. In the “Set Up” group, select “Record Slide Show.” Once selected, a drop-down menu will appear. Here, you can choose to start the narration from the beginning or from the current slide. You can now start recording