Abby Tabor
This text was translated and adapted from the original post in French on WAX Science.
The NESCent Evolution Film Festival asks participants to “submit a video that explains a fun fact, key concept, compelling question, or exciting area of evolution research in three minutes or less.” In other words, the sort of science popularization competition that Wax likes to tackle.
The jury, gathered at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Raleigh, North Carolina, did not choose their video “Selfish Gene” as a winner, unfortunately, but they were close: it was selected among the 12 finalists, chosen from more than 30 films in competition this year.
Selfish Gene from WAX science on Vimeo.
To make this video, they brought out their best accent and wackiest vision of the "selfish gene", looking at evolution, not from the point of view of organisms, but that of genes. What if these coding portions of DNA were really what undergo natural selection? The advantages and disadvantages that they bring play into the success, or not, of a species destined to carry the genes that are replicated, mutated and conserved over the course of evolution, only to die out, in the end… What more did Wax need to set their brains humming with ideas?!
And if it works once, why not twice? Now that they’ve tested a format and a visual identity, and seen what they could do with video, they just have to find which subjects to cover. They are working on that this summer and hope that Wax Video will make its debut in September. Incidentally, the NESCent competition takes place every year and they intend to make another appearance – this time, victorious.
To learn more about this film festival from one of its founder, Jory Weintraub, read the rest of Wax Science’s post (in French), available here.
