This is a PRIVATE update. All the videos here, from p01 to p15, are all PRIVATE. Please do not share.
This thing won't be public until very end of 2015, or very early 2016. Am extrapolating that from more recent editing progress. I'm considering staggered chapter releases but won't know for sure until I've got some early chapters edited to completion, and have created-and-finished p16 (as it may impact p01).
My work from August forward has been writing/organizing of narrative (p02-p15), and then the creation of the first chapter (p01).
Only p01 is narrative-feedback-worthy right now. There's still a few audio issues and black moments, but it is good enough you can get a sense of how the chapter works without being perpetually distracted by editing problems.
I'm sharing current TR2015 edit so you know what I've been up to, and also to get that feedback.
Existing p01 issues I'm aware of:
- Some Zubrin dialog contaminated with music.
- Some Gord narration sounds 4am-coffee-with-milk-ish.
- Closing credit names not finalized or standard formatting.
- I say Pu-238 is dwindling... NASA is in fact making more just not as fast as would be useful. So I need to figure out how fast they're making it and how that constrains missions.
- Might be narrative redundancy... could use insight into repetitiveness and boringness, if there's any moments that seem repetitive or poorly organized lemmie know... I might be aware of them but also hard to watch with fresh eyes.
p02-pXX are not nearly finished, and I'm mostly sharing just so you get a sense of the scope of this thing, the pacing, and how I'm using content that spans the entire range of 2011-2015. Please DO point out any technical errors or misunderstandings I have, but I wouldn't fuss over the quality of anything.
And also, don't feel compelled to watch p02-p15 if you want to simply enjoy watching TR2015 in the future... Maybe your idea of a good time is not watching hours of terrible editing. There'll be easier-to-watch edits to come long before any public release.
p01 (103m) NASA
p02 (022m) History
p03 (013m) Dowtherm
p04 (017m) Pebbles
p05 (018m) Caldicott (weak narration intro needs rethink)
p06 (014m) Solid
p07 (030m) Fission
p08 (021m) Chemistry
p09 (035m) Waste
p10 (033m) Debunk
p11 (030m) Terror
p12 (027m) Regulate
p13 (009m) Terrestrial
p14 (006m) Transatomic
p15 (007m) Flibe
p16 (XXXm) Energy (to be created, last chapter)
While p02-p15 are obviously just work-in-progress, there's a few things pertaining to style I can share-my-thoughts now.
- p01 NASA gives a pretty good idea how I'd like to start and end each episode. No opening title. And no baked-in (burned into the video MP4 video) titles at start indicating this is part of a series... if someone starts watching at p04 i don't want them to feel like they goofed and need to back up and watch p01... any chapter should serve as a plausible on-ramp. At the completion of the chapter viewer is informed they're watching a series, and then they can choose to proceed to next chapter, or start-over at the beginning.
- Only p01 NASA will have a "credits" sequence (which you see at the end). Maybe p15 will have something unusual at the end, but quite possibly not.
PROPAGATION
The big issue I will tackle with TR2015 is more effective propagation. Shorter videos lend themselves to better propagation.
But I also do feel like I need to offer a structure in which a viewer can obtain a wide range of learning on subjects of Th, MSR & Nuclear without having to re-watch material. "Th" was my attempt to explore all topics and see how I could cover them, but I was (at that time) unable to organize topics into a single narrative.
That's why if you watch "Th" there's a lot of repeated moments, and it is ultimately not something anyone would enjoy watching end-to-end... it plays like the same documentary spun 10 different ways. Which, in a sense, it was.
With TR2015, I think I've got both a narrative one can watch that leads viewer thru all topics in a manner where the facts conveyed in earlier chapters are built upon in later chapters...
...and also where "existing nuclear is good"... which is something I believe and I think an important idea to convey if we're gong to stop shutting down existing reactors... that idea has to be almost the last one presented to the viewer.
So we go from NASA-nuclear, where viewers will not have strong opinions and maybe feel enough out-of-their-element that anti-nuclear bias they might already have will be trumped by explaining the limitations of solar power for space exploration. This is blue-ocean territory where anti-nuke messaging doesn't exist... yes a small number of people protested nuclear NASA probes, but that's fringe and just a pain-in-butt for NASA. Almost anyone will watch p01 and be confronted with a fresh perspective on nuclear, in the same way "thorium" itself is a fresh subject for anyone with negative associations towards "uranium".
So space-nuclear is useful, to MSR is useful on Earth, to Advanced Nuclear is useful on Earth, to existing nuclear is useful on Earth.
Complete with technical explanations, this is a 6h+ journey.
I do NOT expect very many people to make that journey. The success of TR2015 is NOT depending on the TR2015 playlist going viral.
But i DO think enough people will watch TR2015 in its entirety that they'll find key moments they want to share.
And this will be the biggest technical difference over "Th", that I've got a much better feel today in how to facilitate (and encourage) independent remixes... I've been "eating my own dogfood" since 2011, and have clear examples of what works and what doesn't.
The biggest surprise learning I took from "Th" was that the use of Kilowatts music radically changed how people remixed the video, because the presence of music triggered Copyright ID matches on other people's channels.
I'm licensing Kilowatts music, so my channel is white-listed, and there's no copyright match for me. I can personally focus on using Kilowatts music (Jamie Watts music) to the very best of my abilities.
Propagation, however, is incentivized by other people being able to run ads on their YouTube content. I've actually seen people edit around Kilowatts music to remove it, so they can run ads. (You can't run ads when using copyrighted music.)
I can help with that problem by also releasing versions with no music, for other people to layer in their own soundtrack which is public domain, or they've licensed themselves. (Or no music at all.)
I can also help by segmenting the video into even shorter pieces than these chapters. Because (eating my own dogfood) I see YouTube Editor is great for assembling tiny pieces, but crappy for making editing decisions within any single video element.
That's what I'll be working on in 2016 once this is finished and public... enabling propagation.
Dr. Helen Caldicott Testifies in Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH-V3oz4QXc
Note how she describes a nuclear excursion incident at Fukushima at 8m10s. She's followed by Geraldine Thomas and Dr. Karl Larsson who refute some of her statements as untrue.
Her performance may tie in quite well to her email exchange with Monbiot in 2011, as it is an exercise in being unable to source her statements.
References are hard. If only there was some way of keeping track of them. Alas, such technology does not yet exist, so Dr. Helen Caldicott once again is able to say "give me your email and I'll send that to you".
I'll write it down. Does anyone have a pen? I can't seem to find my pen.
As Ben Heard says, "You couldn't script this stuff."
GOP Primary Candidate Governor Pataki mentions Thorium and Advanced Nuclear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=316&v=J8UDN-dd7XM
...that might get taken down here's a transcript...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/28/transcript-undercard-gop-debate/
...I don't think that had a huge impact, but is a good sign I think just the same. Was at the "juniors" table. He called for investment in R&D, not subsidies on deployment. Which is pretty much what Bill Gates is also calling for in regards to energy as well.
UPDATE(S)
No. I'll collect 1x when the entire series is finished and vetted, and being released to the public. That it is being split into 12 chapters is just me trying to make it digestible, and more propagation friendly.
I did seriously consider releasing a single 6-hour video... that is not off-the-table, and I may do so just for experimental purposes, as it may have an unusual impact of how YouTube favors it as recommended content. But I'd be very surprised to find the benefits out-weigh the costs of a monolithic video release. I'll certainly let people know if any data supports this approach.
Also, Flibe Energy did announce a LFTR Technology Assessment conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute in collaboration with the Southern Company. [See attachment.]
It is quite detailed. I think it is a pretty good illustration of what the real technical considerations are when pursuing a Molten Salt Reactor, versus the concerns cited by anti-nuclear campaigners. (To the extent such folks even acknowledge that "thorium reactors" should be taken to mean "molten salt thorium reactors".)
The grownups use documents like this to discuss technical challenges. They don't speculate on the cost of chopping up fuel rods to extract the Uranium-233.