|
We are seeking expressions of interest (only, at the moment) from freelancers and companies who would be suitable to work in a variety of ways for Planet Science, as outlined below.
Please send in CV or/and letter and examples or links to examples of work, as requested in the explanation of each separate area of endeavour. Please also fill in and submit this NESTA Prequalification Questionnaire NESTA Prequalification Questionnaire.
If you are successful we will let you know, and keep your records on file in accordance with NESTA’s data protection policy, and contact you to quote when suitable work is needed. Time scales and rates of pay are negotiable as projects come up. NESTA follows a policy of equal opportunities.
The deadline for sending in your expression of interest for working for Planet Science/SciCast is Friday 15.02.08.
NESTA Background
Planet Science is run by NESTA www.nesta.org.uk. NESTA’s mission is to help improve the capacity for innovation in the UK. Planet Science does this by inspiring and enthusing children, young people, teachers and parents about science.
Please click on the above for more details and feel free to email the Planet Science Editor if you have questions Katie.walsh@nesta.org.uk, this is also the email address for any email submissions.
The postal address for submissions is:
Katie Walsh
Editor and Project Manager
Planet Science
NESTA
1 Plough Place
London
EC4A 1DE
Writer/Researchers
Planet Science employs freelance writers and researchers who have a science background in combination with in interest in science communication and writing. Writer/researchers would be expected to deliver anything from a snappy feature paragraph for the planet science newsletter www.planet-science.com/news to the text for interactive experiences or games, from quizzes to worksheets for use in the classroom, or written up experiments for the Planet Scicast project. Writer/Researchers for Planet Science and Planet SciCast www.planet-scicast.com should have:
- a broad knowledge of general science as well as a specialism for the Editor to call on
- a working knowledge of the various UK school science curricula for all ages
- some experience of school teaching or other work in schools or with young people or teachers would be an advantage
- Most importantly they should have some experience of writing in an appropriate tone and style for the varied audiences of Planet Science and Scicast
- an ability to write with absolute scientific accuracy and trustworthiness
- a sense of fun and imagination
- the confidence to take an idea and give it added value with their work
- it would also be an advantage to be able to originate ideas for features, games and interactive experiences and other content.
It would be great to hear from younger less experienced science communicators as well as established professionals.
Please submit a CV and/or fleshed out introductory covering letter, and a 300 word paragraph on the topic of Barnacles, aimed at a general audience including teachers and young people.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Artists/Illustrators
Occasionally Planet Science and Planet Scicast may need to commission any of the following:
Line drawings to illustrate a written demonstration
Full colour illustrations, for example to illustrate a quiz in a particular style
Cartoons to illustrate various points in a feature
Colour drawings to illustrate a feature.
Artists should have an appropriate style that fits one or all of these types of work, and be able to understand and follow a brief closely whilst imbuing the work with the Planet Science sense of fun, imagination and the slightly ‘hand made’ quality that fits the overall style of the site.
Please submit a CV and/or fleshed out covering letter and attach or link to appropriate examples of work.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Interactive Designers– Games and Interactive Experiences
Planet Science commissions the making of new science based games and interactive experiences and will be looking for graphic artists who can bring ideas for games to life, either in combination with programming skills or to work with programmers.
Their work must be in an appropriate style for the site, and suitable for an audience which includes children. It is desirable to have a mix of styles on the site, so please do not consider the styles that are currently used for games and interactives as the only acceptable styles.
It would be helpful if Graphic Designers for Games and Interactives could demonstrate that they have been able to add considerable value to written ideas and originators sketches, making the ideas come to life and including additional visual ideas and visual effects and interactive elements to augment the experience for the player in a fun and engaging way.
A basic understanding of and interest in science would be very useful, and if you do have a science background or strong interest and have originated, written and built science based games, animations, or interactive experiences yourself please do submit examples.
Please submit a covering letter with links to your games or interactives that demonstrate graphic style and capability.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Programmers
From time to time designers working on games will need to team up with specialist programmers to implement an idea. Programmers with good knowledge of all (or who are specialists in) the following: Web 2 applications, Database (PHP, MYSQL) action scripting. They should also be able to work productively with designers (and writers sometimes) and have the confidence to add value to projects and augment ideas with their knowledge.
Please send a CV and covering letter, with links to examples of work, especially work where your experience and knowledge have improved an original idea for an interactive feature or game.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Usability & Information Architect (IA) Consultants
Occasionally Planet Science as a whole, or individual pieces of content, may require some detailed consultation into the following areas :
- Effectiveness
- Efficiency
- Safety
- Utility
- Learnability
- Memorability
Please submit CV and link to examples of work, this will be particularly useful if you are able to demonstrate before and after your input.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Graphic Design/Build – content – non games related
Not all the content on Planet Science is presented in a game or interactive format. We also have science related features that need imagination and flair to illustrate and present them. Designer/Builders need a good knowledge of layout and how to appeal to young people, teachers and parents in the way the content is organised and presented.
It’s important to be able to demonstrate that you can understand a brief, and be able to take written material and help to shape and organise it to best present it online, and have original and engaging ideas about how to illustrate the material to best effect, and add value to any project. You will be working for a mainly education orientated audience so some experience of what does (and doesn’t) work in this arena would be useful.
Please submit a cv/covering letter and link to resources/features that you have designed and built that best demonstrate the above.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Graphic Design / Branding
Occasionally there is a need to overhaul and refresh the site’s look and feel. We would welcome expressions of interest from designers or design companies who have the expertise to carry out such work, although we are not envisioning any large scale changes to the look of the site or the Planet Science brand in the foreseeable future.
Please submit letter and links to appropriate sites where you or your company has created the brand and the website and any other print graphics etc.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Evaluation
From time to time Planet Science may require that work is carried out to evaluate projects, certain content or the whole initiative.
Such research will be carried out by surveys, telephone and personal interviews, focus groups, and other methods that will measure the impact of Planet Science against its own aims and objectives and the overarching aims and objectives of NESTA.
It is really important that individuals and companies can demonstrate that they have successfully and usefully worked in the education evaluation area and know and understand science education in a UK wide context. They must also demonstrate that they can reach all our audience, from younger children and their teachers to parents, specialised subject teachers and those in the education policy sphere.
Please submit cv, covering letter and examples of evaluation that have helped to shape the work of the client in the areas of science education, science communication, public understanding of science or innovation.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Online Video Editing
Planet Science has a sister project Planet SciCast www.planet-scicast.com . It’s possible that at some point in the future we’ll need to increase our capacity for dealing with short films sent in by contributors to the site, the work may be piecemeal and at quite short notice.We would be looking for someone with:
- A DV-quality (or better) video edit system.
- The ability to ingest video from multiple sources and formats (typically DVD-video and miniDV, but also just about any format on DVD-R and potentially awkward things like VHS too), and transfer it into that edit system. This often involves format conversion/ transcoding, so expertise there is important, experience of deinterlacing would be useful for example.
- Media drive space: 80Gb would be plenty.
- Enough video editing knowledge to paste on end captions, amending as necessary.
- Video export skills and software – we are exporting Flash8 video, MPEG4/H264, and likely WMV9 and/or VC-1 also. Batch export is essential.
- Internet Explorer (Windows) to handle file uploads.
- 8Mbit ADSL connection would be minimum necessary
- Some experience with compliance issues - frame flashes/strobing, language, content suitability, etc.
It would also be very helpful if you had:
- An eye for colour grading and image control, a calibrated monitor. (Occasionally films can benefit from a bit of tweaking.)
- An understanding of audio normalisation.
- The ability to write snappy copy to support the films would be excellent, as would a background in or interest in science.
These services could also be supplied by a Facilities House:
General description: groups of dozens of amateur short films, 2:30 or less, arriving on various formats for encoding to multiple web delivery formats. General quality and content check. General delivery targets but no individual deadlines.
Ingest: multiple formats from DVD-video to miniDV, including misc. codecs on DVD-R.
Edit: End-sequence caption addition (miniDV masters, minor text layer change per film.
Output: each of: H264 (2 bitrates/sizes), Flash8 (On2 VP6), WMV9
Delivery: FTP to our server.
Technical requirements: Audio normalisation. Evaluation of grading needs - a quick curves pass overall if absolutely necessary, nothing fancy. No need for flashbox check, etc
Also very helpful would be initial assessment of content suitability welcome, e.g. a bit of common sense during a watch-through to raise a query over content or technical aspects.
Please submit personal or company CV along with evidence of the above.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Welsh Translation
If you are a science teacher (11 – 16 age group or Primary) or a science writer, and are bilingual in Welsh and English we would like to hear from you. There will be future projects to translate the most popular parts of Planet Science in to the Welsh Language.
Please send in your CV, a covering letter and short examples of your work (English and Welsh versions of the same piece).
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Photography
Occasionally Planet Science uses photography to document an occasion or to photograph role models, or to illustrate features in some other way. Photographers should have good portrait skills, and be able to show an ability to get over the context, especially the science context, of a person or subject.
Photographers should have an up to date CRB check as they would be likely to work with children as well as adults.
They should also be able to demonstrate that they can tackle any subject with visual wit, producing photographs which engage a young audience and at a resolution that works on the website.
Please send a covering letter and links to online gallery/portfolio and/or links to websites that feature your work.
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
Music
Sometimes the interactive games and features we produce require a simple soundtrack to add a bit of sparkle to them. The music has to be loopable (normally) and catchy, something that anyone from young children to grandparents might like and not expensively produced.
It would be great to hear or see and hear examples of your work. Please send examples with a covering letter
Please also make sure you fill in and attach or post the Prequalification Questionnaire.
|
