I had a visit from a BBSRC Press Office person on Wednesday 8th May. (The BBSRC are the UK Research Council that fund my current research into ageing, using Drosophila as a model system) This was to record some video footage to accompany a press release concerning a paper that will be published online on Monday 12th May. She went on to visit my collaborator Lynne the following morning.
It was quite a surreal situation - being filmed in the lab while people carried on working. I imagine the raw footage is very funny, with all the false starts and stops - the difficulty was in stopping myself from using technical terms that would be opaque to the general public. Typically I'd be on a bit of a roll, then suddenly grind to a halt having uttered a word like "phenotype" or similar. I have to say that the BBSRC person was most helpful and sympathetic (I presume she deals with inarticulate and camera-shy scientists on a regular basis!).
I got a brief email from Lynne and it sounds like her experience was similar (she even queried the exact definition of "dork"!). I was assured it would all come out fine after editing (and insertion of some still microscope images). Maybe I'll post it here!