Female Scientist Stereotypes in Film: The Naive Expert

Many people get their impressions of scientists and what scientists do from the movies. Film can depict the realities of careers in science and technology while telling a story about the characters who happen to be scientists. Film is also important in developing and perpetuating society’s myths about scientists. We are all familiar with the cliché of the mad scientist in fictional film. But what about female scientists? In this video series, I explore six stereotypes of female scientists seen in the cinema.

In this video, I describe one of these stereotypes, The Naïve Expert, and provide two movie examples to illustrate (Dr. Sarah Harding, The Lost World-Jurassic Park, and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, Prometheus).

As you’ll see, I did not use clips from the original movies, but instead created the video using images in the public domain (or otherwise free to use). I took this approach for several reasons: to avoid any copyright infringement claims, to challenge myself to create a video using only still images and voiceover, and to aid the viewer in envisioning these stereotypes beyond the specific movie examples I offered.

If you wish to learn how to create a video using still images (montage), here is a tutorial showing how:    • How to Make a Video Without Film Footage  

For more tips and tutorials, visit my website: http://thescientistvideographer.com/w...

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