Last night, Hollywood celebrated it’s biggest evening.  It’s the night when achievements are recognized and careers are immortalized.  Well, we certainly can’t promise career immortalization (yet!), but we can definitely recognize the achievements of the top videos in five very important categories.  Welcome to the 2010 ‘Fly Video Awards!  The envelope please…

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Charlie Chaplin Award

Winner: How to Clean a Rotovap, Jonathan H

Sometimes silence is, in fact, golden.  This year’s winner proves that effectively demonstrating a laboratory technique does not require any verbal dialogue.  A few short subtitles and a soundtrack gets the point across clearly.  Charlie would be proud…

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Runner-up: CAM Staining TLC Plates, Jonathan H

It seems that this year’s winner has the market cornered… Again, a few subtitled ques and a solid beat quickly teach the user an essential TLC staining technique.  We’re still waiting for a tiny mustache and the overspeed piano.

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Best One-take Laboratory Technique

Winner: siRNA Transfection Tip, Aaron

Not all tips or techniques require zooms, multiple angles, or extensive editing.  In fact, some of the best videos are the short one-take videos that get straight to the point.  Case in point, our winner describes a great trick for increasing the efficiency of siRNA-mediated knockdown with the cameras rolling in under forty seconds.

Record, upload, done.

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Runner-up: An Easy Silica Gel Dispenser, Bruce

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of opening the drum of silica gel and inhaling the monstrous cloud that results, you’ll know how valuable this trick is.  In a single clip, a safe and easy alternative is clearly explained.  Listen closely and you can hear the years adding back onto the end of your life…

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Most Obscenities in a *#$^@! Scene

Winner: How to Remove Static from a Scale, Rachel

Like with the printer in office space, we’ve all received the equivalent of the “PC LOAD LETTER” error on instruments in lab.  Whether it be a spectrophotometer, an HPLC or a scale, I think we can all identify with this year’s winner.

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Runner-up: Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Steve Martin

This video speaks for itself – in four-letter installments…  A classic.

(Warning: You may want to put earmuffs on any tender ears before playing…)

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Best Video Editing

Winner: Microwave Ball Lightning, lowlevelpanic999

Some videos require only a single take.  Some need more.  As the complexity of a technique increases, often so too does the need to edit.  Effective editing can set the pace of a video, distill a lengthy technique to it’s essential elements and, in the best cases, make it down-right entertaining.  This year’s winning entry also understood that fire, music and microwaves are a magical trifecta… While also a leading candidate for the “Don’t Try This at Home ‘Fly,” Microwave Ball Lightning is well-worth the two minutes.

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Runner-up: DNA Electrophoresis Sample Loading Examples, gkpeter

When it’s important to show an entire technique, but not necessarily every gory detail, fast-forward is a thing of beauty.  (Where was the fast forward in Weekend at Bernie’s II?!) Check out a fantastic application of fast-forward in this record of all of the ways that loading an agarose gel can go wrong.  Excellent for teaching newbies, or for figuring out why your sample keeps floating away without having to admit you have no idea…

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Best Money-Saving Tip

Winner: How to Calibrate Pipettors, ronen

We admit, calibrating our own pipettes always seems to fall to the bottom of our priority list. Isn’t that why people started companies that exclusively clean and calibrate pipettes?  And aren’t we actually helping them out by hiring them?  Yes, and yes.  Problem is, there’s one more question: Can we afford it?  These days, for many labs, that answer is increasingly “no.”  Pipettes should be calibrated annually, and that day can take a significant bite out of the lab budget.  So this year, let our winner show you how simple it can be to calibrate your own, and then convince your PI to take the lab out to lunch, for half the cost!

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Runner-up: Make Your Own Rapid Ligation Kit, Sven L

In the same DIY vein, this little recipe can save some serious coin.

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That’s a wrap! The clock is officially ticking until next year’s awards, so pick up a camera and catch some of the action around you – it might just win you a ‘Fly!

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