Research Findings as Films People Actually Watch. A video editor I built to turn research findings, reports and scripts into finished films. Built because findings that stay inside journals and reports reach almost nobody.
Short clips, each showing the editor being used, with one of the songs as the worked example. They are made to be watched end to end by someone deciding whether the tool is worth their time.
The editor in use: projects and uploads, the step runner, the storyboard and the ten-track timeline, with the household hardship paper as the worked example.
The app driving the same project in another language: the timeline, the billboard screens and the data layers visible as it plays.
The app on the female-sung Bollywood cut, with a different theme and a different motion set on the same project.
Complete films, rendered end to end by the engine.
These are compressed to fit the page. Full quality goes on YouTube.
A song about how I actually work: my own neurons alongside the machines I run, agents working through the night, and something built and shipped before the day.
These are not translations of one another. Each version is written from the research finding itself rather than from the English lyrics, because a line that lands in one language does not land the same way in another, and a style that holds attention in one culture does not in another. For each version my app chooses the motivation and the imagery behind the lyrics, the musical style and the whole visual treatment to suit how that audience actually takes a story in. The English version is a sombre neon-city film. The Hindi and Urdu versions are Bollywood dance films, because that is the form that audience absorbs fastest. Same data, same finding, three different ways of making somebody feel it.
The research song as a sombre neon-city film, built from the paper, the lyrics and the results.
Baja De Dhol. The same finding as a Bollywood dance film, built around a stage and a drum. This is the two minute cut, not the full film.
The same finding again, as a Bollywood street film with its own cast, styling and musical treatment.
Three films I made before I built the Studio.
None of these four is served from this page. They run several minutes each, longer than a page like this should carry, so they go on YouTube.
A video editor for data storytelling. Narrative science writes the story from the data. Data visualisation shows it. Data narration explains it. Data emotionalisation makes people feel it.
Researchers, analysts, business teams and policy makers who want findings to reach real audiences instead of sitting in journals and reports.
A ten-track timeline: hook and fast sections, audio, name cards, my video clips, photo beat sequences, screen moments and code, lyrics, a corner equaliser, and two overlay tracks that sit above everything. Blocks are moved, trimmed, hidden or taken off, and nothing is ever deleted, so anything removed is listed under Removed and can be restored, with its picture or clip still in the album. Edits save beside the film as a new version, and the files you uploaded are never touched.
Underneath, every step hashes its inputs and runs again only when one of them changes, so editing a single lyric re-runs the alignment and never the image work. Movement comes from a motion library of reusable presets chosen automatically by section energy and meaning, with a rule that no preset repeats within 30 seconds. A checks pass then holds the quality bar on every frame: 4.5:1 contrast on every word and chart label, a minimum reading time of 0.35 s per word plus 1.5 s, data on screen for at least 75 percent of each section, lyrics kept inside the 90 percent safe area and never over faces or charts, and every number traced back to the results file.
The research paper “Dynamics of Household Financial Hardship: Landing, Path, Duration and Exit”, presented at the AFAANZ Annual Conference 2026 and the HILDA Survey Research Conference 2026, turned into an English neon-city film and two Bollywood dance films, “Baja De Dhol” and the Urdu version.
Press a button and the app observes you, your camera, your AI chats, your voice thinking aloud and what you do, and makes a song and music video about your own life. The first result, “Two Kinds of Neurons”, exists in the studio as its own cut with its own film player. It is about my working life, my own neurons alongside the machines I run, and it is a separate film from the three research versions above.