Back in New Hampshire, he started making films. First they were shorts, like "Barnacles Tell No Lies," which is still used in college courses, and "Lobstahs," which features a biologist dressed in a lobster outfit and a song, Dr. Olson's first, that goes "lobsters may be spineless but they taste the best to me." That led to a longer film about lobstermen, "Salt of the Earth," which was shown on public television in Maine.  Eventually, Dr. Olson said, "I realized if I wanted to get really serious I had to go to film school."  But abandoning a tenured faculty position at a major university was no small step. He recalled that on his first visit to the University of Southern California, where he ultimately enrolled, he hid when he saw a New Hampshire colleague on campus. When he finally began taking courses, he took a leave of absence from his teaching post, in case the venture turned into a disaster.  Instead, it was a success. Even though he entered film school at 38, far older than his 49 fellow students, he was one of four chosen to produce a student film, and it was shown at the Telluride Film Festival.  After graduation, he made videos for the Rutgers University ocean science program and for the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, which he and Dr. Jackson organized. The Web site for the project, shiftingbaselines.org, features short films, a blog, links to news articles and studies. Its aim is to convey serious information about environmental issues, but always with humor.  He also made his first film on science communication per se  "Talking Science," a guide for researchers. (One who volunteered to be filmed giving a presentation discovered to his dismay that he said "um" on average every seven seconds, and spent 87 percent of his time staring at his own slides, ignoring his audience.)  "Flock of Dodos" opened earlier this year in Kansas, where the reception was just what a filmmaker might dream of: cheers, jeers, questions and discussion from a highly engaged audience. Since then it has been shown at several college campuses, where it has drawn enthusiastic crowds.  So Dr. Olson hopes the film has commercial potential. That would certainly be useful. Though many in science bemoan their collective inability to get their messages across to the public, big grant-makers have yet to embrace Dr. Olson's approach.  "I get hundreds of inquiries from students and graduate students wanting to do what I am doing, to get into this interface between science and the media," Dr. Olson said. "There just isn't any financial support for it. The science world does not understand media, does not support it. They don't see the need for innovation."  Dr. Jackson said some scientists, even those interested in communicating science, "squirm" at Dr. Olson's irreverent approach. Others wonder whether his wry humor will translate to a wider audience.  Dr. Olson says, "We'll find out at Tribeca."  Meanwhile, he lives in Hollywood, financing his films with money from his family, sympathetic researchers and off-and-on teaching gigs  he was for years a part-time member of the biology faculty at U.S.C.  "I have health insurance, but just barely," he said. "I think it runs out next month." But he says he does not regret his decision to abandon the security of the academy for the uncertainty of filmmaking. "I have a much greater fear of boredom than I do of poverty," he said.
Randy Olson's new film challenges scientists to get off their collective high horse and make their case for evolution to ordinary people, with a smile.