This post was updated Oct. 25 at 10:18 p.m.

August Deer, a senior at Geffen Academy at UCLA, was named a semifinalist in a global mathematical and scientific video competition.

For the annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge, students aged 13 to 18 years old submitted educational short films to be judged on engagement, illumination, creativity and difficulty, according to the Breakthrough Junior Challenge website.

Deer is one of 30 students who reached semifinalist status out of more than 2,400 participants, according to a press release from Breakthrough.

Using special effects, 3D animation and a well-aimed tennis ball, Deer demonstrated in a 90-second YouTube video how matter of opposite charges and matter traveling backward in time exhibit similar behavior. In one scene, Deer is seen moving forward up an escalator while a duplicated Deer is moving backward down the escalator at the same time, representing the opposing behavior.

A Feynman diagram in the book “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas Hofstadter inspired the concept for his video, Deer said. The diagram demonstrated the movement and collisions of particles, and its caption described how electrons with the opposite charge could be represented as electrons moving backward in time, Deer said.

“I loved watching lots of videos on YouTube, from mathematicians and scientists talking about just stuff they found cool,” Deer said. “So I said, ‘Oh, here’s a competition. That gives me an excuse to make one.’”

In his competition video, titled “The Subatomic Time Machine,” Deer and competition partner Hugo Chiasson, a junior at Geffen Academy at UCLA, demonstrated physicist John Wheeler’s theory of antimatter.

Deer said the main challenge was simplifying a complex concept and still getting the message across.

Chiasson helped Deer film the project. The pair had to search for film locations with proper lighting, permission and space in downtown Los Angeles during the filming process, he said.

Chiasson, who has experience studying film and animation and has created two short films, said working on an educational video with Deer was a new experience. Nevertheless, Chiasson said he thinks the video achieved a simple teaching of antimatter behavior.

“I think it’s educational, I think it is effective, I think it’s very to the point. It makes a lot of sense,” he said. “It’s speaking to people who will get it no matter their level of expertise.”

Tamar Christensen, a lecturer in the UCLA Writing Programs, said that in some of her courses, she has her students present scientific topics with visual aids, as combining oral and visual content can have a powerful effect and appeal to multiple learning styles.

She said she found Deer’s bodily representations of the antimatter most effective, such as when Deer duplicated his image using video editing in several shots to show separate movements through time.

“If I can see it in another person, I can maybe see it in myself,” Christensen said. “And if I can see it in myself, then I can see the inanimate objects more clearly.”

Tamar said students like Deer can hold unique influence when educating a peer audience. Viewers may better engage with content produced using relatable language or shared experiences, she added.

Deer said he hopes viewers will both understand the topic of his film and also gain a greater appreciation for math and science. Christensen said Deer’s goal could be expanded upon to explain the impact of the video’s topic in life and the world.

“In the … university as an institution, we often think and pontificate for the sake of it,” Christensen said. “And there’s very little translation from … the thinking and processes we go through to, ‘How does this look in the real world? What does this mean for people who aren’t in the university?’”

Deer said he encourages others to try educational filmmaking, no matter their level of experience. In past films, Deer has also examined topics from infinity and exponential growth to COVID-19 and quantum physics.

“You don’t need to have a massive film crew or have millions of subscribers or anything,” Deer said. “You can just do it and then have fun.”