Good question. I'm a science journalist, with 10+ years of experience - my entire professional career has been spent communicating science. I've done some print work, and research for books and the Internet, but most of my experience is in television.
I worked for four years with Discovery Channel Canada, researching and producing for @discovery.ca, the world's first - and only - daily, prime-time, science magazine. This hour-long program is dedicated to making science accessible to the Canadian public. It has been a tremendous success. Topics include the science behind the news events of the day, as well as features on every field of scientific study you can imagine - and a few you can't. Stories need not be Canadian in origin, @discovery.ca aims for the best and the brightest, and some of you may already know the program - your work may already have been featured.
I'm no longer on staff at Discovery, but intend to continue producing pieces for the show on a freelance basis. I also hope to do stories for another Discovery Channel Canada program - Animal Tracks - a weekly half hour devoted entirely to field pieces about animal research & animal behavior. I recently started my own company to produce science documentaries for international broadcast.
A FEW SUGGESTIONS:
We all can relate.After all, we're all animals, and we all have experience watching animal behavior. Everyone has a parent, or, spouse, or child, or pet ... so it's something to which we instinctively relate. Consider this as compared to, say, nuclear physics, which four people in the world naturally understand.
Your work may be inherently visual. When is the last time any of you saw a neutrino walking around? Not lately, I'll wager, but many of us have seen - or have at least seen pictures of - your subjects.
IT'S NOT THE WWF, DON'T MAKE IT A GRUDGE MATCH. Iam NOT responsible for the bad experience you had with a tv reporter 20 years ago. Give me a chance; respond to my call. I'm a professional, I take my work very seriously. I'm not out to make stupid mistakes, misinterpret your life's work, or pin you to the wall. With any luck, we both want the same thing - a good piece, which throws a spotlight on your fascinating research, and makes science ACCESSIBLE to the public. Work with me. And remember, if I do get it wrong, either you ... or one of your colleagues ... or, in the case of dinosaurs any four year old... is going to phone the station and tell everyone what and idiot I am. This does not make me very popular with my bosses, and I do not like that.
OVERSIMPLIFYING. The main fear scientists seem to have with regard to the media is the fear that we are going to misrepresent your work, and get it all wrong. Hmmm. Am I going to do that - I hope not. Am I going to oversimplify things? Well, yes, I suppose I am. In a way, that's just the nature of my job.
The average length of the pieces I do for tv is about 6 -7 minutes. Now, I cannot explain everything about your last year of research, or the last ten years, or your life's work, in six minutes. It's not possible. If our roles were reversed, you could not explain my last year of work in six minutes, either.
So, what I generally do is to take one aspect of your work - for which there are supporting visuals, and focus on that. Oh, yes ... I try really hard to get it right. But that also means that you will need to invest some time in working with me to ensure that happens. I may ask you what seems like an endless stream of questions. I may phone you back when I'm unsure about an inference, or simply have more questions. You may wonder why I need to know all this stuff, especially when you realize that it isn't all going to be in the actual interview.
Be patient. I do not have a doctorate degree in your particular field. I will do as much research as possible before calling you up, but I will still need to ask some fairly basic questions. Also, it is part of my job to ask questions I think the public would want to have answered, and I have to assume that most of the audience members do not have a doctorate in your line of work, either. At the end of the day, the more background I have, the better I will be able to focus the interview, and the greater the chances of you being pleased with the result.
SHORTCHANGING:At this point, you may be thinking you deserve more than six minutes of airtime. Perhaps you do, and if you are a dynamic guest, you will probably be invited back, and will get on the air again. But for the moment, this is what I - and my bosses - are looking for. It is more than 30 seconds on the evening news, but less than a National Geographic special. If you are REALLY great - a great talker, and the story is absolutely fascinating, and the footage is BREATHTAKING - I may be able to push things a bit - to eight, nine minutes.
I can think of very few examples where I was able to go much farther. This only happens when you have a truly exceptional guest, Jane Goodall, for example. I once did an interview with her which ran 12 minutes.
When I went to my senior producer with the claim that it was all great, that I simply could not edit anything out, he said, "you are not going to put a 12 minute item on tonight's show - that is just not going to happen." I sent him off to the screening room with the tape, he returned with tears in his eyes & said "fine, keep it the way it is." Small victories. Bear in mind this is VERY unusual.
EDITING YOU DOWN TO A MOUSE SQUEAK:Unless you are appearing live, the chances of the interview being edited down are pretty high. Believe it or not, we do not do this to make you look bad, or to throw your words out of context. My interview with you may get edited for many reasons, some of which I have absolutely NO control over … remember that when you are tempted to call me up and scream over the phone. There may something that comes up in the edit
suite with regard to visuals, my senior producer and executive producer all have the right to input, sometimes you simply have to make things fit into that evening's show...
Making tv is a pretty complex business, with many, many, technical and creative steps you never see when you are at home watching the set. Decisions get made all the way down the line. Will I have your best interest at heart, and lobby to keep everything the way I think it should be ... YES. We are telling stories, however, and in order to keep people watching, we want to create the smoothest, most understandable, and compelling - and accurate - story.
While I'm producing your interview, either in the studio, or out in the field, I'll be timing things, and paying close attention to everything you say. If at all possible, I'll catch glitches at that stage, and work with you to redo a section if necessary. I'm not anxious to spend agonizing moments in the edit suite - it's more work for me after, all.
VISUALS RULE.Tv is a visual medium. You can take great footage, with scientific content on the slim side, and still make a great story, but the reverse is never true. If you hold the key to life itself, but have no footage to back you up, you will not be a great story for tv. So, if you want your work shown on tv, it might be worthwhile to spend a little time trying to 'think in pictures' about your research. "What will we see when …" is a question you will hear, and hear repeatedly, from producers.
Also, record important developments as your research progresses. Use a video camera -digital cameras are especially good - because there's less of a gulf between them and Betacam, the tape format used in tv. Stills can be useful, but are obviously a second choice. No one is going to expect you to be a professional cinematographer, but, the better the quality, the more we like it. If you have a grad student more adept with video technology, get them to do the filming.
This may sound like pretty simple advice ... but remember ... the media doesn't usually get involved until there are RESULTS. At that point, it may not be possible to go in and do the filming ourselves. The study may be long over; subjects may not available.
So, try your best to record important events as they happen. Still images will do in a pinch, but two black and white stills and a graph do not make compelling television.
It's also possible to be proactive, and work with a producer in order to help you get the best images for a future story. @discovery.caregularly sends digital cameras with scientists heading out into the field. In these cases, you would usually work with a producer such as myself, to help you focus the story, give you some coaching with regard to use of the camera, provide a list of shots to get to cover the story, etc. This system has worked VERY well, and has provided a great opportunity to acquire footage from some pretty far-flung places.
If you know of someone else who has great footage relevant to your story — TELL ME. If you give me even the vague details, I can usually track it down. If you know of one guy in the Russian Far East who caught Siberian tigers mating on tape in 1985, tell me. I will track him down, because I will want to see that footage.
BE A GREAT TALKER.Some people are naturally good at this, seem to have been born in front of a camera. Most of us are not. Think about some great lectures you've been to - the talk Dr. Trivers gave for example. He was funny, he was passionate, he made it personal, he was self- deprecating ... and he used lots and lots of analogies.
Analogies are the very lifeblood of effective communication of complex topics. It's the way to bring things to a level that the public can understand, can measure. Come up with good analogies to describe your work, and the media will love you.
LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER. Or better yet, your mother in law. Or a child ... a ten year old boy. Pay attention to what these people think about your work, what gets a reaction. Our stories are aimed at the public, not your colleagues, who already understand your research at a level far beyond the grasp of Joe Public.
THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO Hmmmm.We're looking for things that make people go HMMM or WOW ... Think about all the amazing behavior that was demonstrated in the film about the hyena and the mudskipper. It had a whole room full of animal behaviorists enthralled. That was partly because of great storytelling, stunning visuals, narration by a classically trained British actor ... and because of endless examples of things that made people say, "I didn't know that!"
TAKE ME AWAY.Let me go out into the field with you, especially if it's a nice, exotic, destination you have in mind. (Hmmm ... now how did that slip in there?) Seriously, I'm sure you think I'll be a complete pain, but letting a producer go into the field has several real advantages. First of all, I'll bring a cameraperson along - to get those great visuals. Second, you'll probably be a better 'talker' in the field. It's more natural than sitting in a studio, staring at a potted plant. I'll probably also ask smarter questions, because I'll be able to react to things I can actually see, and attempt to figure out why they're important. Field pieces offer many more elements to a story, and are inherently more visual than a studio interview.
MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BEING KIND TO ME ONCE.If we work together well the first time around, you can be pretty much guaranteed I'll call you again in the future. I'm not stupid; I'm not out to reinvent the wheel each time out. A great guest is GOLDEN. I will rave about you, put you on air again, and pass your name along to others who have the power to do the same.
I'M OK, YOU'RE SHAKING LIKE A LEAF ON NATIONAL TV.If I call you up about an interview, and the mere idea of going in front of a camera makes you shake, or pitches you headlong into a panic attack - TELL ME. I don't want that any more than you do. Think of someone else you could suggest to do the interview - a colleague or grad student …
Science.At least in my world. Discovery Channel Canada is the most successful of the specialty channels in the country, and @discovery.ca, the flagship show - a daily science show - has a devoted following.
Animals.When you tell people that you work in tv, and work for Discovery, the response is inevitably enthusiastic. Then people tell you what they like about it, what they watch. The first choice is almost always animal shows. Animals - the bigger the better. And the bigger teeth the better. It's a cliché, I know, but it seems to be something we just automatically respond to ... perhaps it speaks to our inner caveman. Curiously, birds do not fare so well - unless they are talking parrots named Alex.
Any sort of major breakthrough is obviously hot news. Here are a few words that tend to get our attention: oldest, newest, first, last, fastest, slowest, unique, rare, endangered, controversial.
Here's some homework for you:
Tape a science story from a tv program you like. Count the number of shot changes. You may be surprised at how many there are. This will give you a better idea just how crucial footage is to tv - and how many different images we need.
Arrange to visit a tv station in your area. Get the tour of the newsroom, studio, edit suites, etc. Try and follow the process of creating a tv story: watch an interview being taped in studio, see what happens in the edit suite, visit the graphics department to see what they've created to enhance the story, watch the entire show being packaged together in the studio, etc ... then watch the finished item that night on tv.
It's probably best to do this through a producer with whom you already have a connection. That said, I've brought everyone from my mother to an astronaut through this process. Everyone loves it. Tv is a very familiar concept, but most people don't know about the process involved - it just magically appears in our living room. In truth, it's something of a miracle that everything falls together, and stories get on air at all - much less accurate versions.
For more information about Discovery Channel Canada, visit their website: www.exn.ca(You
can even watch archived episodes of @discovery.ca).
I'm around for the whole conference, so, if you have great story ideas ... or questions, comments, accusations, bad karma you need to unload ... come and talk to me.
Louise Mac Leod Estmere Productions 1-819 Broadview Avenue Toronto, ON Canada M4K 2P9 Tel: (416) 463 - 4287 Fax: (416) 463 - 7769 E-mail: estmereproductions@hotmail.com