My week at ABC TV
Our communications ambassador Laura McCaughey, Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, shares her week at the ABC.
I have always watched science TV shows and wondered many questions. What makes good TV in the world of science? How do you engage the largest possible audience? How do you balance accurate information with comprehensibility? How are the topics, presenters and narrative are chosen? I was fortunate to learn the answers to these questions while working at the ABC for a week in October.
Science communication is something I am passionate about. In the past I have written about my research topic, given radio interviews and done podcasts, delivered public lectures and organised public outreach events like Soapbox Science (http://soapboxscience.org/soapbox-science-2019-sydney/). However, the missing piece of the puzzle for me was science communication on a mass scale i.e. the world of television.
My week at the ABC came about after a chance encounter with the producer of ABC’s Catalyst program, Penny Palmer, at The Australian Science Communicators conference in 2018. Penny and her team were amazing and not only made me feel welcome, but made me feel useful, which is hard when you’re trying something completely different for the first time!
For those who don’t know what Catalyst is, Catalyst is the ABC’s primary science program with a one hour documentary format. Its aim is to present significant developments and discoveries in science with an emphasis on how they can affect the lives of everyday Australian people. Watch it… it’s great!
I learned a lot working on Catalyst, but there were three main things I wanted to share:
Firstly, if you’re a researcher, does your online content explain your research to someone not in your field of work? And does it outline the potential future applications of your work? One of my first tasks for Catalyst was to research a possible episode on cancer treatments; what were the new and upcoming technologies and treatment modalities, and who was working on them? This was straight forward enough to begin with, searching the clinical trials register and finding new cancer institutes being built in Australia. However, when it came to finding individual researchers working on new cancer treatments I got a bit stuck. With my undergraduate in Chemistry and PhD in microbiology I could understand enough jargon on people’s webpages to decipher which area of cancer biology they were working on, but 99% of what I read had no reference to how their work could be translated into treatments. I fully understand and endorse not overselling your research, like many tabloids do, however a section on where your work could be applied in the future or your aspirations for your research would be a great addition to any researchers online presence.
Secondly, making a science documentary is very different to any other form of science communication. Written articles, radio and news appearances are designed to hold someone’s attention for a short period of time and these platforms are usually digested while a person is doing something else i.e. commuting, working, cleaning the house etc. However, watching TV is something that traditionally is the sole focus of attention. The challenge therefore lies in making a program that not only has enough interesting scientific content for an hour, but that is also visually capturing and non-repetitive. It would be easy to film researchers talking to the camera about their work for an hour, but it would get pretty boring pretty quickly and people would tune out. This is where the director/science researcher team for each episode transform a well-researched idea into a work of art.
Shooting the BBQ scene and eating allllllllll the food!
On Tuesday and Wednesday of my week at the ABC I got to go on two different shoots for two different episodes, both of which were based around food (of which I consumed a lot!). This is where I got to experience first-hand the creativity of the storytelling and visual stimulation that the director/science researcher team create. One of the shoots based around steak was filmed at Vic’s meat market in Sydney where a chef talked about the science behind cooking the perfect steak, whilst cooking the steak. This then followed on to a food expert from CSIRO analysing the chefs ‘perfectly cooked’ steak on site rather than in a lab. Our afternoon was then spent having a BBQ where the episodes presenter, Noby Leong, cooked all his ‘friends’ the perfect steak. Until this point I had not appreciated the importance of a having a story rather than lots of interesting, related but individual, facts. I think this lesson can be carried through to other forms of science communication too, as people love a good story. As well as helping out as part of the team on this shoot I also got to try out my acting skills for the first time. Needless to say I am equal parts excited and terrified to watch the episode (if I make the cut!).
Thirdly, I can share was what I wondered for years; how are the topics, presenters and narrative chosen? Well the narrative/story as I mentioned before is mainly the directors doing. The topics and presenters however are decided before the director/science researcher team are brought on board. Choosing a topic usually arises from a brainstorming session with the pre-production research team. I got to sit in on one of these meetings and enjoyed the unstructured, free-thinking process behind topic selection; had we read anything recently that sounded interesting? Was there anything that was in the public conscience? Was there a topic from previous seasons that had advanced and needed revisiting? Was there any ground-breaking research that the public should know about? Once ideas were thrown out we then discussed if we thought there was enough content to fill an hour, if it had been done before and if the topic had ties to Australia.
This brings me on to presenter selection. In the brainstorming session mentioned above, we threw out the names of possible presenters and experts for each of the topics discussed, preferably Australian. We also then did the process in reverse and thought of topic ideas that might fit a particular presenter who had worked on Catalyst before and who the team really liked. The team wanted to ensure they could find a topic that the presenter could relate to and that the audience would be convinced they had an interest in too. I asked the team how they scout for new presenters/experts and they said that online videos were a great source for finding the kind of charismatic and engaging people they want. So, if you are keen on doing science communication on TV, make some videos or record yourself giving a presentation or public event and post it with relevant key words. The key words really are key apparently!
I realised during my week long internship that all the attributes, which lend themselves to being a researcher in the lab, lend themselves to being a researcher for a science TV show; attention to detail, ability to multitask, curiosity, contacts in the science community, and creativity. I also realised it’s the process of ideas, research and output that I enjoy in my work, and for this reason I could be equally happy being a lab researcher or a researcher for science programs.
Twitter: @LauraCMcCaughey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-c-mccaughey-2022b477/