A head’s up, this will be quite a comprehensive outline and review of the week’s activities, mostly for those who are interested in attending the course (or need some convincing) so they have an idea of what to expect. If you want to know whether or not I would recommend the course without having to read the content; I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone, career scientist or not. The skills you learn have a range of applications, but you’ll have to read on to find out more.
Alright, so I’ve spent the past week at a NERC-funded training course in Milton Keynes, run by Richard Holliman and Clare Warren. We were joined by Janet Sumner, seen often in television shows such as Bang Goes the Theory and Life, and Gerard Giorgi-Coll who works behind the scenes on shows such as ‘The Fugitive’ and ‘Cannibals and Carpet Fitters’.
Particularly in online modernity, knowing how to effectively utilise various media outlets and engage the public in front-line research is increasingly becoming pivotal to securing funding, and more importantly it plays a part in the success and advancement of your scientific field.
Before we got to Milton Keynes we had to write a short description of our research as well as identify some end-users of our research, which was certainly needed for the course.
The week was packed full of activities including:
- An introduction to Pathways to Impact (P2I).
- Interviews about our research.
- Delivering a piece to camera.
- To produce and star in a short 10-minute informative movie.
- Engage in the behind-camera work involved in recording.
- Cutting and editing the movie into a finished piece.
Aside from being very hands-on, there was a big emphasis on team work, reflecting on who the end-users of our research are, and coming up with creative ways to communicate our work to the public.
From day 1 we were working together, filming interviews with the people we had just met, which proved an effective ice-breaker. We learned about the methods behind filming an interview such as the kinds of ‘shot’ involved to create a visually interesting interview segment. We used our prepared research summaries to answer interview questions which was daunting to start with. We all soon relaxed into it as we were filming and supporting each other through the process.
We went on to each produce a piece to camera (PTC) in which we were filmed alone, explaining some aspect of our research while either walking along with the camera or by using props to help us to explain. For example, I explained briefly how we monitor turbidity currents by carving a canyon into a Victoria Sponge and I made instruments out of toothpicks, whitetac and string (a photo would help but I was a little distracted to remember to do that!). There was some real scope to exercise creativity which was a welcome change from hardcore science or, well, scientific writing.
We were then split into teams of five, with people studying similar fields, and we had to come up with a short 10-minute film. Storyboarding, scripting, filming and acting were just some of the activities we had to complete in just a day! It was intense but both teams went all-out and made the whole ordeal into something of a friendly competition.
We quickly established our priorities and decided on the content of our film (burrowing invasive Crayfish, turbidity currents, hard river engineering and soft river engineering), the format of each scene (piece to camera/interview etc), and the locations we wanted to film. One of our scenes needed to be filmed at night (Crayfish are nocturnal…) so we went to work that same night. The next day we filmed the rest of the shots, utilising all of the shots and scene types we had learned.
The final job was, of course, to edit the footage into the finished product. The end result was pretty funny and we all had a lot of fun shooting the footage and pulling it all together. The other team also did a wonderful job with their highly informative, creative, yet hilarious short movie. You can’t beat a movie about Crayfish, rivers and turbidity currents though, can you?
Richard and Clare might want a star rating for the course… So, totally not under duress (I promise), I would give this course a 5/5 from all aspects. Organisation, content, accommodation and support. I’ve never laughed so much in a week and 5 hours after the course finished, my face still hurts.
Jimsblog 