Skinning Your Cat: A Workshop For Scientists
9:30 am - 12:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 3
session room: Connaught
Having a problem explaining DNA Methylation? Visualizing n-dimensional phase space? Describing magnetic Tokomak plasma confinement? Relax. Your communication problems will be solved in Skinning Your Cat, a workshop for scientists interested in getting their material into film and TV. Hosted by three experienced science program producers/commissioning editors, this half day workshop will offer insight into the minds of the international media gatekeepers. It will alert you to broadcasters’ appetites, desires and aversions. It will prompt you to ask the unthinkable - “does my research really matter?” And if, truthfully, the answer is yes, then this workshop will show you how to convey that significance to a lay audience. It will shed light on the ‘engage and entertain’ aspects of today’s multimedia environment and will show you how to step back from that petri dish and tell a gripping story.
Session Producers
Chris Haws, Senior Science Advisor, The Science Channel (USA)
Robyn Smith, Associate Producer, Australian Documentaries (Australia)
Moderators
Chris Haws, Senior Science Advisor, The Science Channel (USA)
Sara Ramsden, Independent Producer (UK)
Alan Erson, Commissioning Editor, Science, History and Natural History, ABC Television (Australia)
Participants
Amanda Barnard, CSIRO Virtual Nanoscience Laboratory (Australia)
Mary D’Souza, School of Engineering, University of Queensland (Australia)
Maggie Gentz, PhD Candidate and Postgraduate Research Scholar, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland (Australia)
Scott Hocknull, Curator, Palaeontology & Geology Geosciences, Queensland Museum (Australia)
Clive Jones (Australia)
Mark Kendall, Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland (Australia)
Evan Kidd, School of Psychological Sciences, La Trobe University (Australia)
Iain McCalman, Department of History, University of Sydney (Australia)