Getting Scientific

This feature was originally published in the MIPTV 2010 issue of TV Real.

“Science is now cool.”

So says Richard Life, who should know. As head of acquisitions and co-productions for ITV Studios Global Entertainment, he deals every year with producers and buyers of all sorts of tele­vision programs, including documentaries on scientific subjects.

Actually, Life says science has been cool for a while. “There was a time in television when science felt very highfalutin,” he says. “It was watched by a minority of people who were brainy enough to understand it. The Internet has helped make science cool—the rise of the nerds. That has led to the rise of channels like Discovery and National Geographic. Those channels alone are evidence that there is a huge appetite for science programming.”

At the U.S. National Geographic Channel, there are 85 original hours of science documentaries on the second-quarter schedule, not including straight wildlife or history, according to Steve Burns, the executive VP of content.

“National Geographic has always been out in front in science, and I would say we have increased even more now,” Burns says. “There is an uptick in science today. It was a bit underserved when networks had to appeal to broader audiences. But with cable becoming so dominant we’re able to find those niche audiences that wanted more detail. National Geographic was probably positioned best because, as an institution, [the National Geographic Society] has been funding science for over 100 years.”

Nicolas Bonard, the senior VP of Discovery Enterprises International, sees the same increased interest in scientific subjects. “The type of scientific programming will vary according to each region, but overall we’re seeing a general uptick in scientific, in the broadest sense of the term,” he says. “The way we look at science, it’s more cutting edge, looking at a scientific topic in a different way.”

Beyond the virtually all-documentary factual channels like National Geographic and Discovery, there is demand from public broadcasters who see a need to help explain complex issues.

Paula Apsell, the senior executive producer of the PBS series NOVA and director of the WGBH Science Unit in Boston, says an understanding of basic science is more important than ever. “[We’re] helping people to…see the way that it affects their lives, and to help them become better citizens by understanding the issues that are so important to us all—like global warming—that require some scientific literacy to make any kind of a reasonable decision. This has grown in importance since the early ’70s, when NOVA started.”

NOVA is distributed worldwide by PBS International. “NOVA is an exceptionally well-known name not only among industry buyers, but people all over the world,” says Tom Koch, the VP of PBS International. “In the world of science producers, NOVA is widely recognized as having the highest of production standards and their ability to relate complex science topics to viewers in an informative yet entertaining way makes their programs very enticing to buyers of science documentaries.”

THEORY OF RELATABILITY
The challenge for makers of science documentaries is to present information that may be complex in a manner that appeals to a broad section of viewers.

For ITV’s Life, that’s what he calls the sweet spot. “The topics that grab people’s attention are clearly medical and consumer science, relatable science that affects you and me in our daily lives, the food we eat, our lifestyles, how we interact with technology, even crime solving,” he says. “Relatable science is very popular.”

Complicating the search for the right balance between entertainment and information is the differing needs of niche channels versus broad-appeal channels and between commercial and public broadcasters. “The BBC and France TV are broadcasters who would take more high-end, blue-chip documentaries, with a strong narrative and voice-over on top,” says Discovery’s Bonard. “Commercial broadcasters will take the more entertainment-driven documentaries.”

How the various producers and distributors of science documentaries balance viewer interest and appeal with information content shows up, naturally enough, in their programs. At Japan’s NHK, one of the world’s top sources of blue-chip documentaries, Toshihiro Matsumoto, the chief producer of science and environmental programs, says any successful science program must inspire viewers to want to know and understand more. “If we can find a way to trigger people’s curiosity, people will watch the program no matter how complex the science might be,” he says. “So we strive to present the content in ways that make it resonate with viewers and give them a sense that they’re making discoveries. High-speed photography, CGI and 3-D imaging are effective for giving viewers the sense that they’re making discoveries. However, they are just tools. The most important thing is to make the content feel relevant to viewers.”

Painfully relevant in the aftermath of the recent earthquakes is Megaquake, a four-part co-production with National Geographic Channels International that premiered this year in NHK’s flagship NHK Special documentary slot but was produced before the Haitian and Chilean quakes.

The mini-series uses the latest advances in seismology and CGI to demonstrate the dangerous effects that violent quakes could have on major cities like Tokyo and Seattle—highly populated areas located within regions of well-known seismic activity.

NHK’s two Miracle Body mini-series were keyed to Olympic athletes; the first consists of four episodes focusing on competitors in the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. The current series is on the Vancouver Winter Olympic athletes, made with the Eurovision TV co-production unit. Both series use ultra-high-speed HD cameras to capture and scientifically analyze the physical mechanisms behind human potential. “Our science documentaries consistently attract great interest from viewers in Japan,” Matsumoto says. “Since interest in science is always quite high, the number of programs varies very little from year to year. We continuously examine and review our programs and strive to improve their quality so that our viewers won’t lose interest.”

SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS
National Geographic Television (NGT), the documentary arm of the National Geographic Society, often relies on the society’s scientists for topics. “From an international-distribution point of view, there’s always been a very healthy interest in science, and at National Geographic we are very fortunate that we have people, explorers in residence, who are some of the most excellent in their fields who bring us these stories every year,” says Maurice van Sabben, the president of NGT’s international sales arm.

Not surprisingly, the National Geographic Society’s scientists are more attuned to the science of their own disciplines than they are to audience appeal, which can present a challenge to the television arm.

“Science can be pretty obscure or difficult to understand,” says Michael Rosenfeld, the president of National Geographic Television. “Part of the challenge to science producers is to communicate to a general audience what it all means. We try to find storytelling techniques that can bring it to life.”

An example is the mini-series Science for Future World Leaders, based on a textbook called Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re asking viewers to imagine you’ve just become president and you’re getting a scientific briefing on things you need to know,” Rosenfeld says. “One is on the nuclear threat and nonproliferation issues. Another is on electromagnetic pulses. It’s a storytelling device. Instead of a dry lecture, it’s a lot more fun, an exercise in using your imagination. It humanizes it and makes it more accessible.”

In another example, the unit wanted to do a film on the society’s Genographic Project, a five-year effort to figure out the history of global human migration using DNA analysis, but Rosenfeld says the producers were initially stumped on how to approach the subject.

“Genetics are hard to explain in a way that people will understand and that will seem relevant to them,” Rosenfeld says. “There are five major human migrations, so we set ourselves a challenge: Can we find traces of all those migrations in one spot? We went to one of the most diverse places on earth, Queens, New York. We went to a street fair and [NGS explorer in residence] Spencer Wells and his team did cheek swabbing. We later got everyone back together and we gave them their results and put them in groups according to which migrations their ancestors had been part of.”

The resulting one-hour program is The Human Family Tree. “It’s fun,” Rosenfeld says, “because you’re telling it through personal stories of people who are learning about themselves.”

Another big documentary is 24 Hours After Asteroid Impact, which looks at the immediate aftermath, 66 million years ago, of the meteor impact that killed off the dinosaurs and affected every living thing on Earth. “Things that shed new light on humans, people are always fascinated with that,”Rosenfeld says.

Burns, who programs the U.S. National Geographic Channel and describes himself as a lover of science, disputes the very idea that science documentaries may be dry. “I think science is riveting,” he says. “It comes down to how creative the filmmakers are, and we work with the best filmmakers.”

As evidence he cites the current Traveler’s Guide to the Planets, which goes planet by planet for three nights; Fight Science, a series that looks at the dynamics of the human body to see what crushing forces the body can take; and Drain the Ocean, which uses CGI animation and data gathered by scientists to see the seafloor as if the ocean was missing.

“None of those are dry,” Burns insists. “The Emmy award winner for best science program was our Five Years on Mars, which retraced all the work that Spirit and Opportunity, the little rovers, did exploring the surface of Mars. It was anything but dry. You see these scientists who were so emotionally involved in their little explorers.”

STARSTRUCK
ITV’s Life strives for what he calls science as spectacle, an example of which he says is the two-hour Journey to the Edge of the Universe, a co-production of National Geographic Channels, Discovery Channel Canada and France 5. “It takes you on an epic voyage beyond the stars, from Earth to the farthest edges of the universe,” Life says. “We liked it because it’s visually stunning. The buyers reacted well to it because it looked spectacular. The CGI and visual effects tell the story.”

In a different vein entirely, no pun intended, is Inside Nature’s Giants, a four-part mini-series consisting of dissections of large animals—a whale, an elephant, a giraffe and a crocodile—to reveal how their bodies work and have evolved over the eons.

“It’s one of the most visually stunning programs you’ve ever seen,” Life says. “It shows you, clear as day, the miracle of nature, without CGI. You combine that with footage of the animals in the wild and you learn something about animals that you’ve never seen in any wildlife documentary. It’s a spectacle. Channel 4 played it at 9 o’clock, a peak-time slot. They knew there would be a strong audience.”

For Discovery Channel, the need to make a complex subject appealing to large audiences was most challenging with Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, a complex subject made more challenging by the British theoretical physicist’s neuro-muscular dystrophy, which has left him in near total paralysis, making communication difficult. “With the use of CGI and a new angle, we’ve tapped into his mind to explore how the universe was created, whether alien life exists or if the galaxy has a life expectancy,” says Discovery’s Bonard. “It is trying to find a new and compelling angle to reveal the wonders of the universe.”

Another new mini-series from Discovery is Wild Planet. It begins this year with Wild Planet: North America, seven hours of looking at the North American continent, but in a different way. “It’s not wildlife,” Bonard explains. “It’s looking at the development of the continent and how it’s affected life—the formation of the continent, the only continent that extends from the Arctic to the tropics. The mountain ranges run north-south, so you’ve got a funnel of cold and hot air going down the middle. It’s looking at science in a slightly different way.” Future mini-series will focus on other continents.

A TOUCH OF SHOWBIZ
In assessing ways that NOVA has evolved, Apsell notes that recent programs are livelier than they used to be. “There is more action in the programs,” she says. “You see scientists doing things; the programs are more visual.” Apsell points to two upcoming mini-series, Making Stuff and The Fabric of the Cosmos. In Making Stuff, David Pogue, a personal technology columnist for The New York Times, examines modern technology and the materials that are required to make it. “I’m sure when you say ‘material science’ people are thinking, ‘Oh my God, give me my pillow,’” Apsell says. “But, really, civilization is built on the back of material. There is a reason that they call ages by the names of the materials that were dominant in those ages. And I have to say I never quite got that, and material science is one of the most important sciences today.” The four-part series debuts this fall.

Coming up next year is the four-hour The Fabric of the Cosmos with physicist Brian Greene, author of the book The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. “I’m hoping to have a hit on the magnitude of The Elegant Universe,” Apsell says, referring to a program based on an earlier Greene book. PBS International licensed The Elegant Universe to a slate of broadcasters, among them Channel 4, ARTE, SBS Australia, YLE and NHK. The new series incorporates playful animation and startling effects, along with experiments to show that the physical world is far more fantastic than our senses alone can appreciate.

Other producers take a more entertainment-oriented approach to science. France Télévisions Distribution (FTD), for example, has Changing Climates, which Eric Verniere, the manager of international sales and development, calls a docudrama with a lot of dramatization. “There is very definitely a need for scientific documentaries, as long as there is some sort of entertainment angle,” he says.

Changing Climates is set in 2075 after warnings about the consequences of global warming have been realized. It focuses on three characters affected by global warming in Europe, Africa and the Arctic. “When we’re talking to a big terrestrial buyer, they really focus on angles that are more entertainment,” Verniere says. “It could be subjects more like dinosaurs or pyramids. FTD is co-producing a show called The World of Dinosaurs with NHK and France 5. There is a strong entertainment angle to this project. When we are talking with cable buyers, or discussing specialized documentary slots or science slots, it’s a very wide range of subjects.”

Also leaning in the popular science direction is Cineflix, which is producing a series hosted by William Shatner called Weird or What? Paul Heaney, the president and managing director of Cineflix International, says the pop-science genre has been reignited. “Weird or What? is something that Shatner’s fascinated with anyway, which is trying to explain paranormal phenomena and weird and wonderful creatures and medical oddities and mysterious disappearances.”

Heaney especially likes documentaries that can appeal to a variety of broadcasters. “I love shows that can be different things to different broadcasters,” he says. “In some territories these shows—Weird or What?, Huge Moves or Mayday—can be described as science. In others they can be classed as factual entertainment. Shows like Huge Moves, where they show train engines, steamships, submarines or massive mansions being moved across seas or ice or continents, that’s straightforward entertainment. Air-crash investigations, rescues, tragedy and drama—that hits a male and female audience. There’s emotion, a narrative, real characters. Weird or What?, with the appeal of Shatner and universal stories means it should fit in a reasonably good peak spot in a lot of terrestrial broadcasters.”

Gary Lico, the president and CEO of CABLEready, points out that definitions of science vary, but that almost everyone wants it in some way. “For some, science may be disasters,” he says. “For others it might be big dinosaurs. For others Planet Earth or a current event. Forensics works well. Engineering and archeology work well, as does crypto-zoology—we have MonsterQuest on the History channel.”

One new wrinkle in the world of documentary television was added in January when Discovery, IMAX and Sony announced a joint venture to launch a 3-D TV channel next year. National Geographic Channel’s Burns sees 3-D production as a way of “future-proofing” the business. “I think it’s an important advancement just as CGI was a new storytelling technique. 3-D will allow us to keep advancing and revisiting these great topics. Can you imagine being able to plummet into the center of the earth or go through a tomb in Egypt and see the sand traps and the big granite doors that block the way to the next find? I think 3-D will be spectacular for science.”