StudyQA — Master: Science Media Production

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Description Contents Requirements Funding

This full-time one-year MSc course is for people with science, technology or medicine backgrounds, or graduates from other backgrounds with substantial experience in a scientific environment, who want to develop careers communicating science in broadcast media, probably in documentary or other factual programming.

Through both academic and practical taught modules, the course allows a greater focus on broadcast media than the more general MSc in Science Communication.

Instead of an academic dissertation, you will undertake an independent production project.

MODULES

Core practical
Science and its social contexts
Introduction to film form
Documentary film
Sound, sign, meaning in radio
Narrative

Practical modules

Radio production
Television production

WORK PLACEMENT

The work placement allows you to develop the skills and knowledge gained on the course in the real world of broadcast science communication.

Placements are set up through the College, although you may also undertake your own initiatives, in consultation with the College.

INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION PROJECT

You will research, script, shoot and edit your own programme based on your ideas for a short television documentary or a radio show.

Term 1

In the autumn term, students take two core academic modules and the core practical module. Each module lasts for the full term. At the end of term, additional sessions introduce students to the video editing equipment in preparation for the next term's practical work.

Science and its social contexts

In this module we study some of the contemporary debates surrounding science and its place in the world. By examining historical and recent work in the humanities and the social sciences, you will learn to question common-sense assumptions about science and its social contexts. The module divides into two parts. In the first part, we scrutinise work by historians, philosophers and sociologists who have written about the nature of science and its relation to other disciplines and the broader culture. In the second half of the module these themes are explored further as we consider how scientific expertise in the public domain becomes controversial and contested, as seen in the issues of mad cow disease, immunisation and GM crops. In this part of the module we will also look at the way ‘the public understanding of science’ movement has evolved into ideas about ‘public engagement’. The module ends by considering how this change intersects with the ambitions and claims of ‘Web 2.0’ in the communication of expertise in post-modern society.p>

Introduction to film form

This module introduces students to different models of film form and narrative. It focuses on national ‘art’ cinema movements over the last century paying particular attention to how these different cinemas interpret and exploit conventions of realism in contrast to the classic Hollywood film. This emphasis on aspects of ‘the real’ provides a foundation for further theoretical and practical investigations into documentary film in the second term. The course begins with foundational ideas of film theory (that film is a language, for example) and takes a chronological approach, feeding in new concepts, for example Russian formalism, psychoanalysis, post-colonialism etc., as the case demands.

Core practical: interviewing and reporting

Much of this introduction to the practice of communication is devoted to broadcast media. Students experiment with communicating science through various genres. In a series of practical exercises, students develop technical skills in directing, vision mixing and camera operating and they reflect on the use of television as a medium for communicating science. The exercises include adapting the BBC’s Question Time programme to the genre of the scientific studio discussion and experimenting with other televisual forms such as the game show, sketch show and pastiche.

Term 2

During the spring term, students take three academic modules, each lasting five weeks. In parallel with this theoretical work, students also take two practical works spanning the entire term.

Documentary

Documentaries show us situations and events that are recognisably part of a realm of shared experience: the historical world as we know it, or as we believe others to encounter it. It is this status of documentary film as evidence from the world that legitimates its usage as a source of knowledge. But while documentaries offer pleasure and appeal, their own structure remains virtually invisible, their own rhetorical strategies and stylistic choices largely unnoticed. Documentary films raise a rich array of issues: legal, philosophical, ethical, political, historiographic and aesthetic. This module looks at these issues within the context of viewing and discussing some of the seminal works in the history of the documentary film. It also brings a critical eye to recent developments in factual TV—video diaries, Reality TV, docu-soaps—which raise, in particular, questions of subjectivity, embodiment and privacy in the public space of television.

Narrative

Story-telling lies at the heart of nearly all communication. Even ‘objective’ genres of media communication, such as news, are all about telling stories and these narrative structures construct and constrain the way we see the world. This module introduces key concepts from narrative theory in order to inform students’ own narrative writing as well as raising important theoretical issues. Examples are drawn from a range of all genres and media, from TV documentaries to fairytales, and the module also explores the extent to which scientific discourse is itself narratival.

Sound, sign, meaning in radio

This module begins with a brief history of radio from Marconi to podcasting and then turns to the analysis of the medium’s primary code (speech) and secondary codes (non-speech sounds such as music, sound effects and silence). How the codes and conventions of radio convey meaning is explored further through the analysis of radio drama and the devices producers employ to create a sense of space and depth. Radio is a highly trusted medium and yet it is also one of the easiest to fake. The module finishes by considering this apparent contradiction and the ethical difficulties programme-makers face as advocates for the audience.

Radio production

This practical course introduces students to radio production, presentation and basic journalism. During the term students work through the essential techniques of radio production—starting with writing and narrating for radio, moving on to interview technique and then producing short features and complete programmes. The module includes the live transmission of a’ weekly magazine programme from IC Radio.

Documentary production

Working in small groups, students conceive, research, shoot and edit a short documentary film on a set theme. Although short, these projects provide an opportunity to practise all the skills required to produce a full-length television programme. Emphasis is placed on developing workable, televisual ideas and mastering the basic skills, both technical (research and planning, camerawork, sound recording and editing) and social (time-keeping and good co-operation) to realise them.

Term 3 and summer period

The summer term begins with two days of examinations. These are followed by work placements lasting about four weeks. The remainder of the year is taken up with work on a final production project.

Work placement (television or radio)

The work placement allows students to develop the skills and knowledge gained on the course in the real world of broadcast science communication. Students benefit from the supervision and guidance of professional TV and radio producers and can widen their range of contacts both in the media industry and in the world of science. Placements are set up through the College, although students may also undertake their own initiatives, in consultation with the College, if they wish. Placement hosts will exercise choice in their acceptance of students. The College will endeavour to accommodate students’ wishes as to placement type and location, but cannot guarantee that first choices will always be available.

Production project

Students research, script, shoot and edit their own programme based on their own ideas for a television or radio documentary. The final programme is accompanied by a written report.

Candidates require a good degree, normally a second class Honours degree or better, from a UK (or equivalent overseas) university or college of higher education in a scientific or science-related subject.

If your first degree is from a country other than the UK, you may find the guidelines within our Country Index helpful. Please note that these guidelines indicate the College minimum.

You must also be able to demonstrate potential in media production, as judged by completion of an assignment and perhaps submission of a portfolio of work.