Storytelling & Storyboarding Science

The desire of scientists to communicate elegantly with the general audience using storytelling, and the tireless search of filmmakers for good stories to tell, demand tight collaboration between scientists and filmmakers. However, filmmaking technical skills lie outside of the training of the academic scientists. Hence, the successful collaboration between scientists and filmmakers requires that scientists acquire the basic knowledge of film storytelling and storyboarding. This will allow scientists to translate their research into elegant and convincing cinematographic stories, thus enhancing the communication between them and filmmakers, and making it easier for the filmmaker to transform these stories into films.

The course “Storytelling & Storyboarding Science” took place form August 2 to 5 at the Locarno Festival. 16 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers form different universities participated. They learned basic skills about conceptual and technical filmmaking: storytelling techniques, script writing and storyboarding. By attending the Locarno Festival, they had the chance to watch films, discuss the different techniques and to engage with filmmakers. The learned methods were also applied to scientific text structures and the participants had the opportunity to improve their writing skills by applying storytelling techniques.

The course was led by Dr. Samer Angelone.