Science Retreats and InBIO-CIBIO at the University of Évora are jointly organising a course on Low Budget Scientific Film Making.

This 5-day film-making course will take you through all the stages of making a short documentary about your research. It includes:

- Documentary theory: what makes a good film? How to think about using film and video to promote your research. The language of film: Shot sizes, camera movement, and how to use them.

- Pre-production: Planning your film, researching content, organising shoots. Understanding equipment, copyright and permissions, story-boarding.

- Production: Shooting interviews, shooting additional material, getting good quality sound, lighting your interviews

- Post-production: Editing your film, boosting the colour and audio of your film, best use of music, adding simple graphics, titles and web links.

- Promoting your film: Upload to Youtube, search engine optimisation, social media, getting your film seen.

Each day will combine learning theory in the classroom, with practical, hands-on experience of filming techniques, and analysing footage. Each participant will have the opportunity to be involved in every stage of the film-making process. They are invited to come prepared to make their own film on the course, and will be taught all the stages to produce a finished film after 5 days.

Requirements

No special requirements although we are expecting to recruit students with a background in science, science communication or multimedia.

Language

English

Fees and funding

The fees include full participation in the course and course material, provision of a certificate of attendance, half-board accommodation at Casa Morgado Esporão for up to 5 nights including breakfast, lunch and coffee breaks (offering assortment of coffees, teas, fruit juices and cookies).

Unfortunately we have no scholarships on offer. We do offer early bird discounts (before the 30th of April) and shared accommodation is provided for those with more limited budgets.

Participation

The course accepts a maximum of 15 students.

Contacts

For any additional informations about the course, please contact us at "scienceretreats" "at" "gmail" "dot" "com".

About the instructor: Dr. George Chan

I’ve worked in TV and film for eighteen years after joining the BBC to work with Sir David Attenborough on the series State of the Planet. I’ve been fortunate to travel the world producing and directing on internationally renowned documentaries, such as Planet Earth and Wild China, and I now bring a wealth of high quality broadcast experience to research and enterprise taking place in the UK. My early career started with a PhD in Evolutionary Biology and I have continued to work alongside scientists and researchers on an almost daily basis – translating and bringing discoveries and ideas to life on screen. It’s been a real privilege to be able to film ground-breaking research and meet the people behind it. Currently I lead Blue Fire Films that focuses on science film making in a range of disciplines.