Backgrounder: Vincent Liota
Vincent Liota, producer of NOVA ScienceNOW.
Photo: Yunsik Noh.
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When Vincent Liota hears an idea, he sees a story.
“I love stories about ideas rather than events,” Liota, 44, the series producer of NOVA ScienceNOW said in an interview with this reporter in March. He enjoys using images and simple narratives to translate abstruse ideas for his audience. “Everything is a TV story,” Liota said in a phone interview. “I just have to figure out how to do it.”
In 2005, when the producers of ScienceNOW decided to do a segment about ribonucleic acid (RNA) interference, a defense mechanism plant and animal cells use to fight invading viruses, Liota faced the challenge of creating an engaging story about a scientific concept many of his viewers knew little about. He decided the best approach was to use animation, one of his favorite tools in his visual toolbox.
The story is told using animated chefs, recipes, pirates, and cops. Recipe cards represent the RNA that carries genetic instructions to ribosome chefs, who cook new cells and tissues. When a pirate (or virus) invades a cell, it distributes its own recipes, instructing the chef to create a toxic meal that would harm the cell. The cops arrest this process by destroying the pirate’s suspicious recipes. The episode won a CINE Golden Eagle award in 2005.
Liota began his career studying fine art and animation at the Pratt Institute in New York, but became interested in filmmaking and transferred to New York University. He graduated with a BFA in film production in 1983. For the next 10 years, Liota was a “one man band” working as a cameraman/editor/reporter for local news stations such as WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut.
Then in 1993, he put down his camera and began editing for ABC News, where he worked on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline, Primetime, and 20/20. Seven years later, he accepted a new position at ABC, working closely with Robert Krulwich on science and business segments.
Liota joined the PBS TV science news magazine NOVA ScienceNOW in 2004. I was always interested in science—chemistry, Star Trek, and sci-fi books—as a child, Liota told this reporter. Yet, he admits he was skeptical about working exclusively on science productions. “I thought I’d be bored,” he says. “But, I love it. I am in my element now.” At ScienceNOW, Liota has been able to pair his interest in science and “things that explode,” with his love of visual storytelling.
Since joining ScienceNOW, Liota has tackled subjects ranging from archaeology to technology to molecular biology. His favorite segments are a 2005 piece about the common wood frog, which freezes in the winter and defrosts in the spring, just in time to mate, and a 2006 report about a 2,000-year-old mathematical problem woven into a song Liota wrote.
By using eye-grabbing visuals, Liota has made hard science accessible to the uninitiated.
SOURCES
- Liota, Vincent. E-mail Interview. 8 Mar 2006.
- Liota, Vincent. Telephone Interview. 8 Mar 2006.
- “RNAi.” Prod. Vincent Liota. NOVA ScienceNOW. PBS. WGBH. Boston, 26 Jul 2005.
- “Frozen Frogs.” Prod. Vincent Liota, Win Rosenfeld. NOVA ScienceNOW. PBS. WGBH. Boston, 19 Apr 2005.
- “Twin Prime Conjecture.” Prod. Vincent Liota. NOVA ScienceNOW. PBS. WGBH. Boston, 10 Jan 2006.
- “CINE Competition Winners Fall 2005.” CINE. 2005. http://www.cine.org/w_fall05.html