Lecture: Vincent Liota
Vin Liota at NYU Journalism, March 22, 2006.
Photo: Alison Snyder.
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Only a producer as inventive as NOVA ScienceNOW’s Vincent Liota could make footage of a tiny frog defrosting on the forest floor riveting television.
In a panel held on March 22 at New York University and moderated by the science writer Robert Lee Hotz of The Los Angeles Times, Liota told the story behind a story he had produced on the common wood frog, airing in April 2005 on ScienceNOW. The idea for a segment on the frog, which freezes in winter and thaws in time to mate in the spring, came from the 2003 book Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, by Bernd Heinrich.
The frog’s ability to live in a state of suspended animation could assist scientists in their quest to preserve human organs — possibly even entire people — for later reanimation. The freeze-tolerant frog floods itself with a type of sugar that works like antifreeze, allowing entire organ systems to lay dormant until the spring when they begin functioning again. Scientists hope that studying the frog will allow them to develop methods for freezing and storing human organs. But Liota admitted he chose to ignore that angle of the story because it would “cheapen” the matter-of-fact miracle of “this one frog defrosting and coming back to life. To me, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Armed with an idea, Liota next had to sell the story to ScienceNOW’s executive producers. He wrote a treatment describing the visuals and sounds that would be used to tell the story, including a rough draft of the voiceover narration. He also provided a list of expert sources to be interviewed, along with a synopsis of what they were likely to say.
“[The treatment] goes against the grain of journalism,” said Liota. “You have this forgone conclusion about what the piece is about before you do it which I think is a little dangerous.” The treatment can be “an impediment to going out and reporting a story,” he said, “because you’re going out to prove a thesis and it might not even be true.”
Liota’s loyalty to unadulterated science may explain why the treatment’s visual description boiled down to: “Well, we hope to get a frog thawing out,” as he put it. Apparently, that was enough to convince his higher-ups, who gave Liota the go-ahead to begin producing the story. He shot time-lapse footage of the frog thawing; interviewed Miami University cryobiologist Jon Costanzo; created an animated springtime garden; and directed ScienceNOW’s composer, Rob Morsberger, to compose a tune in the spirit of Ray Charles’ “Making Whoopie” to set the tone for the post-thaw mating.
Before beginning an interview, Liota tries “to understand exactly what the subject’s contribution needs to be.” He asks himself, “‘What can this person add that I can’t really convey through picture or narration?’” He begins each interview by showing his subject the photograph or video he plans to use to illustrate that section of the piece. This gives experts as sense of context and allows them to refer to specific images.
Liota’s stories rely heavily on visual elements, such as photographs, video, and animation. When constructing a piece, he begins by reviewing his images. A cartoon garden, video of the search for the small frog in the woodlands of Ohio, time-lapse footage of the frog thawing, and images of frogs mating were the foundation of this particular story. As he lays out the stock, Liota explained, the story almost tells itself. “The material has to talk to you,” he said.
After choosing his images, Liota weaves in the interviews and narration to explain the science behind what the viewer is seeing. Intertwining an expert’s comments with the narration “passes the baton” from one part of the story to the next, said Liota, and enables the average viewer to hold on to the thread of the piece.
Liota’s approach to producing science stories relies on seamlessly stitching disparate elements into a story-proof that science can make for a good yarn.