At Montana State University's Master of Fine Arts program in Science and Natural History Filmmaking, our goal is to re-invent these areas of documentary by admitting students with undergraduate science degrees and teaching them both production and film studies in an intensive three-year curriculum. In the course I teach, "Criticism and Theory: Science Studies for Filmmakers," I apply critical theory simultaneously to the study of science and film. There are two significant results: 1) teaching filmmakers using the tools of academic film studies can provide a conduit for the re-invention of a moribund practice such as the "blue chip" nature film; and 2) the disciplines of science studies and film theory, because they draw from the same critical theory substrate, have much more in common than has previously been written about in either the film or science studies literature.