“Making the leap from physics to filmmaking”
H/T to GITS reader Kevin Wild for finding this gem:
Valerie Weiss is not your ordinary triple threat. She writes and directs, and, yeah, that’s about as common in Hollywood as a cup of coffee. It’s the third element that stands out. She is a biophysicist — one the Pentagon funded to attend film school.
With a Harvard doctorate and a 102-page thesis on the X-ray crystallography of a yeast protein, there’s nothing about her science that’s an act. Having traded crystallography for cinemain 2003, she transferred many of the skills she learned in biophysics to film. Today, she’s in preproduction on her first feature, with full financing from private investors. Making an independent film in today’s volatile market and scorched economy may well indeed require rocket science.
Her film, “Losing Control,” is a romantic comedy about a scientist who seeks proof that the man she loves is the one. Scientific proof, of course.
“It’s the first movie about a scientist by a scientist,” says Weiss.
It’s such a wonderfully quirky story — scientist turned filmmaker — that it’s easy to overlook that little word that got slipped in at the very end of the first paragraph: Pentagon.
What in the world does the Pentagon have to do with turning scientists into filmmakers? Read on:
It’s also the first movie to come out of a Department of Defense-backed program to train screenwriters, the Catalyst Workshop. Though Pentagon-backed screenwriting has the sound of a boondoggle, the workshop was a modest, carefully thought-out attempt to address a national security problem: the scientist and engineer deficit.
By the new millennium, the science deficit had reached the point where research labs working on defense projects were struggling to find qualified Americans for jobs requiring security clearance. Dr. Robert Barker of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Martin Gunderson, USC physics professor, were aware of the power of media to create a firestorm of interest. Fighter pilot recruits grew explosively after the 1986 release of “Top Gun.” And the TV series “CSI” and its many progeny sparked a stampede into the forensic sciences.
Most portrayals of scientists in Hollywood range from dumb (the stereotypical nerd scientist in “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”) to dumber (the bad-hair, google-eyed mad scientist Dr. Evil). It was Barker and Gunderson’s hope, in launching the Catalyst Workshop, not just to inspire budding scientists but also to generate more positive portrayals of them in movies and television.
“I absolutely believe that media makes a huge difference,” says Barker, continuing to make the point that authentic science makes for stronger stories. “Real science is more exciting than the flights of fancy.”
Curiosity piqued, I checked out the AFI Catalyst Workshop website:
The mission of the Catalyst Workshop is to provide a means for scientists and engineers to become more knowledgeable about the initiation of motion picture, television and digital media projects. The Catalyst Workshop encourages those scientists and engineers interested in working in entertainment to learn how to find the stories in their work.
Participants in the Workshop become more informed about the business and craft of writing movies, learning everything from conceiving a story to selling the finished script. National attention from such diverse media as NPR, The Los Angeles Times, Science Journal and Wired Magazine has furthered this unique Workshop’s success. This will be the fourth iteration of the AFI Catalyst Workshop.
The need for Hollywood to produce entertainment with “better science” has been pointed out in many forums. However, in order to accomplish the goal of producing scripts with better science stories, an increase in the number of science-literate writers is necessary. The AFI Catalyst Workshop accomplishes this by pairing each of the selected participants with an AFI screenwriting alumnus, and teaches scientists how to collaborate and maximize their existing skill sets within the film and television profession.
The 2009 AFI Catalyst Workshop will accept up to 12 scientists into the 5-day intensive November 9–13, 2009.
The fee is $500. Evidently it worked for Ms. Weiss:
How’d a nice biophysicist like her end up in a place like Hollywood? Weiss has found plenty of crossover between the fields.
“Scientists are very creative and big risk-takers. They have no idea how long a project will take. The pay is low. They put off having children.”
In other words, it’s a lot like breaking into Hollywood.
Weiss starts principal photography on her movie in October. Good. Maybe once she finishes the movie, she and her fellow scientists can figure out how to get Hwood off its obsession with pre-branded movies and remakes.
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