AFI

By Roxanne Benjamin
Special to the Daily News

The Sloan Foundation and AFI FEST pulled together another rousing panel discussion yesterday for the Sloan Film Summit. The well-attended panel took a look at science’s role in cinema, particularly futuristic ‘disaster’ films.

The aptly named We Told You So: Scientific Disasters in Film as Entertainment or Cautionary Tale? featured both the Writer and Producer of the Academy Award-winning CHILDREN OF MEN as well as a CalTech neuroscientist who has served as an adviser on a number of Sloan Foundation projects, as well as on feature films such as ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.

The general consensus of the panelists was that television has much less constraint than film in expressing scientific ideas as an integral part of a narrative. Within feature film, science is used more as a catalyst that creates a problem that must be faced rather than a modus operandi for solving a dramatic situation. Thus the panelists focused more on the relationships that exist between scientific discovery and filmmaking.

Mark Abraham, whose producing credits include END OF DAYS, AIR FORCE ONE, and DAWN OF THE DEAD as well as CHILDREN OF MEN, spoke about his approach to science in cinema. He made his directorial debut this year with FLASH OF GENIUS, which received a Sloan Foundation award.

“You’re always doing research,” he remarked. “I did so much research for FLASH OF GENIUS. I spoke with Professor Kearns. Same for AIR FORCE ONE. We got on the actual Air Force One and did a walkthrough…from a scientific standpoint, from a director’s standpoint, a writer’s viewpoint; it comes back to creating character.”

Writer Timothy J. Sexton expressed similar sentiments, ““I am not at all a scientist. I can’t even talk that coherently about science. The science is a texture, or presents a problem to be worked out. Ultimately I don’t think science-fiction stories are really about science, they’re about character. The scientists—they are the oracles.”

Moran Surf, neurobiological researcher at CalTech, felt that scientists generally fell into two stereotypes in film, either the nefarious villain trying to take over the world or the brainy sidekick. “The scientist is always the guy who finds the answer and helps the main guy—the two muscle-y stupid guys—to use it. And, the scientist, he’s the scruffy guy with the glasses, who won’t look you in the eye. But if you come to CalTech, we’re actually all quite attractive.”

He lauded the Sloan Foundation’s efforts to change these stereotypes. “That’s a problem that I think the Sloan Foundation is trying to solve. And it makes the writer work much harder…. It seems to me that the core thing about science and movies is that they both tell a story. They are riddles…you want the audience to understand the story and let them investigate the story. Writers are interesting; they have to look at story like a scientist. They know the end but they have to reveal it piece by piece by like a scientist for the audience.”

Sexton then spoke of technology’s role in informing story from a writing perspective. “From a storytelling point of view, technology serves as a great opportunity for a writer. A movie like CHILDREN OF MEN in the dystopian world, it’s post-technological. We haven’t been able to solve problems with science…we had all the technology imaginable but we were still brought to this precipice…ultimately its about how technology can not save us. Technology is not so much present in that world so much as it is in the making of the movie…it was a level of technological art that was very impressive.”

Abraham followed up with the answer to the tantalizing question “How did director Alfonso Cuaron accomplish the stunningly claustrophobic car ambush shot?” Here for the first time is the producer’s account, in vivid detail, of how the shot was actually accomplished:

“Alfonso wanted the point of view only from the automobile, from the point of view of the characters in the car….We built a flatbed—we called it the Bizmarck—we had to get it low enough that the automobile would be at the proper height because we’re shooting the whole thing for real, as it happens, on site. On the flatbed, we put two engines, one in the front and one in the back, and a steering wheel on either end. It was driven from the front or driven from the back…. So then the car is put on the flatbed, mostly hollowed out. The top of the car was off. We took a Doggicam, the roof—now missing—had a grid on it. The camera was hanging from the grid rails. And the camera can move by remote on its own. And we had someone pulling the windshield down so you can get the shot from the front. Sitting on top of the roof is Alfonso and Chivo (Emmanuel Lubezski) and I think George (Richmond). Now we’ve got these guys sitting up there on clamshells, and Chivo sitting up there moving the camera. And the actors would have to duck to the side when the camera was coming from their point of view. It had to be choreographed. Then we had to put up a windscreen around it. When the ambush happens, the differential is switched over and the other driver is now driving the rig in the other direction, when they reverse. That’s how it happens so fast…. The guy driving now, he’s got the bikes coming right at him…when the rock got thrown, it wasn’t supposed to break the glass, but it did, and glass went everywhere. It cut his (Clive Owen’s) face; you can see that in the film. Everyone was terrified then, so that part is real.”

Moran then whipped out a list of his own personal top ten scientific topics that he thinks should be made into a movie. Pads and pens appeared from nowhere, and the Sloan fellows furiously wrote as Moran counted down his ideas, ending with, of course, a topic involving neuroscience (his own field). He urged the fellowship winners to speak with as many scientific people as possible.

“The schools for Sloan filmmakers…they’re all great science schools. Just go to that other building, the one you avoid on the way to the cafeteria…go in. They’re very friendly. It’s really useful for filmmakers to talk to them, and more than that its fun. That’s my advice to filmmakers looking for ideas.”