Category Archives: science in drama

Speaking of Time…

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Just finished a complete redo of a nine (plus one) panel page of the Arena story that was the prototype outing for the graphic novel project. (See some earlier posts, e.g. here, about this redo process.)

I shudder at the horrible drawings on the page it replaced.

To the left are some parts of the new page… Click for a larger view.

In other news, I met our new Dean (of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences) today, during a short session where a few of us had a conversation with him while someone filmed us. I think it is some film they are doing about the new Dean taking up the reigns, or something similar. He seemed a nice enough fellow, and he seems to be coming with definite ideas for interesting changes… I’m looking forward […] Click to continue reading this post →

Before and After

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The last several sessions on The Project have been an exercise in revisiting some older pages. In fact, in the sample you can see to the left the subject is the very first page that I started experimenting with seriously for developing and learning production techniques.

Back then I was doing my inking digitally, and I ended up with work that I did not like the look of. I hate the clean straight lines that resulted. Also it was too slow on the computer to control the brush with the fidelity I wanted…various other things bothered me as well, which I won’t trouble […] Click to continue reading this post →

Process

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A process update, since some of you are curious about The Project.

While hiding in the desert on walkabout recently, I finished writing a story I’d been working on (one of a few I worked on), and started thumbnailing parts of it and refining the pagination of it. Thumbnails are just little sketches of how a page might be laid out, maybe focusing on how the eye might move about the page, how the words and pictures might flow, etc. There were some pages I was immediately interested to try out, and so I did larger versions of them in rough here and there (and for some other stories too)…. For one of them, I have a really exciting exchange (about symmetry and beauty) over a notepad, and I sketched over oatmeal one breakfast time a mannequin construction of the layout. (See earlier for introduction to my mannequin friends.)

Well, on Thursday and Friday I finished the rough pencils for the whole page, featuring those two figures, now given flesh and bone. Today I did the main figures for another page, with a variation on that pose of the mannequin drawing from the desert. (Vellum helps here.) I thought I’d share (click for larger view):

They’ll be refined later on, with things like scaling of various bits and pieces fixed […] Click to continue reading this post →

Losing Control

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Have you heard about Losing Control? It is a film that’s being released this year with a lot of promise to be unusual, interesting, and sure to tackle an area that you don’t see covered much in the mainstream: the choices facing a young female scientist when it comes to her career and her personal life. I was introduced to Valerie Weiss, the writer/director/producer of the film not long ago in the context of a project I was doing concerning science and film. Valerie is an award-winning filmmaker who has a background as a research scientist, and so is in a great position to tackle such subject matter. I’m looking forward to the film a lot. I want to see more of this sort of thing, as you know from my writing here about science and scientists in the media. This is (I think) Valerie’s first feature film, so let’s hope it does well so that she can be encouraged to do more work on this sort of subject matter.

It’s going to start with limited releases in cities in the US such as New York, Sacramento, Tacoma, Boston, Los Angeles, and Tempe, and go on from there, so try […] Click to continue reading this post →

Reports on the Night

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Well, it seemed to go well. I rambled too long and unstructuredly in my off-the-cuff speech (and long thank-you list) at the beginning, but nobody seemed to mind so much since the films were the main focus, and people loved the program. I only got two shots of the activities worth sharing since I was occupied with being host and so forth… but there were so many reporters there, and so I expect there’ll be more showing up all over the place. There were about 140 people in attendance, I was told, which is nice to hear.

People seemed to really love the whole idea of the competition and showcase, and really to understand what I am trying to do with this whole program, so that’s heartening. I hope this also translates into lots of interest next year, with even more filmmakers joining in and making films (and faculty being supportive and helping out as matchmakers and so forth).(This is all assuming I find a sponsor to fund the thing.)

Oh! I opened envelopes Oscar-style and gave out the awards. Here are the results:

1st place (and $2500): Time (Kevin Le, Edward Saavedra)

2nd place (and $1500): It’s All in You (Maria Raykova, Andy Su, Jabril Mack, Mara Guevarra, Kayla Carlisle – a freshman team!)

3rd place (and $500): Superluminal Neutrinos in 5 Minutes (Josh Heineman, Nate Fulmer, Michael Powell)

Honourable Mention (and $500): Dance with Newton’s Laws (Linda Jules, Anna Zaferiou)

Honourable Mention (and $500): Yaddda, Yadda, Yada (Kimberly Laux, Simon Wilches Castro, Scott MacDonald, Anna Drubich, Laura Cechanowicz)

(Filmmaker’s roles and the synopses can be found here.)

Then there was a surprise extra prize from Richard Weinberg (Professor in the Division of Animation and Digital Arts). He came up and gave a limited edition print […] Click to continue reading this post →

CelebritySC is on the Story!

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So I learned about a blog called CelebritySC recently, when they got in touch to ask me about the science film competition, and whether they could attend the showcase and cover it as press. (They also asked me some background about it, and posted an interview here.)

They’ve been doing update posts on the whole thing in the days leading up to the event, and I just saw that they’re even making guesses about which films will win prizes! From Anya Lehr’s piece, I’d guess she’s been chatting with the filmmakers to […] Click to continue reading this post →

Crunch Time

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I’m on the bus on the way to campus, it is pouring with rain, the heat is too high on aboard the bus, and I am late. And a bit tired. I was up until 1:00am crunching numbers. The main stage of the judging for the science film competition ended last night and I went into the system to do the data analysis. I’d designed a spreadsheet on which each of the ten judges give a score for each film in eight different categories which I tried to make roughly orthogonal. I set it up so that they could go to an online form (having viewed the films on a private channel on YouTube) and enter the scores, an action which in turn populates the spreadsheet for me. (Google docs rocks!) They could also enter optional comments about each film that could be useful for any discussion that needs to be had. So what I was doing was slicing the database of scores to see if I could get a ranking of the films to take into a face to face meeting with some of my fellow local judges today. Then I wanted to find ways of laying it all out in a way that was easy to read for everyone and in the end this morning I printed out a giant version of the entire spreadsheet on several sheets of 11×17 and glued them together to make a big colour coded foldout for us all to sit around.

The films? I’m delighted with the turnout as it shows the kind of variety of film I’d hoped would be produced. There are eight films, with films that are illustrated explainers on the one hand (with with animation or live action or sometimes both), through drama and narrative, to reflective overviews of a topic on the other, sometimes venturing into art inspired by science ideas.

(Above is a graphic made by Laurie Moore In Dornsife communications from stills of the films.)

This variety makes for a hard task in coming up with the prize winners, since […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tense Moments

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I’ve tried not to be worrying about it, but nevertheless there was a bit of concern today as I logged into the account and looked to see if any films had arrived. I did this a few times between other things like teaching and working on issues to do with another film project, and each time there was nothing. I was confident that there were some films on their way, since various students from the teams who entered the film competition had emailed me about various clarification issues (duration, what does midnight mean exactly, etc.) and so I know that not all of the 19 teams who submitted their application to enter the competition in October were going to be no-shows… but how many would “not all” end up being? This is the issue you get when you set something up, advertise as much as you can, and then sit back and hope that people come. You never know until they do. The same thing happened with the pre-registration phase. I’d been running around doing as much as I could to build awareness since the end of August, but until the very end I did not know if I would get a single entrant. In the end 19 teams (around 90 students) got involved!

So here I am again. There’s no turning back… the splendid theatre is booked for the showcase, the judges have been selected, the upload space is sitting waiting, the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Happy New Year!

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Well everyone, 2011 is drawing to an end, so I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! for 2012. All the very best, and thanks for reading. See you for more next year.

As my New Year’s greeting image, I give you the results of yesterday’s work on The Project. It is the opening panel for the dialogue/story that I started ink work on.

I sat in the sun with ink pens, brush, and ink, and happily brought to life the panel I’d envisioned for some time. I like the results, even though it is not quite […] Click to continue reading this post →

Science Comics and Branded Content

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People often point to certain “science comics” as examples when I explain to them what The Project is about. In turn, I explain that while both things have science in them, and both things use sequential art, they’re not really the same. Not everyone gets it, but that’s ok. (If it helps, ask yourself if you would assume that I was writing a bodice-ripper for Mills and Boon or Harlequin if I said I were writing a novel in which there are elements of love, relationships, romance, etc., in it*.) There’s room for more than the “hey kids! science is awesome!” model, as fine a model as it is.

Since the confusion with that genre is so easily made I confess that I find myself reluctant to discuss it much here, lest I compound the confusion. That might be silly. Anyway, as an exception, I thought I’d point to a little collection of comic covers (and an extract from an interior) that the Washington Post has on its Innovations site as a piece about the movement in the fifties to get kids interested in science, through the big popular culture medium of the time – comics!

I wonder how much it worked, as compared to other efforts at the time. Is it even measurable? (For example, I think that the stuff I do in science outreach helps the cause of strengthening science (and its understanding) in […] Click to continue reading this post →

More Mannequins

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So, this weekend I am determined to get fully pencilled at least one page of this new story for the graphic novel (the one featuring science as the main character… follow the link for more).

(I had a fantasy that by the end of this weekend the page would be inked and painted as well, but I spent a bit of time on teaching myself a new set of techniques instead, which will feed into much of what is to come… so I am behind.) So I’ve designed the interiors, done all the layouts for this page, and am very happy with it. I have done the first pass at the accurate pencil-work, and there it is on the left. Those mannequins from before are back, now fully worked out in perspective for you. Takes a long time, as I’m rusty, but it’ll gather pace now, as I clothe them in flesh, then cloth (and some leather), and also the space they are in. Compare to the rough layout of this same page from a previous post.

The story? Well, not giving away anything in detail, but the two characters you saw conversing in an earlier story had met before. This is the story in which they meet for […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales from the Industry XXXVIII – Improvising

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For the second half of today I was involved in film-making again, but this time not the usual science documentary material, but something else. What, exactly, I am not at liberty to tell you since I don’t really know, if the truth be told. It is going to be a rather beautiful-looking piece of work, with an interesting narrative arc, and… well that’s all I know. I was cast in it a while back following an interesting story in and of itself. I’d made friends with a really engagingly interesting bartender at a bar downtown that specializes in rum, a while back…(a year? more?) We had a great time chatting about ideas in science, the arts, and beyond, and did that “let’s stay in touch” thing that people do a lot, which may or may not really happen…

Some months later, the same fellow came to see me in my office to tell me about this film he was making, and that he’d like me to come and be in it. At the end of the conversation, somehow I still knew nothing about the film and what I was to be doing in it. I was just going to be in a splendid house somewhere, talking to people, and… […] Click to continue reading this post →

Rough Pages

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Well, it’s a time-consuming process (continuing the new work on The Project mentioned in a recent post), especially when you put in more detail than really needed on what is supposed to be a rough layout. Sigh… Anyway, I’m several pages along in layouts for a story I wrote a while back, and I’m flipping ahead from time to time and wondering how long this beast is going to end up being! In any case, it’s a fun topic (or topics) being explored in this one. I’m wondering if I should try to find a way of splitting it into two stories or perhaps […] Click to continue reading this post →

Movie Notes

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Going to the movies this weekend? Lots of interesting choices, but perhaps you especially want to see some portrayals of people in academic careers by some of the hot young phenoms. Well, here are two you might not have considered, both films released May 6th.

1. Observe Nathalie Portman as an astrophysicist in Thor. I don’t find this to be too much of a stretch since the actress always seemed to me to radiate an intensity and intelligence that would help make such a role believable, even in films where everything else is rather a disaster as far as believability is concerned. (cough, cough, Star Wars prequels, cough, cough) Well, it turns out that Thor is not the disaster I thought it would be and is rather well put together, all things considered (this is one of several Marvel characters that I was underwhelmed by in the old days). So go for Portman, stay for the hammer, lightning bolts, and other stuff. Turns out the physicist aspect of her performance was not as well studied as her ballet in that other film, but oh well. It was not like it was the central issue of the film. But enjoy all the Einstein-Rosen bridge mentions!

2. Observe Jessica Alba as a mathematics teacher who loves numbers in An Invisible Sign. Now, er, this for me was casting that did not bode well, but to be fair,[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Revolution!

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Ah. Should have mentioned this before. Tomorrow I’ll be talking at Revolution Books. No, I won’t be stirring up political buzz or anything like that, rallying the troops, singing the songs and so forth. Sorry to disappoint. I’ll be there doing what I usually do – trying to put a bit of science out there among the rest of the culture where it belongs. I ran into Keith James of Revolution Books in the market one day some time ago and he recognized me from a tv show explaining science – and I was hanging out with a writer friend whose work he was a fan of, and so it was a two-birds-one-stone thing for him, stopping us to say hi. He raised the idea of me coming and explaining Einstein’s Relativity at the bookstore, and I readily agreed. It has been a long time in the making -largely due to me- but we finally settled on a date, and it is tomorrow. I also suggested that I put them in touch with a friend at the Griffith Observatory so that after my […] Click to continue reading this post →