Blending Science and Storytelling: Insights from Hollywood Filmmakers

Join us for part two of our tiny expedition into the Hollywood writers’ room. We wrap up our conversation with a pair of filmmakers, exploring the ways that science and Hollywood influence each other, current scientific topic trends in Hollywood, and the scientific method as a storytelling structure.

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Transcript

Chris Powell  00:01

Welcome to Tiny Expeditions, Season Five, Episode Six, part two, part deux. We're back again today. My name is Chris. I'm your co-host for today. 

Sarah Sharman  00:11

And I'm Dr. Sarah Sharman, here to help you understand the science. 

Chris Powell  00:14

Sarah, we are getting pop cultured this season. And when we say we're getting pop cultured, what in the world do we mean by that? 

Sarah Sharman  00:20

So, the Cliff Notes version of Tiny Expeditions gets pop cultured is that we're looking at all the ways in which genetics and biotechnology are represented and misrepresented in your favorite TV shows, movies, maybe music, who knows? 

 Chris Powell  00:36

And we've looked at basically a film each week, right? This week we are talking to filmmakers, and so, we will obviously talk about a lot of films. So, if you've got a favorite film, there's a good chance that we're gonna talk either about it or kind of around it. I mean, Apollo 13, Gravity, Philadelphia, James Bond, Annihilation, Twilight Zone, they all get shoutouts here. So, it's gonna be a fun episode.

Sarah Sharman  00:59

It will be a fun time. And as a reminder, this episode is a continuation of a conversation we started in the last episode with two filmmakers from Hollywood.  

Chris Powell  01:09

That's right, we're talking again with Michael and Jori Felker. We had such an amazing time talking with them in the last episode. If you were listening, you know what a great time we had. And we're gonna let the good times roll again this week, but we're gonna go a little bit different of a direction. Last week, we talked about accuracy in film, and today, we're gonna go a little bit of a different direction.

Sarah Sharman  01:31

For this episode, we are exploring the relationship between science and film, and how they influence each other, and why it's important to keep making films that drive people's curiosity.

Chris Powell  01:42

We'll also learn that not only do these films drive our curiosity, but they also give us a way of envisioning, almost a language by which we can talk about, try to understand, interpret and explore the world around us. So, sit back, relax, enjoy this conversation with Michael and Jori Felker.

Sarah Sharman  02:09

How has science fiction filmmaking, script writing had to change as we have gained more scientific knowledge? So, as the science has been changing, how has the storytelling had to evolve and change to keep up with our vast amount of knowledge we now have?

Jori Felker  02:27

I think one of the first animated projects, and Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, The Trip to the Moon is actually a science fiction movie and is portrayed in the movie Hugo. So it's like one of the first ways that we've ever started telling stories has been science fiction. And how the moon is portrayed in a movie that comes out in the 1920s is obviously very different than how the moon is portrayed now when we talk about more modern movies. There's a constant evolution as the science gets better, the movies adapt as well. And just like the breadth of topics that we can even cover because genetics didn't even exist back then. So, of course, there weren't naturally going to be movies about it. But also, when you look towards the future, what are the topics that we can't even fathom that are going to exist? 

Jori Felker  03:25

I think social media is such an interesting example, not necessarily on the science fiction side, but on how we consume media and how it's influencing us that's going to continue to evolve. And I think it's always changing as well to grapple with, like, the new socio-political, geopolitical issues of our time, and grapple with new evidence that we can that kind of talks about how the world is actively changing. We can now put those in our movies, and we can add that as a new talking point. And how we kind of like tackle different civil rights issues. Michael just showed me the movie Philadelphia, which is about a lawyer fighting wrongful termination because he had AIDS and how that is a courtroom drama that kind of grapples with the fact that how we view a deadly disease has changed over the years and how it's seen in association with sexuality. So, how we view homosexuality in the 80s is very different than how we view it now because we have more science and more evidence, and because of that, the movies and how they tackle that is also going to be changing actively. So it's a constant evolution, and it's really cool. It's really fun to be a part of storytelling that's always reinventing itself. 

Michael Felker  04:53

I think Jori brought up a good point, especially with A Trip to the Moon, considering I've seen it before. Jori hadn't seen before. I was showing her Apollo 13 for the first time. And those are great example of the first cinematic interpretation of science fiction is how do we go to a place we can never go, which is to the moon? And it's always important to root a movie, I guess, in the time in which it was made. I mean, gosh, we were re-watching in the pandemic, all the James Bond movies, and those movies are more fascinating when you root into what culture was at the time, or what cinematic trends were at the time, and seeing how this, like person throughout time is just reflecting it in action movies. So A Trip to the Moon is not only just a fascinating expression of cinematic invention and trying to express things that are in our dreams, but it's just also being like, what is it like to go to a place we don't understand like the moon? And it raffles with these questions, but also just gives us this fantasy of being there and like, Oh, this is great, if we could eventually figure it out. But then you have Apollo 13, which is based off true events, and it literally is grounded in the exact science or what happened, like even proposing what we thought happened when we lost communication with the astronauts at that point. And they're all rooted in specific things that happened within the time of the movie. In a way, film actually is a really great way to look at the history of where our mindset was as a society, where we were as man and culture going like what we're wrestling with right now in the pursuit of the unknown. You know, that's why movies like most recently, I would say the two science fiction movies that I think about all the time, and they're kind of like two sides of the same coin, are Arrival and Annihilation. They both are wrestling with things that I don't know if we'll ever see in our lifetime or maybe we'll never see, period. But they do take what we know now, our grounded approach to what if aliens did visit us, or we had this phenomenon happen on Earth? What would be the scientific approach, but also marry this reach of just here's something we don't understand is explained to us in a language we don't know how to comprehend and how we'd react to it. I feel like the evolution will come as a reaction to how we as a society, or how y'all as scientists, make discoveries, and then we make movies to reflect our reaction to everything about it. 

Sarah Sharman  07:21

Is there anything happening in science right now that you would want to make a movie out?  

Jori Felker  07:28

Oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with AI in a way that it's kind of actually alienated me from a lot of writers because everyone here is very anti-AI, but I think for me, I'm so interested in, I mean, like, my background is neuroscience. Naturally, I was very interested in neural networks and how reinforcement learning creates these patterns and large language models. And, like, when I was in school, we were just starting to talk about this stuff, and now it's pretty mainstream. I mean, it's gonna get better and even smarter, and it's freaking me out, but I am so interested, and maybe it'll be terrible if I go on the record as being kind of like a pro-AI person, but because the Writers Guild is so anti-AI, because we all think it's coming for our jobs, but for me, I'm more like I want to learn how to talk to it and use it because it's really just a mirror for society and kind of like what we've already consumed on the internet because the humans are going to bring a perspective to that, that like AI is not going to have a perspective on like childhood trauma. So, we can use what AI is capable of to make our creations better and more accurate and more reflective of humanity. So, I think it's going to be interesting. I know it's very controversial in filmmaking. But I also know that, like by studying kind of progress and power and the evolution of just how technology affects people, that it's here to stay, and the people who stick their head in the grounds, the Luddites essentially, are not going to be here, so you either learn to live with it or continue to pretend it doesn't exist, and that doesn't really help anyone. 

Jori Felker  09:29

I also think the metaverse is a really interesting topic that's becoming wider. I don't know, it's still pretty new and like how it's getting put into film and TV, but it is something that, just like our interactions with the digital space, are becoming more ingrained in our lives, and as we continue to do that, that's going to only get scarier and more terrifying, and maybe it's going to give us a way to interact with each other and create new relationships that we've never even thought possible, like with the dead. You know, when we upload our brains to the cloud, and now you're able to talk to a dead parent years later, like that. That's just gonna create such interesting stories. So we're at the brink of kind of a terrifying time,. It's just also really crazy to think that there are so many movies and TV shows about AI and now it's like a thing. 

Sarah Sharman  10:34

That's what I was about to say. Yeah, even that Disney Channel movie with the house that was like an AI house. I mean, that was like when I was a kid.  

Chris Powell  10:44

So, do you think that your perspective on AI would change? You mentioned it specifically as reflective of the collective consciousness, right? It is where we are now. It's kind of reflecting back on what it's learning from what we've put out there in the world. If it moves from that to, I know generative is used a lot differently when it comes to art creation, right? Like a visual medium, but if we move into a generative to where it starts more influencing in a new direction, versus reflecting the collective consciousness, do you think that would change the perspective there?

Jori Felker  11:23

Oh, gosh, yeah. There's a quote I really like, I'm gonna have to look up who said it. But essentially, the idea is, like, we are using a hammer to hammer the world with AI, but the hammer also shapes the hand that is using it. So, it's going to spark start influencing us back. I mean, it already is. That's kind of what the internet has become, is that we are in kind of this echo chamber where we're going back and forth and influencing each other and building a society essentially online that is, in many ways, a reflection and not a reflection of the human race. But we're always going to need creatives or outside perspectives to inject new data into it. Otherwise, it's never going to grow. It's just going to keep going in a cycle. So, yeah, it's definitely going to influence us. And that's kind of like the cool balance between science and art, I think, is that science is going to expand art, but art is also going to change and influence the next generation of scientists.

 Michael Felker  12:37

I would piggyback off, especially the evolution side question you had before was how the evolution of science has influenced us as creatives, specifically the AI thing. A lot of us see it as a threat to our job. So of course, it's going to be influencing us creatively. Most recently, Black Mirror, a science fiction driven Twilight Zone show that we love was a huge factor in the Screen Actors Guild strike last year to us. Basically, last year we had two strikes that shut down our industry: The Writers Guild of America strike and the Screen Actors Guild of America strike. Basically, right when the Writers Guild started striking Black Mirror started releasing its new season of television, and the first episode, I believe the episode is called Joan is Awful, and it's basically about this woman who sees that her life is being replicated in a television show. And it's like changing her entire life. That episode specifically scared so many actors in that they were going to be replaced by AI-driven versions of themselves, body scans of themselves, that it basically is like the catalyst to why they went on strike a month later. To see science scare people in like a fiction and causing a genuine reaction to change how they work in their industry is humongous. That's why it's like a thing that we constantly think about. So that's why, at this moment, this for the side question, just AI is what's in our brain at all times, even though it's been talked about and delved into for like the last 100 years of cinema. There's always just like the unknown, the AI like replacing us as a human intelligence. To see that now be like in our forefront of we're going to lose jobs because there's some streamlighting. The tedious work of getting stuff done on the post side or visual effects side is being now taking these jobs away has actually made a huge spike in movies that are focusing on AI. Even this past week, there's a movie called Afraid that just came out that has like the AI in afraid as, like, the main factor. And it's basically a new version of Smart House where it's like, Hey, we're going to start taking care of you, your children, as like, Google Home starts to wire itself all throughout the house. I believe there's also Megan that just came out, which is like this doll that can then basically replace your children and whatnot. I think horror is actually a big subgenre within science fiction because a lot of people aren't as positively thought-provoking as me, Jori, or even my family is like, ooh, science. And there's all these questions. Let's see what happens. A lot of people are afraid of the unknown. A lot of people are afraid to explore these avenues of a world that's changing around them. So, they always drive them into the horror subgenre. I mean, we were talking about Alien. Alien is one of them. And then Annihilation and Arrival also deal with the horror subgenre of just like, I don't know if this thing's going to come and kill me or replace me or take over. So, you know that's probably because we also are dealing with a nice horror boom in the film side for us. It's a very easy way to make cheap money if you know how to shoot and execute a concept, and get a lot of people into a theater in a dark room and watch something scary. So seeing science fiction delve into that is a huge thing.

 Jori Felker  16:22

I want to counteract Michael's point for 30 seconds because, yes, he's right; there are a lot of really great horror movies that explore sci-fi and technology and are acting as warnings, essentially, to the next generation. Like, be careful what you wish for if you have technology like this, it's gonna change you and create this fear around technology that sometimes is warranted. That's not to say it isn't. I'm working on a show right now. It's about the alternate space race, and it's like, what if Russia beat the US to the moon, and then the space race kept going, and it's more like an alternate history. So everything's very much grounded in reality, just with this tiny little twist. And it is a much more hopeful and optimistic way that's meant to inspire people about what would happen if we all kind of put aside our differences on Earth and focused on developing science. I think there are examples of stories in sci-fi that sure there are definitely warnings and how it would change, and we should definitely heed that. But also, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to create and develop as scientists because there's a lot of amazing potentials out there, and it'd be really cool to find life on another planet and what that would mean for the rest of humanity. 

Michael Felker  17:57

I think right now, AI is the biggest thing within our film circles that people are pursuing, and it's even different in ways than it was when AI came out or iRobot came out, which is like, Oh, here's just a robot and replacing me. The scariest things are now being like, hey, they're replacing my jobs, and we have no way to counteract it. They're not a body; they're literally within a system or within our own brains, changing who we are fundamentally. And that's scary and exciting for us as creatives to pursue in storytelling.

Chris Powell  18:32

I think it's fascinating that you're hitting so hard on AI because a big thing with film is that it allows us to explore who we are as people. And, of course, the whole alien phenomenon I see is basically a challenge of saying, okay, so if we're not the only ones out there, who are we? Right? And AI, the evolution from kind of the alien to AI that you were talking about, the shift there, it seems like AI is an even bigger threat to understanding who we are because it's a disembodied person, right? Like with an alien, you can at least put eyes on it or have some sort of a fantastical view of what it is. But AI, you can't do that, and it causes us to ask that question even more. Like, okay, so Who the heck are we in this grand scheme of things? Right? If consciousness is all that it's about. Well, AI's got that nailed. So who, you know? Who are those people?  

Michael Felker  19:25

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what you know. That's why I think it's even more scary and even more science-based because we definitely are working with things that we that are already out there. Like, Alien, we have this H.R. Giger-like thing that we've designed, and it's the basically dream logic of here's this nightmare that might come and just destroy us as people. But it definitely just doesn't exist. It's part of human imagination. It's more of a what-if scenario. The scary thing about AI is that it's moving so fast. And being developed and learning every single day that you know we're actually using that type of data to funnel our fears and anxieties and then put them into a story, and hope to wrestle and understand these fears. Maybe try to figure out a world where AI does exist and we can't change it or go back. And that's actually a really good answer to why good science fiction is like helping us wrestle with evolution of humanity, is that sometimes we just can't go back. There's no way we can go back to a pre-internet age. There's no way we can go back to not having a phone on us at all times, and we have to run to a pay phone in order to solve this drama. We have to wrestle that there's no turning back now with development in science and so good science fiction and storytelling there is basically helping us as humans to be like, Hey, it's okay. You're not alone. We're figuring that out. Just let's take this time and have a little fun for two hours, but also help you grab a little bit longer that your world is now different.

Chris Powell  21:02

I think a lot of times when people watch films, they just kind of watch it and be like, Okay, so that's a cool story. But you being on the narrative side of this instead of the technical side of the film, that's your world, right? It's all storytelling. And most people don't understand that there are distinct structures to storytelling. Is there one in particular, one structure in particular, that kind of jumps out at you and says, like this lends itself better to scientific stories or to science fiction? 

Jori Felker  21:31

This is an interesting question. And I mean, story structures themselves are constantly evolving and changing, so it's hard to say what we have now is going to be even relevant in the future. But there's definitely a lot of underdog stories about the scientists who invent something against all odds. And then there's also the mad scientist story about the perils of developing some kind of technology without understanding the cost. But I really think that the structure of storytelling is really similar to the scientific method and that three-act structure is very much like, you have a hypothesis, you're gonna test it. The character has certain beliefs about how the world works, or who they are at their core. And then they're gonna go through an act two that's like their trials and experiments of what works, what doesn't work, and then was my hypothesis? Right? Maybe it wasn't. Usually, it's not right. In storytelling, I feel like that's a more interesting story when a character has to face the fact that their beliefs about themselves are just not accurate, and then there's a conclusion. So they discover, they digest what they've learned on their experiment, and then they maybe set off to do another experiment and we get a season two or a sequel. So storytelling is very similar to taking a question and running it through a scientific experiment, just like a scientist who is researching or curing cancer might do.

Michael Felker  23:21

That's a really good way to put it Jori, is that the hero's journey and the scientific method kind of go hand in hand, but would just have different perspectives in what we're looking for. I feel like the three-act structure just lends itself so easily, and that's why it's persevered throughout time. Specifically in film, which is driven in trying to have people leave the experience having a good time and wanting to come back and spend more money on movies, is that you want people to go like, Hey, here's my status quo. I don't want it challenged and I want to go and live my life. But extraordinary circumstances put them on an adventure journey, and then they come out knowing more and benefiting the world around them in a way that they couldn't before. Just like a lot of scientific method stuff. You could see that in the two-prong different approaches that Jori was saying. There's the underdog story about the scientists that changed the world and the mad scientists are the ones that kind of doomed it for more. Hidden Figures being part of column A, as like in a real world example/adaptation of it, and then Oppenheimer being B and being like, changed the world for the worst/what have I done? Both are genuine science fact stories, but they delve in a little bit to fiction in order to understand the human side a little bit more, in a way that you can probably get from an autobiography or even just reading a Wikipedia page. So there are tons of different ways to explore the three-act structure or storytelling. 

Michael Felker  24:54

I am crazy in that I love time travel movies, so I feel like those are a fascinating puzzle because it definitely is the hardest type of movie to tackle in this structure. Time travel is literally, I think I mentioned this before, but it's a non-linear concept put into a linear format, So, you're already scrambling how things play and flow to each other, and unless you hold the hand of the audience a lot, you're going to throw them off the deep end immediately. I like being thrown off the deep end as a storyteller because it challenges me in what stories can do. I mean, we've had 100 years of film and even longer for just telling stories around a campfire way back in the day. I always try to find the new, and I try to find new ways in which people can approach story, whether it's embraced now or rejected now and thrown out the window and then maybe picked up decades later, hopefully, and they can embrace it, being like, oh yeah, this was a new way to think about stories. So time travel movies are a great way to explore how much impact we can make as humans, or how much we are victims of fate and we have no control over anything, which is one of the huge things as people we always wrestle with, is how much influence do I have on the universe versus how much is already predetermined. Time travel is really a great way to break that and reorganize it in your brain. Maybe it's just my editing background loving to repeat all this stuff, but that's I feel like an area of science fiction storytelling and film that seems to be the most exciting because it tries to really mess with a linear structure that's worked for all of humanity.

 Chris Powell  26:44

So now you can see and appreciate why we wanted to extend this over two episodes to let you hear this whole conversation. It's a great conversation, and I find it fascinating we're ending with time travel. Sarah, when you were in the lab, you were working with cancer research before you took on this new role, was anybody in there kind of on the back burner side project, working on time travel, or maybe the lab next door to you, was that? Was that a thing?

 Sarah Sharman  27:08

I'm pretty sure time travel is under, like the classified research information protection, so I couldn't tell you. 

Chris Powell  27:15

You'd have to kill me if you told me? Okay, well, don't tell me. Does not sound fun. But if you miss the one part that really stuck out to me towards the end, where Jori was talking about the scientific method as a way of telling story. Sarah, I thought that was absolutely fascinating, that's true, the scientific method itself exploring the world around us like that's a beautiful story in and of itself.

Sarah Sharman  27:40

Yeah. And as a scientist turned science storyteller myself, I really connected with Michael's obsession with time travel stories. I really appreciate how science fiction kind of mirrors the scientific endeavor, like both are trying to disprove or push further what we already know and what we have accepted sometimes for, you know, centuries.

Michael Felker  28:02

This is why I love this podcast. We know we binged as many of the episodes as we could. And the reason why we love it is that there's a constant talk between storytellers and science because it is constantly flowing as like a circle between all of us being like we need to know more about what we're actually achieving as humanity, and then we as storytellers make stories that react and funnel even more questions and more pursuit of the unknown that then is also driven back to you guys to be like, well, how is that practically applied to our jobs in terms of actually achieving that? So, this podcast is great because it allows us to keep going and having that conversation back and forth, because it drives us further as humans. So, thank you for having us. It's been really awesome to chat with y'all. We could have gone another hour, so it's been great. Thank you. 

Chris Powell  28:55

Thanks for joining us on today's episode. We've had a great conversation with Michael and Jori and that kind of ends this format. Next episode, we'll be back with our usual format, and we've got a lot of very interesting ground to cover. Sarah, where are we going next episode?  

Sarah Sharman  29:10

For our grand finale of this season, we're gonna talk with some of our researchers about science and technology that could be in science fiction movies that might come true in the future. 

Chris Powell  29:21

Hey, I may have to stick around for that one that sounds like fun. Excellent. Well, Tiny Expeditions is a podcast about genetics, DNA, and inheritance from the Hudson Institute for Biotechnology. We're a nonprofit research institution in Huntsville, Alabama with a very unique mission. 

 Sarah Sharman  29:37

We bring together scientists and companies to develop and apply genomic advances to make a better world. That's everything from cancer research to agriculture for a changing climate. 

Chris Powell  29:47

If you've enjoyed this episode, swing by your favorite podcast app and hit that subscribe button while you're there, please consider leaving us a review. It really helps us spread the knowledge. 

Sarah Sharman  29:56

Season Five of Tiny Expeditions is made possible in part by our sponsor EBSCO Information Services. They are the leading provider of online research, content, search technologies and workflow tools serving public libraries, schools, academic institutions, corporations and medical institutions around the world, proudly delivering information access for researchers at all levels. Online at ebsco.com.

Chris Powell  30:21

Thanks for joining us.