This grant provides three years of support to the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) to maintain and expand its Sloan Science & Film website, the most up-to-date, comprehensive resource for the Foundation’s Film program. In addition to cataloging over 600 past, present, and upcoming film projects by Sloan supported filmmakers, the site, along with its various social media channels, serves as an education, information, and engagement platform for the growing science in film community. Supported activities include updating the Sloan film catalog, live streaming six public events promoting science in film, producing four articles per week for publication on the site, and hiring a digital engagement strategist to maximize engagement across the site’s various social media channels.

This grant continues support for a program at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama (CMU) that exposes top dramatic writing students to science and technology and awards prizes to student screenwriters who write science- or technology-themed scripts. The CMU program includes a fall symposium that brings scientists to the drama school to introduce students to recent developments in a variety of scientific disciplines; a year-long screenwriting workshop that meets weekly and focuses on the challenges and opportunities posed by incorporating science into dramatic or comedic narratives, a mentorship program that pairs film students with working scientists to help them depict science accurately in their work, an annual screenwriting competition that awards $17,500 to the two best science-themed scripts submitted, and a yearly showcase in Los Angeles and New York to bring student filmmakers into contact with leading producers, directors, and distributors in the film and television industry. Grant funds provide core support for these activities for another three years.

This grant provides three years of continued support to the American Film Institute’s (AFI) efforts to encourage young screenwriters and filmmakers to write and produce compelling, engaging narrative films that explore scientific themes or have scientists, engineers, or mathematicians as major characters. AFI’s program includes three annual award programs: a $25,000 award given to the best student film project that brings science and technology to life; a $20,000 annual screenwriting award given to the best science-themed script; and a yearly tuition scholarship worth $45,000 given to an incoming graduate student with a background in the hard sciences who wishes to become a filmmaker and to incorporate scientific themes in his or her filmmaking. In addition, AFI holds a seminar series where established actors, writers, directors, and producers talk to students about science and Hollywood, and provides access to working scientists to serve as mentors on student scripts.

This grant, to the University of Southern California’s (USC’s) School of Cinematic Arts, provides three years of renewed support for a series of activities aiming to support student engagement with science as a subject matter in their work and to spur the development and production of science and technology film, television, and new media projects by USC film students. Supported activities include a $25,000 production award, given annually to the best student film project that features science and technology as a theme; two $17,500 screenwriting awards, given annually to the best student film or television scripts featuring science and technology as a theme; a $17,500 animation award, given annually to the best student animation project featuring science and technology as a theme; an annual $12,500 grant given to the most innovative student interactive game design project featuring science or technology as a theme; and a yearly seminar that brings USC film students together with leading scientists to discuss the power and potential of science as a vehicle in narrative filmmaking. In addition, grant funds will support a host of related support activities, including faculty mentoring, industry events, and dedicated science advisors to ensure accuracy of scientific content in student projects.

This grant provides three years of renewed support to the University of California Los Angeles, for a series of activities, programs, and initiatives designed to encourage UCLA film students to engage with scientific themes in their filmmaking and to produce science-themed films and screenplays. Funded activities include an annual colloquium that brings film students together with leading researchers to discuss the newest developments in science and technology; one annual, $30,000 production grant awarded to the best film project that incorporates scientific or technical themes; two annual $15,000 screenwriting awards given to the best student scripts incorporating scientific themes or featuring a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character; one annual, $15,000 filmmaking grant for the best episodic television project that explores scientific or technical themes; and the development of a screenwriting course open exclusively to students who are working on a science-themed project. The course will help students explore both the challenges and opportunities of incorporating scientific themes into narrative film and television. In addition, this grant provides funds for dedicated scientific advisors to help students with their projects, independent judges to evaluate student submission, and faculty support and other operational costs associated with administration of program.  

Funds from this grant provide two years of support for the continued administration of the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize, which honors the best science- or technology-themed feature film script produced by a student at one of the Foundation’s six participating film school partners: American Film Institute, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU Tisch, UCLA, and USC. Each participating school submits one script for consideration each year, and nominated screenwriters are then paired with a dedicated mentor to help improve their submissions with an eye toward shepherding the script to production. An independent panel of distinguished filmmakers and scientists then selects the winning script, whose screenwriter or writers receive a $20,000 prize and a cocktail reception in their honor. They also receive support for an industry mentor to guide the project, a committed science advisor, other marketing and distribution efforts, and two professional development workshops to further develop the project.   Additional grant funds will support the pilot creation of a new $10,000 prize for the best science- or technology-themed feature film script submitted by film students drawn from one of six schools outside the Foundation’s existing group of film school partners. Schools invited to compete for this new “Sloan Discovery Prize” include Brooklyn College Feirstein School of Cinema, SUNY Purchase School of Film and Media Studies, Florida State University, San Francisco State University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and the University of Texas, Austin.