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LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: How Women Can Save the World by Telling Epic Stories in the Movies

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared yesterday at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. A Wonder Woman fan film that blazed across the Internet this week has women everywhere cheering the possibility of a female superhero movie. It also raised the intriguing question: what might our culture be like if we had more grand, epic movies about the lives of women? And what if women filmmakers were writing and directing them?

As women filmmakers, we’ve been told to accept small stories, low budgets, and modest expectations. But what if we have much larger visions? What if we want to make blockbuster movies with heroines who are full of valor, keen intelligence, and a desire to change the world?

And what if women’s epic movies could change the world – by providing the uniting narratives that can overcome the division and fragmentation of our civilization today?

This past week I had the pleasure of speaking on this subject at Social Media Week LA’s “Power Women in Entertainment” panel. (You can see the full video from the event above.) We had a bright and enthusiastic audience, and as often at such events, the recurring question came up: how do we correct the ongoing imbalance in women’s representation in media and entertainment?

We all know the dismaying numbers: only 5% of the top 100 studio films are directed by women, 4.2% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women, 3% of all tech companies are started by women (and yet they are 35% more profitable than those started by men), 27% of top media management jobs are held by women, and only 27% of on-screen movie roles are played by women (a number not changed substantially since the 1920s!).

I suggested to the audience that the best way we as women could overcome these inequities was by focusing on the excellence of our work – and by taking on big stories and using digital technology to deliver big results.

My co-panelists Rachael McLean of JuntoBox Films (an innovative film company co-founded by Forest Whitaker), Sarah Penna of Big Frame, and Jesse Draper of Valley Girl outlined how they were working toward these goals. We agreed that we needed many more women entrepreneurs and entertainment creators to make these efforts stick.

In the film world, this means insisting that women be given the opportunity to write, direct, and act in the major movie properties that have the potential to achieve the greatest box office success.

The excuse that Hollywood executives give that women-led movies don’t make good business sense is pure nonsense. Research studies show that the chief determinant in the box office success of a movie is not the gender of the director or lead actor – but the size of the budget and the breadth of the film’s release.

Therefore, when a woman is given a significant budget and a tent-pole property to direct, she has as great a chance of success as a man given a similar-level project. Examples of such profitable female-directed tent-pole movies include Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight ($392 million worldwide box office, launched a $3.34 billion franchise); Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s Kung Fu Panda 2 ($665 million worldwide); and Phyllida Lloyd’s’s Mamma Mia! ($609 million worldwide on a budget of $52 million).

Recent female-starring successes include Alice in Wonderland ($1.02 billion worldwide) and The Hunger Games ($691 million worldwide on a budget of $78 million). Women are also the leads in five of the ten highest-grossing domestic films of all time, adjusted for inflation: Gone With the Wind (the highest-grossing film of all time, with $1.64 billion in domestic box office), The Sound of Music ($1.16 billion domestic), Titanic ($1.1 billion domestic), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ($889 million domestic), and The Exorcist ($902 million domestic). One could also argue that women play a major role in the success of other top-ten grossing films like Dr. Zhivago and The Ten Commandments, with their significant and strong female roles.

But how do we empower more women to direct, write, or star in such blockbuster movies? Further, how do we enable more women to found the next big media company, or come up with the next great tech innovation?

My belief is that women can help themselves achieve these goals by adopting broad and ambitious visions. Further, these visions must be founded on a firm foundation of deep, humanistic knowledge, a willingness to step out from the pack and lead, and creativity in crafting epic, inspiring narratives. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: How Women Can Save the World by Telling Epic Stories in the Movies

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Finding Movie Inspiration in NASA’s Real Science: The Case Study of Europa Report

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Hollywood is in the midst of a science-fiction boom, yet few of its sci-fi movies are based on real science. That’s a shame, because the scientific discoveries emerging from NASA these days are as exciting as any Hollywood blockbuster. Whether it’s the stunning images from the Mars Curiosity rover, or the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes’ observations of a dazzling array of exoplanets, or the announcement that Voyager 1 has become the first human-made object to leave the solar system, NASA is daily generating storylines that provoke the imagination and expand our horizons.

What makes these developments intriguing for adaptation into sci-fi movies is that they are real. At a time when audiences are increasingly jaded by computer special effects, there’s something fresh and engaging about a sci-fi movie that might actually have some basis in reality. Isn’t it time that we see more sci-fi films that explore the real mysteries of the universe all around us?

As a case study for a sci-fi movie inspired by NASA science, I recommend that people take a look at Sebastian Cordero’s Europa Report. With a cast that includes Sharlto Copley, Anamaria Marinca, and Michael Nyqvist, Europa Report is currently playing in select theaters and on VOD, and will be available on iTunes starting October 8th. The movie is one of the few sci-fi films in recent years to offer a realistic depiction of a manned mission to outer space – in this case, to search for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

I chatted with NASA- JPL astrobiologist Steve Vance, one of the science advisors on Europa Report, at the film’s LA Film Festival premiere. Vance expressed to me his enthusiasm about the movie:

“I’m just thrilled that I got to be part of something that is bringing Europa more into the public eye. I’m really excited about how this movie captures the passion of exploration and also the science.”

Europa has been the focus of much attention in recent years because it may harbor life in the liquid water ocean that is theorized to exist under its icy crust. Vance, who studies the interiors of icy moons like Europa and who is acting staff scientist on NASA’s Europa Project, told me that he and his colleagues are “pre-formulating a mission that we hope will fly to Europa to address the same kind of questions that were addressed in the movie.” The most pressing of these questions is whether life independently developed on another body within our solar system.

Although Vance noted that a manned mission to Europa isn’t currently feasible, due to the difficulties of even sending a human as far as Mars, he explained that NASA is assessing plans to send a robotic spacecraft to Europa (see NASA artist’s concept above): “The mission we’re looking at right now is [that] we’ll do multiple flybys to orbit Jupiter, and do thirty or more flybys of Europa and completely map the surface.” (See this paper in the August issue of Astrobiology on future missions to Europa, co-authored by Vance).

And this brings me to a larger point: whether it’s robotic spacecraft taking photos of the surfaces of distant moons like Europa – or movies that draw on that imagery to dramatize outer-space exploration – visual representation plays a crucial role in bringing science to life.

For example, the photos taken by the Galileo space probe as it orbited Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003 gave the public the most detailed images yet of mysterious Europa and its icy, cracked outer shell. These photos (see below) then inspired the filmmakers of Europa Report. In turn, NASA scientists like Vance hope that movies like Europa Report will inspire public support for future missions back to Europa. In short, art and science play a surprisingly reciprocal role today.

Given how important photos and imagery have been to NASA, I was amazed to read in a recent NASA blog post that in the 1960s, NASA debated whether to even put cameras on board spacecraft. Fortunately, with the Mariner 4 mission that brought back the first close-up photos of Mars in 1965, the agency realized how crucial images were to advancing scientific knowledge and inspiring the public. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Finding Movie Inspiration in NASA’s Real Science: The Case Study of Europa Report

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking About Women’s Roles with Director Kat Coiro of And While We Were Here

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared yesterday at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. It’s a welcome development to see more women directors emerging in the indie film scene and it’s my hope that this will soon translate into more women directing studio features, as well. We all know the statistics: the most recent studies reveal that women only direct 5% of the top 100 studio features – and yet in the indie film world, they direct 18% of the narrative features and 39% of the documentaries.

One indie woman director whose work I’ve enjoyed in recent years is Kat Coiro. Coiro’s latest film, the stylish, Italy-set romantic drama And While We Were Here, opens this weekend in select theaters and is also available on VOD. The film stars Kate Bosworth, Iddo Goldberg, and Jamie Blackley and features a voice-over by the great Claire Bloom.

Shot on location in beautiful southern Italy, And While We Were Here tells the tale of a neglected wife, Jane (Bosworth), who falls for a bohemian American youth, Caleb (Blackley), when her emotionally-remote viola player husband Leonord (Goldberg) is invited to perform in a concert in Naples.

The film is the latest in a tradition of stories about travelers whose lives are transformed by Italy. Bosworth and Goldberg give strong, sensitive performances as the troubled couple Jane and Leonard, while Blackley is disarmingly amusing as the Dionysian youth who disrupts everyone’s carefully ordered lives. Bloom (Jane’s Grandma Eves) provides a poignant voice-over commentary through tape-recorded interviews that recount her loves and losses during WWII.

I caught And While We Were Here at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012 and had the chance to chat with Kat Coiro a few months later at the LA Film Festival where she was screening her charming short film Departure Date. A romantic comedy starring Nicky Whelan and Ben Feldman, Departure Date (see photo below) is the first film shot and edited entirely at 35,000 feet – an innovative effort made possible by Virgin Produced and highly worth viewing the next time you’re on Virgin Airlines.

Director Kat Coiro filming "Departure Date."

Coiro and I talked at the LA Film Festival about the importance of emotional honesty in storytelling, the joys of poetry, and the importance of creating films that honor brilliant women both past and present. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: I noticed in Departure Date and also in And While We Were Here that there’s a real romanticism to these films, that they breathe with a heartfelt, poetic spirit. What draws you to these sorts of stories?

KC: I appreciate simplicity and I find that creativity often flourishes within the constraints of doing these very small projects in a very short time – and making them something people can relate to. So I wrote both of these stories knowing I had to keep them very simple and I didn’t have time to get very flashy. You strip it down to what people enjoy: which is human connection, relationships, character-driven pieces. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking About Women’s Roles with Director Kat Coiro of And While We Were Here

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Why I Love 3D Movies – And Why They’re the Future of the Cinema

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared yesterday at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. This may be a controversial thing to say, but I’m an unapologetic fan of 3D movies. I see 3D not as a fad, but as the wave of the future. Whether it’s in movies, the next generation of smart-phone apps, or 3D modeling and printing, the trend in all our technology is toward recreating reality with greater detail in three dimensions.

I’ll have more to say about this in a moment, but first, I wanted to let fans of 3D cinema know about a wonderful opportunity this week to see classic 3D films at the World 3-D Film Expo in Hollywood. Leonard Maltin gives high praise to this festival for offering what may be “the last opportunity” to see many classic 3D films in their original 35mm dual-projection formats, noting that “digital restorations are good but they don’t pop off the screen the way the originals do.” The World 3-D Film Expo is unspooling this week through Sunday, September 15th at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

The screening not to be missed at the World 3-D Film Expo is this Friday afternoon’s 3:30pm showing of legendary Western director Budd Boetticher’s The Wings of the Hawk (1953), with star Julie Adams in attendance. (Ms. Adams is most famous for being the star of Universal’s iconic 3D classic, Creature From the Black Lagoon. You can read an Atlantic interview Jason Apuzzo and I did with Ms. Adams about the making of Creature here.)

Julie 2 — Julie Adams in "Wings of the Hawk."

Shot in eye-popping color 3D, The Wings of the Hawk stars Julie Adams as fiery Mexican revolutionary Raquel Noriega (complete with breeches and bandoliers) in a proto-feminist role opposite an edgy miner played by Van Heflin. How many classic movie posters (see above, and the photo below) feature the heroine in a more commanding pose than the hero? If you want to meet this lovely and charming film legend in person, Ms. Adams will be present at the screening signing copies of her autobiography The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections From the Black Lagoon.

Other films to catch over the next few days of the festival include a very rare 3D screening of It Came From Outer Space (based on a story by the great Ray Bradbury), Revenge of the Creature (with a cameo by a young Clint Eastwood), and the Mexico-set gangster drama Second Chance (starring Robert Mitchum, Linda Darnell, and Jack Palance), which features stunning on-location photography. Also intriguing is Cease Fire, a Korean War drama featuring the only color 3D footage ever shot to this day during combat.

The World 3-D Film Expo is showing many of these films in the last known copies of their archival, double-system 35 mm celluloid prints, projected with dual projectors and viewed using polarized glasses. This is the way 3D films were originally meant to be seen – not with inferior anaglyphic prints made decades later using color separation, of the kind people often mistakenly identify with ’50s 3D.

Original poster for "It Came from Outer Space."

And this brings me to my larger point: with all the enjoyment to be gained by watching 3D movies both classic and contemporary, I don’t see why the technology remains so controversial. Critics repeatedly assert that 3D is a gimmick, citing as their evidence the supposedly egregious use of spear-throwing or other projectiles in the past as a reason why all 3D in the present must be condemned. (What’s wrong with throwing a spear at the screen, anyway? Or having a monster’s claw come rearing out at the audience – as in that great moment from Creature From the Black Lagoon?) Such critics would no doubt have been offended by the famous 1st century B.C. Roman mosaic of Alexander the Great, in which the charging horses and bristling spears appear to come straight at the viewer.

And while movies shot natively in 3D certainly look a lot better than those that have been converted after the fact, I still enjoy both because I like experiencing the immersive quality of a 3D image – of being made to feel like one is literally swimming in a movie, much like Ms. Adams in her famous dip in the Black Lagoon. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Why I Love 3D Movies – And Why They’re the Future of the Cinema

LFM’s Govindini Murty Talks Ben Affleck as Batman @ HuffPost Live

LFM’s Govindini Murty participated in a HuffPost Live segment yesterday on the subject of Warner Brothers’ announcement that Ben Affleck will be playing Batman in the forthcoming Man of Steel sequel.

Our thanks to the HuffPost Live team for inviting Govindini to participate.

Posted on August 27th, 2013 at 9:22am.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: A Look Behind Steven Spielberg’s Falling Skies, One of The Best Sci-Fi Shows in Years

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty. Steven Spielberg’s Falling Skies has unexpectedly become one of the best sci-fi TV shows in years – a dark, gritty and emotional look at an American society struggling to survive after an apocalyptic alien invasion.

The show’s third season debuts on TNT this Sunday, June 9th on Father’s Day, which is appropriate, given the show’s focus on fathers and their responsibility toward their children. The series has already been a ratings bonanza for TNT – Falling Skies was last summer’s top-rated drama on basic cable – and having seen the first five episodes of the upcoming season, we can tell you that Season 3 looks to be an even bigger hit.

So why would the success of Falling Skies be unexpected, especially given the involvement of executive producer Steven Spielberg and series creator Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan)? Possibly because when the show first debuted in the summer of 2011 – the long, hot sci-fi summer that gave us Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Super 8 and Cowboys & Aliens – the idea of another movie or TV show about alien invasion seemed redundant.

And after getting their tails (or robot parts) kicked on-screen in recent years by Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise and the U.S. military, you’d think aliens would know better than to invade by now, anyway.

Starring Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood, Falling Skies (Season 2 of which arrived this week on Blu-ray) has carved out its own niche, however, largely by doing basic things well – telling a classic American story of the fight for freedom, and of families struggling to stay together in wartime. And with its populist vibe and focus on civic duty, Falling Skies is also the sci-fi show for audiences who don’t usually watch sci-fi. Indeed, the series often feels inspired as much by American Westerns as by science fiction.

And, of course, there’s always the magic touch of Steven Spielberg.

“Steven Spielberg is the master of science fiction, and of drama,” Noah Wyle told us recently at Zoic Studios in Culver City, where Falling Skies‘ visual effects were being completed. Series showrunner and writer Remi Aubuchon agreed: “Steven actually is very involved in our show … he certainly reads all the scripts and watches all the dailies, and he’s intricately involved in the design of the creatures and the cool things.”

Season 3 of Falling Skies picks up where the previous two seasons left off, with former history professor Tom Mason (Wyle) and his extended family trying to pick up the pieces of civil society in the wake of a devastating alien attack. Like some grizzled, bearded patriarch out of the old West – and now serving as the acting President of the United States – Mason tries to hold it all together, as his provisional government in South Carolina forges a dubious alliance with a new alien species encountered at the end of last season.

On the home front, Mason also welcomes an unusual new daughter into the world, born to Dr. Anne Glass (Moon Bloodgood), his longtime lover and the show’s emotional center. Meanwhile, Mason’s son Hal (Drew Roy) struggles to keep himself from being used by enemy aliens as a spy, all while juggling the two edgy blondes in his life (Sarah Sanguin Carter and Jessy Schram) – one of whom just happens to be the enemy aliens’ new commander.

Such is family life in Falling Skies. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: A Look Behind Steven Spielberg’s Falling Skies, One of The Best Sci-Fi Shows in Years