The goal of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation film school program is to influence the next generation of filmmakers to create more realistic and dramatic stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers through the visual media. This innovative program awards prizes at six leading film schools: American Film Institute; UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television; Carnegie Mellon University School of Dram; Columbia University Film Department; NYU Tisch School of the Arts; and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Eligibility:
Tisch students in the Undergraduate and Graduate divisions of the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television and in the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing who are motivated to write and produce new films that challenge existing stereotypes about science and technology.
Type of grant offered/award amount:
The Screenwriting Awards: Four $10,000 awards
The Production Grants: Two $20,000 grants
Submissions for the Screenwriting Awards must be for feature-length films; submissions for the Production Grant must be for short films made within the Tisch curriculum.
Selection process:
All applicants are required to attend the NYU colloquium and to meet with a science advisor for consultation on their script. To request a science advisor, please email Dara Feivelson at DLF1@nyu.edu. Specify the area of science in your script and include a brief synopsis. Requests for science advisor are due by February 15, 2009.
Once the script has been approved by the science advisor, applicants submit three copies of their script and a synopsis of their project along with the application. Applicants for the Production Grant are also required to submit a budget.
A rotating panel of Tisch faculty from the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing and the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, as well as scientists from the NYU Faculty of Arts and Science and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences selects the recipients of the grant.
Deadlines:
Requests for the mandatory science advisor are due by February 15, 2009.
Scripts and applications are due by April 15, 2009.
Recipients will be notified in June/July, 2009.
2008 Colloquium:
This year the colloquium will be held on:
Friday, December 5 at 10:00am
in the Skirball Center for New Media, 721 Broadway, 9th Floor Lobby.
All grant applicants are required to attend the colloquium. You may also view the colloquium by clicking the link under "Videos."
At this event, students will have the opportunity to hear from Tisch faculty and members of the scientific community about the depiction of science and technology in film and television.
This year’s guest speaker is Dr. Ken Perlin of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
Ken Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, directs the NYU Games For Learning Institute. He was also founding director of the Media Research Laboratory and director of the NYU Center for Advanced Technology. His research interests include graphics, animation, user interfaces, science education and multimedia. He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in feature films and television, as well as the 2008 ACM/SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, the TrapCode award for achievement in computer graphics research, the NYC Mayor's award for excellence in Science and Technology and the Sokol award for outstanding Science faculty at NYU, and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. He has also been a featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Dr. Perlin received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University, and a B.A. in theoretical mathematics from Harvard University. Before working at NYU he was Head of Software Development at R/GREENBERG Associates in New York, NY. Prior to that he was the System Architect for computer generated animation at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. He has served on the Board of Directors of the New York chapter of ACM/SIGGRAPH, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Software Industry Association.
For more information contact:
Dara Feivelson, tel.: 212.998.1762
