Sarah Sharman 00:01
Welcome to Tiny Expedition, Season Five, Episode Six. I'm Dr. Sarah Sharman, here to help you understand the science.
Chris Powell 00:08
And I'm your co-host, Chris Powell. This season, we've been getting pop cultured. We've been talking about how science finds its way into some of our favorite films and TV shows. We've covered a lot of ground. We've covered some really good films and great topics for this season.
Sarah Sharman 00:23
Yeah, just to give you a tiny recap, in case you haven't listened or it's been so long that you forgot, we have covered topics like cloning with Jurassic Park, ethics and eugenics with the great movie GATTACA, and then we had a few episodes about genetic mutations and talked about, you know, the X-Men and Chris's personal favorite.
Chris Powell 00:43
My favorite? Yes, the Turtles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! (singing) Heroes in a half-shell. Turtle power.
Sarah Sharman 00:49
And during all of those episodes about science in film and TV, we were lucky enough to be joined by experts in genetics and biotechnology who helped walk us through the facts and Hollywood exaggerations.
Chris Powell 01:00
But this episode is going to be a little bit different from the previous ones of this season. We're not going to be looking at a specific area of science in a specific film, but instead, we've talked to some new friends of ours, Michael and Jori Felker, who are writers, directors, and editors living out in Hollywood and are actually working on films and TV shows right now. And bonus points, they actually have science backgrounds, either themselves or in their family, and so we wanted to sit down and talk with them about, well, what's it really like to write a film, to direct a film, to edit a film that's dealing with scientific topics, and what do you have to consider?
Sarah Sharman 01:37
We had such a fun time talking with Michael and Jori, and it was such a fascinating conversation that you're in luck. You're getting two episodes out of this one conversation we had with them.
Chris Powell 01:47
It really was such great content, and we really think you're gonna enjoy this. So it's a little bit different format, but sit back and enjoy this conversation that we had with Michael and Jori.
Chris Powell 02:01
Can you tell us who you are and what it is that you do for a living?
Jori Felker 02:05
My name is Jori. I am a script coordinator and aspiring Junior writer. I work essentially as the bridge between the writer's room and production. So, I prep and format the scripts, check continuity, do legal and research, and make sure that the scripts get to the right people at the right time.
Michael Felker 02:31
And I am Michael Felker. I am a writer, director, and editor. My main trade for the last 15 years has been as a film editor. So I usually just take what production shoots, and then I edit it all together to make the final product. It could be either feature films, television, music videos, digital content, etc. And most recently, I just wrote and directed my first feature film. It encompasses everything from the writing stage of writing the script all the way through the directing of production, and then I'm also co-editor of that movie, where I edit everything and put it all together.
Chris Powell 03:07
Excellent. I'm looking forward to that that's October correct for release?
Michael Felker 03:11
Yes, the movie Things Will be Different will be out in theaters and on-demand on October 4.
Sarah Sharman 03:18
That's so exciting! I know when we were emailing back and forth, Jori, you mentioned that you studied neuroscience originally. How did you get to film?
Jori Felker 03:28
My background is in neuroscience, and what ended up happening is that I worked at Children's Hospital in the ER doing research and essentially onboarding patients for research. And what ended up happening is that I got really in love with the stories and the people and just the the world more so than the science. And then, when I went to apply for medical school, they asked, Why do you want to be a doctor? I realized that Grey's Anatomy wasn't the right reason. I just kept going back to the movies and TV shows that inspired me to pursue a career in medicine and that I really wanted to be a part of that. Because if it's so powerful to be able to uplift my life and make me passionate, then I want to be a part of the system that actually can inspire the next generation of scientists.
Sarah Sharman 04:36
I love that, and I feel the same way. And you know where I am now because I got a whole PhD and then decided I was not going to stay in science at the bench. So, yeah, storytelling is definitely our jam, and I really appreciate people that can do it.
Chris Powell 04:52
Yeah, and Michael, you come from a family of scientists as well, right?
Michael Felker 04:57
Yeah, I'm basically the artistic black sheep of the family. My mother is a doctor, radiologist. My sister's now a doctor, working in genetics and whatnot. And then my dad's an engineer. Me going into film instead was actually super easy, considering they also are huge movie lovers, science fiction lovers. They read every book under the sun that involves science fiction, as well as watch every movie and television show. So it's very easy to talk about our love for storytelling, especially within a science-based world. So not too different. I just decided to take a different career path with it.
Sarah Sharman 05:45
So was it seeing them read those stories and watching movies with them growing up that led you into more of the science fiction film? How did you get there, specifically?
Michael Felker 05:56
Basically me and my sister, Stephanie, growing up with my mom and dad, we kind of just watched a lot of movies growing up. Specifically, my dad loves science fiction. I believe he showed us Blade Runner, Alien, and The Matrix, all at a very young age. Me and my sister grew up in like, the DVD era, boom. So basically, you know, having high quality movies that you could bring home and watch with your family was super easy and affordable. Then so and half of the bonding experience was just watching science fiction, kind of absorbing as much as you can in terms of what the lore and the world and the rules of and the logic thread that goes through all of how the universe works, and talking about it for hours at like diners or Taco Bell afterward. It was a really good experience to understand how their brain worked and how my brain worked, and getting to know them on a personal level, in a way you kind of don't get, just like talking at a dinner table, and talking about your day.
Chris Powell 07:04
I like that you're a man of the people you referenced the DVD explosion, and not the uppity blu ray explosion.
Michael Felker 07:11
Shows how much older I am, where basically growing up on blockbuster VHS rentals, and then seeing the DVD swap in and going like, oh man, we could get better quality picture. We could see what's going on now. So, yeah, that's how nerdy we are here.
Chris Powell 07:28
You mentioned several films there that are easily recognizable. Is there one that you really just kind of gravitate towards and say, ‘This is kind of a seminal film, I just keep coming back to this one,’ and especially one that deals with science as a main theme, or science fiction?
Michael Felker 07:44
Yeah, the one that, basically, I would say, is the centerpiece to me being a filmmaker, especially in science fiction, is The Matrix. It's in two specific aspects. One is that the world building and lore are very exciting and very thought-provoking. You get a lot of references in The Matrix to Japanese animation that pulls from its inspiration, but also older science fiction books. Stuff that like the Hugo Awards with a cover specifically, and just seeing that blow up in my brain, while also seeing how the filmmaking aspect is a game-changing aspect to seeing where the camera can and can't go, kind of open my brain as a way to shoot movies in a cool way that and tell the story that's like also about people who are experiencing the world they live in. And then having the entire blanket pulled over their eyes and see that there's an even bigger world. So seeing the storytelling and where the filmmaking aspect of it marrying so well together just basically was like, I want to do this type of movie and filmmaking for the rest of my life.
Sarah Sharman 09:01
So obviously, this season, we've been diving into the representation of science and genetics in pop culture. And so I guess maybe we can just have a little chat about why you all think that people are so interested in themes of science in movies and TV shows and books. You know, what is it about it that draws us into that unknown or not yet known, or maybe never known?
Jori Felker 09:26
I just think science in general, and like the philosophical debate, are such a great pressure cooker for stories and conflict. They often spur these debates that don't necessarily have clear answers, and they center around these characters and how they battle with ethics and relationships and progress, and they really become microcosms for a wider human experience. And it also it's like science and fiction, the boundaries of what is and what can happen have always been shifting, and I really feel like it's a two-way street. Science fiction inspires the scientists to make it real, and then alternately, the scientists inspire the writers and the creators to come up with like, well, what if we push that even further? And the boundaries and the dance of how they influence each other is always just switching.
Michael Felker 10:31
For me, what makes science fiction so appealing for an audience, and especially the science element, is that it's like a gateway into human emotion, just through the logic based parts of our brain. There's a genuine urge from humanity to just kind of reach and know the unknown. I feel like all my favorite science fiction movies always inspire more questions than answers, because we end up poking the different parts of our brain that go like, well, what if we did this, or what if we reached out and did this? Does this change our world? Does this change our viewpoint? And it's a very human urge that we all have had since humanity's ever existed. So there will always be a drive for specifically science fiction, just because we can't help but be curious and try to find the urge for answers to questions we've always had. And the best ones I feel like are always us trying to reach for something that's just out of our grasp and and try to figure out what that is. So that's why science and fiction go so well together.
Chris Powell 11:41
Do you see films in this regard as a way of wrestling with questions or as a way of introducing new questions? I don't know if that makes sense?
Jori Felker 11:52
That is a great question. And I really think it has to be both, because we're constantly evolving as a society in terms of what is considered science and what is no longer relevant. The data is always changing, essentially, so grappling with new questions for sure, but then also processing what we already have and what's existing because we're always evolving and changing. It's really cool.
Michael Felker 12:25
I just recently converted to Judaism. My wife, Jori here is Jewish, and one of the biggest things that I get out of Judaism, that I hadn't gotten from when I was a Christian before is that it's inherent in the DNA of being Jewish to wrestle with God, not try to just understand and know the philosophy, but also go with the rules, but also question why God does certain things. You know we have this like back and forth with our life versus what we owe to an unknown that is greater beyond our understanding inherent in that. In science fiction that goes hand in hand too, of like, what is beyond us, what we don't know, and I feel like having those questions, and then the wrestling is so inherent within us as humans, and also just storytellers. Like the best stories always put you head in head with something you don't understand and lock in conflict, and that wrestling is conflict. So, you know, it's actually pretty exciting to have that within movies and science and even now religion too.
Chris Powell 13:34
So, do you see yourself as kind of a guide, taking people on that journey?
Michael Felker 13:39
I see myself as someone who's just curious. And I think there's an audience anytime we write stuff. There's an audience we always think of, who's the audience that would want to be curious with us. I think one of the most important things, like Jori will also attest this, when writing a script, you kind of always ask, is there somebody who would ask the same questions? Is there somebody who would ask the same questions in the pursuit of trying to find these answers? And if there isn't, then maybe it's not a movie worth writing, or really, it's not a movie that has figured out its questions yet, either. So we always just try to find an entertaining way to tell a story that allows people to pursue these questions and hopefully find their own answers, or the more questions they can wrestle with as soon as they leave the theater. Jori, you probably have some ideas picking back off that, too, right?
Jori Felker 14:31
Yeah, it's interesting because I'm always so much more interested in how the characters react to sudden world changes or progress or technological advancements and how they kind of fit into the format of the world that we live in right now. I'm developing a project right now about what if we develop teleportation, but nothing else in the world changed. We could just suddenly teleport across the world. And like what that would look like for long-distance relationships. How would you make money off of that? What would happen to the economy? What would happen to language or religion? And over a few years immediately, and then after 10 years, what would the world look like if we could suddenly just be in different places and like, it's not always just, the mechanics of, how does teleportation work? Because I don't know. I'm not going to figure it out. Clearly, we are not the one who's going to figure that out. But I really get interested in the socioeconomic changes that come with that and how it alters the human psyche, and those are, like the questions that really fascinate me when I'm developing projects.
Sarah Sharman 15:53
So I guess, sort of along those lines, as we've been doing research for this season and looking at just the vast array of movies that would fall into science fiction. They range from you mentioned Grey's Anatomy, which obviously needs to be extremely accurate to what we know now and what is happening right now, all the way to Jurassic Park, where we have some of the technology, but we're obviously not in a place where we're bringing back dinosaurs right now. So how do you deal with toeing the line between fact and stretching the fact and how do you decide when it's important to stay close to fact and when you can stray away?
Jori Felker 16:34
Yeah, this is a really tough question, because every show I've been on it's always different, and everyone has a different tolerance for what they prefer. In some genres they they end up wanting it to feel more real so they can suspend that disbelief and take the audience on their journey, and then others, it's kind of a throwaway, and it's it's more of a vehicle to talk about other things. Like, I worked on this show where a kid is babysitting aliens. And it's not really about like, ‘oh my god, humans and aliens connected.’ It's more about this relationship with people that are different than you, and having responsibility for that. So that's always been kind of an interesting debate, and I really think it depends on the intentions of the creators, because it's obviously very dangerous I think if you don't get the science right in certain cases because then it can create these false beliefs. And there's already so much misinformation out there that I really think filmmakers need to be careful with what they're saying and what they're not saying about certain scientific topics like vaccines or abortions and just healthcare in general, because that's something that can actually affect the world. That's like the power of science fiction that we need to be careful with. So yeah, that that's generally kind of what I feel.
Jori Felker 18:23
I think one notable example is I worked on a show that didn't end up airing, but there was a huge discussion on its portrayal of mental illness and a character going off their medication as a plot point, and having that be represented in a way that was positive. And it's not necessarily a blanket statement to say that people who go off their medication when they genuinely need it have a positive experience, or people who are on medication for the wrong reasons, because they feel numb, that can be kind of a slippery slope, and how you represent that, because you're going to influence people ultimately to go off their medication. And that felt like something that we needed to handle with more care, and there was a lot of debate, because everybody has a different experience with that. And sometimes it's in movies and TV shows' best interest to show it. And sometimes you need more advisors because you don't want to have propaganda or do something dangerous either.
Michael Felker 19:46
Yeah, to piggyback off that, I have a lot of thoughts specifically in this specific realm. It's something I talk about with my family all the time. I talk about it with Jori all the time because, regardless of the genre that you work in and write, every creator, filmmaker, and showrunner has a responsibility to honor the needs of that genre. And specifically within science fiction, you have a responsibility to do the research, have the consultation, the science backing, to tell the story in the way that needs to be told. Or it could be as simple as if you do science fiction, you could easily tip easily in a fantasy if you don't properly have the backing of it. That's why, when you talk to Jori for more than five seconds about Star Wars, she will argue that it's not science fiction, it’s fantasy.
Michael Felker 20:45
Nothing wrong with it, but just because it takes place in space doesn't make it science fiction. And that's a very big misconception, and it really depends on the movie. My big go to with this specifically is I took my dad to go see Gravity about 10 years ago. And the big thing with Gravity is my dad, I don't know if you've met Doug Felker or not, but my dad, Doug Felker, has had involvement with the International Space Station back in the day and its design. And he goes in and understands which creative liberties need to be taken and which ones don't in order to tell the story. And Gravity is very much science fiction. It's like, what if you are stuck on the International Space Station, and a meteor shower comes through and wrecks everything? How do you get back to Earth? And so a lot of its answers are where the Soyuz is, where all the different satellites are around the globe, and how you get back down to Earth. And there are two examples specifically that I think he took as creative liberties that the filmmaker did in order to tell the story better, and I call them like the visual cheat and the invisible cheat.
Michael Felker 21:56
One of the visual cheats that I know that he flagged specifically when he watched it is that there's at one point, Sandra Bullock, in order to be able to navigate zero gravity, has to use the propulsion of a fire extinguisher in order to get around the station. His first response is, that's not what a fire extinguisher looks like on International Space Station. In the movie, it has the all the properties of a fire extinguisher we know now here on Earth, which is like, here's a long, cylindrical tube and a hose. There you go. But on the station, it's actually more of like a small sphere, because you just don't have the space for something like that on a very tiny space shuttle. So it's like a small sphere that you have to go and shoot in order to do anything. And I don't even know if it does that kind of propulsion as well as it does in the movie, but if you introduce a sphere with like weird tube to most audiences, they need a little more hand holding that that will be a fire extinguisher, unless it shoots and puts out a fire. So one of the cheats that they would have to do is, let's make it look like a fire extinguisher we have on Earth in order for a general audience to understand that this is what we need for the story to happen. So it's one thing where, like, Look, I know that's what a fire extinguisher is, because we need people to see it. But we're cheating a little bit, because that's not really what it looks like on a space station up there.
Michael Felker 23:20
The other thing, the invisible cheat, is that a lot of where Sandra Bullock's character goes in Gravity would be a lot tighter. The biggest thing is that for filmmaking specifically, is you got to know where they put the camera. And a lot of times when you're in small, claustrophobic rooms, when you're on a space station, the camera would genuinely probably be inside of a wall nine times out of ten. But you can't have the camera be on a wall. Can't move the camera at a wall because you can't see the story. So a lot of liberties are taken to the invisible cheat of this room's just going to be bigger, because Sandra Bullock needs to be in here taking off her suit and getting back into the station to rest at one point. But this room would not be that big. You would lose way too much air up there, and it's a huge waste of oxygen for what you would need up there. But the camera needs to be in the room, so you make it a little bit bigger in order to put the camera in. Hence the invisible cheat of ‘look, it's kind of just, we need to have it look this way. And so you constantly delicate, you know, have this delicate balance between visual cheats and invisible cheats, in order to just hold the hand of an audience but immerse them in the story that you really want to tell, which is how you bounce back and forth everywhere.
Michael Felker 24:36
And the more nebulous, final answer to all that specifically is like, how do you deal with stuff that is closer to Jurassic Park, which is we have these concepts and theories for the science, but we are nowhere near able to bring back dinosaurs just from using mosquito DNA found in a little crystal from the ground. A long time ago, when I was writing one of my first time travel scripts, I was so in my head about the rules and how it worked. I spent about 10 of like, 90 pages trying to get the rules in, and it was killing the flow of the story, killing the flow of the questions I wanted to pose and answers I wanted to dig into, and the character arc. And so I'm sitting there with my my dad, Doug, across a diner table, and going, I can't quite figure out the rules. I'm trying to do this and this and this, and I wanted to say this, but if I don't say this, then I feel like I'm cheating. His answer was pretty simple and a good metric for all science fiction writing that deals with concepts that we generally don't have a lot of the answers to. He said, Michael, if you would have figured out time travel, you would have invented time travel. You wouldn't be writing a script. You would be out there showing how people can traverse time and changing the world. And his answer was always like, use enough of the science in order to pose the bigger science driven questions and answers and pursuit of that knowledge, and just use as much of the time travel rules that you can to get to that story. The minute that the actual science gets so much in the way that you end up not making an entertaining movie, you make something that's just in a different format. You make like a theory, you know, you pose theories in a written form. You're not making a movie anymore. So, there's always a delicate balance between what we know and telling those smaller stories, between the invisible cheats and the visual cheats. But then the other side, which is like, here's this concept we don't understand. Use a little bit of flexibility, but use it to find the heart of science driven questions and answers.
Jori Felker 26:49
The moral of the story is, Michael could have invented time travel.
Michael Felker 26:54
I can go a whole episode about time travel. There's like 10,000 different ways to do time travel in a nonlinear concept in a linear format is very fascinating to me.
Chris Powell 27:04
I'm not convinced that you haven't figured it out and you're just holding it for another project.
Sarah Sharman 27:20
I know you all are probably really enjoying this conversation just as much as Chris and I did when we were having it, but we're gonna stop here and jump in to give us a little wrap up and save the rest of it for next time.
Chris Powell 27:30
You don't want to have too much of a good thing y'all at once, right?
Sarah Sharman 27:33
You gotta save that slice of cake for tomorrow.
Chris Powell 27:35
And let me just say the rest of this conversation is absolutely fascinating, the places that we go for the rest of our conversation together is just, you're gonna want to hear this, so make sure you tune in for that. That'll be, I don't know if we'll call it episode seven or episode six, part due, who knows?
Sarah Sharman 27:52
Yeah, we’ll have to think about it.
Chris Powell 27:53
Yeah, we'll figure that out, but we'll be back to continue this conversation. So make sure you join us. But for today, thank you for joining us for this episode of Tiny Expeditions.
Sarah Sharman 28:03
Tiny Expeditions is a podcast about genetics, DNA, and inheritance from the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. We're a nonprofit research institution in Huntsville, Alabama with a unique mission.
Chris Powell 28:15
We bring together scientists and companies to develop and apply genomic advances to make a better world that includes everything from cancer research to agriculture for a changing climate.
Sarah Sharman 28:25
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 28:36
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 29:02
Thanks for joining us!
