This grant provides three years of support to New York University's Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & TV for its continuing efforts to provide opportunities for emerging filmmakers to work with practicing scientists, to incentivize these filmmakers to produce high-quality scripts that engage with scientific themes or topics, and to facilitate the development of those scripts into completed films. Grant funds will support an annual colloquium that brings together film students and working scientists, expert advisors to ensure the accuracy of scientific content, and a yearly awards program that provides development funds to student screenwriters and filmmakers who submit the most engaging, entertaining, and accurate scripts on scientific topics.

Funds from this grant support three innovative annual awards programs at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts that urge students to write, direct, produce, and animate scripts that touch on scientific themes or feature scientists, mathematicians, or engineers as major characters. The first, aimed at student screenwriters, awards $15,000 to the best science-themed script submitted. The second provides $22,500 in production support to turn two compelling, accurate science-themed scripts into completed films. The third, aimed at animators, awards $15,000 in production support to a high-quality science themed animation project. Other grant funds support stipends for science advisors for student film projects to ensure the accuracy of scientific content, and for an annual science colloquium that educates students on exciting new scientific advances. Taken together, the USC program provides a rising generation of filmmakers with a powerful introduction to the narrative possibilities of merging science and film.

The grant provides partial support for the production and release of a feature film on the life and work of social scientist Stanley Milgram, the researcher made famous through a series of shocking experiments that tested individuals' propensity to defer to authority, even when deference entailed the performance of ethically suspect actions. The screenplay, written by Michael Almareyda, will be produced by Ted Hope, producer of In the Bedroom, The Ice Storm, The Brothers McMullen, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Savages and will focus on taking a wider view of Milgram's life and work, placing his obedience experiments in the context of his larger research program and providing a more expansive perspective on his contributions to science and culture. Funds will provide general support, as well as monies to ensure a qualified science advisor to ensure the accuracy of the film's scientific content.

Launched in 2009 by the National Academy of Sciences, the Science and Entertainment Exchange is a program that seeks to enhance and improve the scientific content of film and television through connecting writers, producers, directors, and other entertainment industry professionals with top research scientists and engineers. To date the Exchange has consulted on over 400 film and television projects, including big-budget film productions like Apollo 18, Battleship, Iron Man 2, and Green Lantern and hit television programs like Castle, House, The Good Wife, and Covert Affairs. It also sponsors salons and panel discussions, bringing together industry insiders and scientists. Funds from this two-year grant provide core support for the Science and Entertainment Exchange, allowing it to reach out to more individuals, studios, networks, and guilds; to target television more aggressively; to expand its database of current science experts and add new scientific fields that are not currently represented; to improve publicity around major releases of films and TV; and to expand its presence and impact on the web and in social media.

Funds from this grant provide two years of funding to the Tribeca Film Institute for its ongoing efforts to support films and filmmakers that explore scientific and technological themes. With Sloan Foundation support, the Institute will annually award up to $140,000, in grants from $10,000 to $40,000, to compelling narrative filmmaking that explores scientific, mathematical, and technological themes and storylines, or that features a leading character who is a scientist, engineer, innovator or mathematician. In addition to such financial support, Tribeca provides selected filmmakers with professional guidance and mentorship, including project notes, networking assistance, and exposure to financing and distribution executives. Funds from this grant also support a series of high profile events at the Tribeca Film Festival, including a screening and discussion series, readings of in-progress scripts exploring scientific and technological themes, and an awards ceremony and reception honoring winning filmmakers.

In 2010, the Foundation supported a pilot program based at the Coolidge Corner Theatre to support film screenings and subsequent science discussions at art house theaters across the country. That effort, Science on Screen, was successfully piloted at eight independent theaters across the country. Funds from this grant will enable the series to be expanded to include up to 40 theaters over the next two years. Coolidge will prepare a syllabus that includes film programming suggestions, speakers, case studies, and marketing and outreach guidelines and will conduct a major outreach seminar at the Art House Convergence, the largest gathering of art house cinema managers in the country, which convenes annually just before the Sundance Film Festival. Independent theaters who successfully apply to be part of the Coolidge effort will receive $7,000 stipends to help create their own Science on Screen series, which must include a minimum of three screenings or science-themed events during the year. In addition, Coolidge will coordinate a national Science on Screen day, organizing same-day screenings at all participating theaters.

This grant funds a project by New York University's Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & TV to spur the production of high-quality, feature-length films about science and technology through a competitive awards open to all NYU film students. Each year for the next three years, NYU will offer $100,000 to the best student script exploring scientific, mathematical, or technological themes or featuring a scientist, mathematician, or engineer as a main character, with award funds to be used to turn the script into a feature length film. NYU will administer the awards process, accepting applications, convening a faculty panel to select quarter-finalists, advising filmmakers on needed script revisions, and arranging for scripts that advance as semi-finalists to procure an appropriate science advisor to ensure technical accuracy. Three scripts moving on to the final round will each receive $5,000 awards.

Funds from this three-year grant will support activities by Film Independent to develop science-themed film scripts and assist production teams developing science-themed feature films. Grant funds will primarily support two ongoing programs at Film Independent: the Sloan Producer's Grant program, which chooses one science script each year and develops it through a seven-week course of mentorship so that the project emerges with a realistic budget, schedule, and business plan; and the Fast Track program, which chooses exceptional science-themed film projects that are ready for financing and exposes them to more than 60 film financiers, production companies, and other industry professionals during an intensive series of meetings held at the Los Angeles Film festival. Also supported through this grant is an annual reception hosted by Film Independent at the Filmmaker Forum of the Director's Guild of America, where Sloan supported writers and directors are given special exposure to some 400 influential filmmakers and industry professionals.