This grant provides three years of renewed support to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), for a series of activities, programs, and initiatives designed to encourage UCLA film students to engage with scientific and technological themes in their filmmaking and to produce science-themed films and screenplays. UCLA’s Sloan Foundation-supported activities include four annual prizes: a $30,000 production award; two $15,000 screenwriting awards; and a $15,000 episodic television award, as well as an annual colloquium that brings film students together with leading researchers to discuss the newest developments in science and technology. This grant also 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 the program.

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 narrative films that explore scientific themes or have scientists, engineers, or mathematicians as major characters. AFI’s Sloan Foundation-supported activities include four annual prizes: a $25,000 production award; a $20,000 annual screenwriting award; a $25,000 development award; and a $45,000 tuition award. 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 provides funding to Film Independent (FIND) to organize, publicize and host the next Sloan Film Summit, a major convening of all grantees in the Foundation’s Film program, held every three years pre-COVID. FIND will continue to include public-facing events that go beyond the Sloan attendees. FIND’s own membership has grown by 25% since the last summit and includes over 7,500 filmmakers, who will be among the target audience. The three-day summit, which will feature some 150 attendees, offers a rare opportunity for mingling and interacting among students, faculty, and administrators from the six long-established Sloan film schools; filmmakers and leaders from the five Sloan screenplay development and film festival partners; and the Museum of the Moving Image, Coolidge Corner Theatre, and the Science and Entertainment Exchange. The 2021 Summit will also include representatives from new entrants to the Sloan Film program, including the six new film schools in the Discovery Awards program and the Athena Film Festival and North Fork TV Festival. Planned activities at the festival include an opening night film screening and dinner, updates on Sloan award recipients, case studies of successful filmmaker-scientists collaborations, a networking lunch that connects filmmakers with scientists, staged screenplay readings, a panel where leading scientists discuss underappreciated scientific discoveries, and an industry connection event that will allow 100 filmmakers to meet one-on-one with agents, casting directors, distributors, and other industry executives.

This grant funds an innovative awards program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) that aims to promote the production of a science- or technology-themed full length feature film by students at the nation’s premier film school. The process begins with NYU film student submissions of one-page pitches of science films they propose to make. A dozen quarter-finalists are selected to move forward, and write step-by-step breakdowns of their films. Six semifinalists are then chosen and given a month to meet with scientists and film faculty to improve the science content, narrative, and design of their films before submitting revised treatments. Three winners are then selected and each is awarded $5,000 to develop their treatments into full-scale feature screenplays. Once screenplays are submitted, one winner is selected, who receives a $100,000 production award to make their first feature film. Grant funds support the continuation of this awards program for the next three years.

This grant funds an awards program by Film Independent (FIND), producer of the Independent Spirit Awards, that aims to help produce and distribute feature films with scientific or technological themes, or those that feature scientists, engineers, technologists, inventors, or mathematicians as major characters.   FIND makes several grants a year to achieve its aims: one producer a year selected to develop a science-themed script in FIND’s Producing Lab, with a $30,000 Producer’s grant and a reception and promotion around this project; one producer or producing team a year awarded a Sloan Fast Track Fellowship, which is a $20,000 cash grant and invitation to the Fast Track film financing market; one outstanding episodic television writer a year supported with a $15,000 grant to develop science-themed series in FIND’s new Episodic Lab; and an average of one exceptional science-themed film every 18 months for a total of two distribution grants of $50,000 each to incentivize buyers to acquire an eligible film for distribution. To date, FIND’s program has been a success. Every project supported has either been completed and released theatrically, is currently in preproduction, or remains at the script development stage. In addition, the program has an admirable record of promoting diverse voices, with women and people of color representing over 60% of their filmmakers.

Launched by the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 with Sloan support, the Science and Entertainment Exchange (the Exchange), is an ongoing program to increase the quality of scientific content in American film through providing directors, producers, and other Hollywood film executives with access to high quality consulting by real working scientists and researchers. Providing more than 250 consultations a year, the Exchange works to ensure accuracy when science is used in film and television, seeds new ideas within Hollywood by exposing creative and industry professionals to new scientific content, and acts as a well of professional advice across a wide range of scientific topics. This grant provides support for the Exchange for a period of three years, including funds to support science consultations, help expand and diversify the Exchange’s roster of more than 3,000 science consultants, create up to six videos targeting an online audience, and launch a new monthly series of online events designed to highlight successful industry-scientist partnerships fostered by the program.