Festival Talk: SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize: Talking About Twisters
Guests Expected
Director Lee Isaac Chung, Scientists Kevin Kelleher, Tapio Schneider, Sound Editor/Designer Al Nelson, and ILM VFX Supervisor Florian Witzel are expected to attend.
Description
In partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, SFFILM is thrilled to award the Sloan Science in Cinema Prize to last summer’s blockbuster Twisters. Join director Lee Isaac Chung, along with scientific experts and effects wizards from the film, as they discuss whether a tornado can actually be “tamed,” the world of tornado chasers, and how they embraced science to depict the awesome power of nature through cinematic craft and create the vastly entertaining world of Twisters. This talk is free and open to the public, RSVP required.
The Sloan Science in Cinema Prize celebrates the compelling depiction of scientific themes or characters in a narrative feature film. The program celebrates and highlights cinema that brings together science and the art of storytelling, showing how these two seemingly disparate areas can combine to enhance the power of one another. The selections are meant to immerse a broad public audience in the challenges and rewards of scientific discovery, as well as to engage members of the scientific community.
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Lee Isaac Chung grew up in rural Arkansas, the son of Korean immigrants. His first feature, Munyurangabo (2007), the first film made in Rwanda’s Kinyarwanda language, won AFI Fest’s Grand Jury Award and Chung received a Film Independent Spirit Awards Someone to Watch nomination. He received Best Director and Original Screenplay Oscar® nominations for Minari (2020), which also counts the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Dramatic and Audience Awards among its many accolades. His latest film, Twisters, was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Action/Adventure Film.
Kevin Kelleher was the Technical Consultant on Twister (1996) and the Tornado Consultant on Twisters (2024). He holds graduate degrees from the University of Oklahoma in meteorology and computer science and was a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Senior Executive Fellow Program. Kevin spent 13 years at the University of Oklahoma and 26 years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in various capacities at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, OK, before becoming the Director of the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO.
After graduating with a degree in music composition and film music studies from Florida State University, Al Nelson moved to Northern California to pursue a career in “New Media.” Shortly after his arrival to San Francisco, Al was holding the original source recordings for Star Wars and working amongst legends of sound design. This unexpected journey has taken him from machine rooms and mag to aircraft carriers and wild animal preserves in an almost 30-year career at Skywalker Sound.
Tapio Schneider‘s research focuses on understanding climate formation and potential changes in the Earth and other planets. To improve climate predictions, he leads the Climate Modeling Alliance (CliMA), developing a next-generation climate model that uses AI to integrate observations with Earth system models. He is the Theodore Y. Wu Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Caltech and Principal Scientist at Google. Recognized for his significant contributions, he is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, among many other honors.
Florian Witzel is a two-time VES Awards winner who recently served as the ILM Visual Effects Supervisor on Twisters, overseeing the entire visual effects effort. In addition, Witzel designed and created the water and effects work for season three of The Mandalorian, earning him a VES Award for Outstanding Effects Simulations. Witzel played a pivotal role as a creative innovator and supervisor on some of the most iconic film franchises, including Marvel’s Avengers, Doctor Strange, and Ant-Man. His work on five of these features garnered Academy Award® nominations.
