California art initiative examines how science and art collide

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Finally tonight, a story from the PBS News Student Reporting Labs, our journalism training program for high school students.

As part of our Canvas coverage, we featured some of the work from the Southern California PST Art initiative that examines how science and art collide.

Amna Nawaz: Student reporter Ebonie Shelley has now the story of two exhibitions at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures that are part of PST and explore the relationship between movies and technology.

Sophia Serrano, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: I often say that color is interesting because if it’s done right you don’t notice it. You are perceiving it and it’s impacting you. It’s not being drawn attention to.

And so one of the things that we really hope with the exhibition is that it gives people a new understanding of what they’re seeing on screen.

Ebonie Shelley: The Academy Museum in Los Angeles, California, is exploring the intersectionality of movies and technology as part of the PST ART Initiative with two exhibitions.

Color in Motion the history and subtlety of a color palette.

Sophia Serrano: You know we wanted to show people the intention behind color, how it really is an art form in itself and one of the kind of hidden arts of cinema.

So the gallery in which we show all the costumes and props, we’re showing Technicolor to present because we’re showing how color in front of the camera really impacted people’s processes. We have Natalie Kalmus, who’s the color director and she’s really influencing the color palette of a movie.

And so we see her name on a lot of Technicolor films, so you will see her doing “Wizard of Oz” or movies — really notable Technicolor movies from that era. She’s the one who’s responsible for setting those palettes. You see a lot of super-saturated, really vivid color films, especially in sci-fi today.

Ebonie Shelley: Just downstairs from Dorothy’s ruby slippers, cyberpunk envisions possible futures through cinema and showcases the lessons of sci-fi and advancing technology.

Nicholas Barlow, Assistant Curator, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: I think one of the things that’s fascinating for this exhibition is, we’re looking at different time periods depicting the future and what they’re bringing to that imagined future, their own anxieties and concerns.

What happens is, in these stories, groups of rebels and people who are marginalized or pushed to the side on the peripheries fight for survival in the face of environmental collapse and societal ruin.

In some ways, the technology is always pushing the filmmakers forward, and then the filmmakers are always pushing the technology forward. It’s always trying to figure out something new. And in figuring that out, they are kind of inventing or requiring new technology. You have to come here and experience in person, because it is immersive and exciting and seductive and amusing and fascinating in all the different ways that these films that we’re trying to champion are.

Ebonie Shelley: For PBS News Student Reporting Labs, I’m Ebonie in Los Angeles.