“Interstellar” producer Lynda Obst believes grounded science is more exciting than fiction.
“Science can inspire you if you can tell a great story behind it,” Obst said in a press conference ahead of her keynote speech at the Culture Technology Forum at Coex Center in Seoul on Thursday.
“You can turn the world on to these big ideas through character and story,” she said, referring to the link between time and space illustrated in the internationally acclaimed hard sci-fi epic “Interstellar.”
The making of “Interstellar” revolved around the struggle to reconcile the demands of an entertaining story with scientific accuracy, said Obst. Science consultants would explain the mathematical algorithms behind time-space warping, and the special effects team would reflect them in their depictions of black holes.
Lynda Obst at the Culture Technology Forum, hosted by the Korea Creative Content Agency, on Thursday. (KOCCA)
“Chris at first thought that science would get in the way, and Kip was afraid that Chris would come up with these crazy ideas,” she said of the collaboration between Christopher Nolan, the film’s director and creator of the “Dark Knight” Batman series, and Kip Thorne, the film’s science consultant and a theoretical physicist at Caltech.
“But the one rule was that nothing could defy the law of physics,” and the two experts were able to create synergy from each other’s knowledge, Obst explained.
“Interstellar” not only won an Academy Award, but contributed to important new science, she continued. “Papers were written about black holes because of the work our teams did.”
The movie has received a particularly warm welcome from audiences in Korea and China, a fact that Obst is well aware of. “Interstellar” attracted over 10 million cinemagoers in Korea alone.
“These countries are very scientifically minded, technologically advanced and smart,” and therefore unintimidated by a complex story based on accurate science, Obst said.
With another science-related endeavor in the works, this time involving prominent physicist Steven Hawking, the driven, 65-year-old producer will continue to weave stories that focus on what is “real.”
“I deeply believe that what is out there is fundamentally more interesting than what a screenwriter can make up in his imagination,” she said. “So we just have to create a great story to go along with great visuals … a way to make (science) more accessible.”
“But what is real is so astonishing that I won’t give up doing stories based on grounded science.”
By Rumy Doo (bigbird@heraldcorp.com)
