[The post below was featured today at The Huffington Post.]
By Govindini Murty. Women have been the stars of many of our biggest sci-fi films recently – from Star Wars: The Force Awakens to The Hunger Games and Gravity. This has been a very welcome development – but we need more women behind the camera as creators of sci-fi, as well. We need the female equivalents of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron. But how do we do this, given the many obstacles in the way of women filmmakers?
There is an entire online industry of VFX-driven sci-fi shorts that are launching male filmmakers’ careers right now. If women are to direct and produce blockbuster sci-fi films, then we must also enter this arena of online sci-fi shorts.
I’d like to introduce you to my epic, women-led sci-fi short film UFO Diary, debuting today on Vimeo. UFO Diary is a sci-fi action-comedy about two Women’s Army Corps officers in WWII who fight off an alien invasion of Los Angeles. The film recreates a famous WWII air raid, is edited by Emmy Award-winner Mitch Danton, and features stunning VFX by artists from ILM, Weta Digital, and Digital Domain. UFO Diary was recently featured in the January issue of American Cinematographer.
UFO Diary is inspired by one of the most famous UFO incidents in history – the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942. We’re releasing UFO Diary today to commemorate the upcoming anniversary of the Air Raid on February 25th.
In the early hours of February 25th, 1942, a mysterious, unidentified flying object appeared in the skies over Los Angeles. The Army fired a massive barrage of 1400 shells into the night sky – but nothing was shot down, and no wreckage was ever recovered. The incident was witnessed by over 100,000 Angelenos, but remains unexplained to this day.
Making a film about the Great LA Air Raid was a colorful adventure in itself. In addition to producing UFO Diary, I also played the lead role of Captain Diana Ravello, a tough WAC captain and former Caltech rocket engineer. Playing Captain Diana involved me climbing over tanks and half-tracks, firing anti-aircraft guns in the middle of simulated WWII combat, getting my hearing blasted by machine-gun fire, and being swallowed up in massive dust clouds from tanks as I ran around a WWII-era fort. It was a great experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
During all this, I also collaborated on every aspect of the film – from story concept to cinematography to editing – with my filmmaking partner, Jason Apuzzo, the writer-director of UFO Diary. Jason is my husband and one of the most supportive people I know of women in film. We were united in wanting to make a WWII movie with women in the lead roles because we both wanted to tell a WWII story from a fresh perspective.
Producing UFO Diary also meant wrangling a cast of over one hundred WWII actors – including some pretty salty military vets (who were my favorites) – and hiring and supervising everyone on the crew, VFX, and post-production teams.
I’m excited now to be sharing UFO Diary with you, in part to show that women filmmakers can make sci-fi shorts as spectacular and technically-challenging as any male filmmaker out there. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Why Should Women Have a Voice in Sci-Fi? Introducing My Film UFO Diary