A LOOK INSIDE THE LAB!
One of the things that I love most about being a filmmaker is that I get to explore new realities and learn about other people’s lifestyles and careers with each film. For I REMEMBER YOU, I got to learn about what the life of a scientist is like. LEAH EVANS, the protagonist, played by Stefanie Butler is a young woman who has devoted her life to science and is determined to develop new treatments and cures for cancer.
In order to accurately portray the role of LEAH and better understand her world, I knew I had to find a way to directly experience a lab that did research work similar to Leah’s. Thanks to Dr. Antoni Ribas, M.D., Ph.D. and UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, I was able to shadow incredibly talented and dedicated young scientists who work tirelessly on a daily basis towards finding a cure for certain types of cancer.
Among the many things that I witnessed was that scientists spend all day on their feet, barely have time to eat or do much at all outside the lab while at work which can be 60 plus hours a week, and that there is no room for error. The thing is, one single experiment can take them months or years to complete, so they could be six months into an experiment, but if they accidentally contaminate a sample or miss one minor procedure, they have to start all over again. Also, very often an experiment will not give them the results that they had anticipated, so they have to be mentally prepared to possible spend a year of their lives on a experiment that might not offer them any conclusions.
After spending a week watching the work of research scientists closely, I walked out feeling in awe of them and their work. Here are some stills of the film that were inspired by my experience at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. Let me know what you think!
