It  Came  From  Outer  Space
2015

Indiana University Cinema Bloomington, IN

with

Dr. Jonathan Eller

Director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies; Professor of English, Indiana University-Purdue University

and

Dr. Phil Nichols

University of Wolverhampton, UK

and

Dr. Chris Eller

Professor of 3D film production, The Media School, Indiana University; Member of the Advanced Visualization Lab, Indiana University

It Came From Outer Space— The History of Stereographic Images, Motion Pictures, and Ray Bradbury

A panel discussion on the history of stereographic (3D) images, motion pictures, and Ray Bradbury.

Indiana University Cinema Bloomington, IN

Film Synopsis

A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert, and only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strange.

While stargazing in the desert, John Putnam (Richard Carlson) sees what at first appears to be a meteor shower, but is actually a crash-landing alien spaceship. After investigating the impact crater, John informs the town sheriff (Charles Drake), who dismisses his story. Even his fiancée, Ellen (Barbara Rush), is skeptical. All that changes when the townsfolk start disappearing and are replaced by eerie alien duplicates.

Photo credit: Universal Pictures

About the Speaker

Dr. Jonathan R. Eller is a professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, the senior textual editor of the Institute for American Thought, and the co-founder of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at IUPUI. He is the co-author of Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction and the textual editor of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, Volume 1: 1938–1943.

Dr. Phil Nichols holds an MA in screenwriting, has a background in video production, and teaches all aspects of video and film production. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is currently working on his PhD at Liverpool University, supervised by Professor David Seed.

His research interest is in the screenplay as an interface between film production and literature, and adaptations to/from literature, film, and other media. His primary focus is Ray Bradbury, who is best known for his short stories and novels in the popular genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, but is also the writer whose authorship is most heavily engaged with self-adaptation.

Dr. Nichols's work on Bradbury has taken him to leading international conferences on the fantastic, media adaptation, the short story, and science fiction, at the University of California, Riverside, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, the University of Angers in France, and Edge Hill University in the UK.

Since May 2007, he has served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana. Since 2009, he has served on the Editorial Board of The New Bradbury Review, University of Indiana/Kent State University Press.

His website at http://www.bradburymedia.co.uk/ catalogues and reviews Bradbury's work across all media, and is the most extensive bibliography and filmography of Bradbury on the web.


Dr. Chris Eller is a professor of 3D film production in The Media School at Indiana University. He is also a member of the Advanced Visualization Lab, where he plans, deploys, and maintains the various servers that provide the AVL's infrastructure and public face. Dr. Eller also helps design and build systems and facilities that are used by faculty, staff, and students at Indiana University.