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"  Why did you decide to make science a big part of the story? BERNDT MADER: I think a big part of the film is the main character Julius&amp;#039;s natural curiosity. We&amp;#039;re all scientists in a waywe&amp;#039;re all going through life asking questions and learning through observation with the scientific method, and we&amp;#039;re all employing it on one another. Julius is a scientist. He&amp;#039;s curious about these worms and he&amp;#039;s experimenting on them, and he&amp;#039;s also kind of curious about his own life, and trying to figure out where he is going what he&amp;#039;s doing at all times.  Were you into science at all when you were a kid?  I was always kind of bad at science. One of the big regrets of my life is that I was never encouraged in science or in mathI think they&amp;#039;re really important. [Science] wasn&amp;#039;t considered a serious option as a career. And here I am as a filmmaker, so... But I think scientists are underappreciated in general. I think nerds are cool. People shouldn&amp;#039;t run from their passion. I think that&amp;#039;s certainly in the movieembracing who you are, no matter what society tells you.   Is there any particular reason why you chose earthworms as Julius&amp;#039;s science project?  I was at this bookstore that had a bunch of 50-cent books outside, and I came across one called Drunken Goldfish and Other Useless Scientific Experiments. I was like, ah, that&amp;#039;s kind of funny. So I bought the book, and I was just looking at itI wasn&amp;#039;t really looking at as if I was going to find the answer to the screenplay in there. But I came across this really interesting chapter about wormsabout their regenerative capabilities, how they&amp;#039;re asexual. Plus, worms are readily available. A kid can go to a pond or dig in the mud and find them.   How did you film it? What kind of equipment did you guys use?  We had one angel investor, but we didn&amp;#039;t really have enough money to make the film. So we applied for a Panavision New Filmmaker grant, which is for first-time feature directors. We got a camera packagea Panavision Super 16 camera and nice prime lensesfor 40 days. But we didn&amp;#039;t have any film to put in the camera, so we called Kodak. We were like, &amp;quot;Hey Kodak, Panavision is giving us a free camera, can you help us out with some raw stock?&amp;quot; They were like, &amp;quot;Yes, we can; we have a new stock coming out, this 250 daylight stock, and we&amp;#039;ll definitely give you some free film.&amp;quot;   What drew you to the role of Julius? RYAN AKIN: I almost saw myself in him. He wants to find order in things, even things that have no order. He will search his entire life for that, just because that&amp;#039;s the way his mind workshis mind looks at things from a scientific standpoint versus an emotional standpoint.   Do you think like that? Are you a scientific person?  I&amp;#039;m going to a science- and math-based school; it&amp;#039;s technology-based, project-based learning. I&amp;#039;ve always been into finding out how things work. I was that kid who at 5 years old was taking apart everything his parents bought for him, and drove them totally crazy. And my stepdad built and programmed computers for Cisco, so I was always watching him.  In the film, Julius&amp;#039;s experiments revolve around earthworms, so you spent a lot of time handling them. What was that like?  It was interesting. At first I thought, this is going to get nasty after a while. But through shooting the film and reading the script, I actually started to learn about worms.  Lay some earthworm facts on me.  They&amp;#039;re really interesting creatures. Say you have a bunch of earthworms in a bucket, and for whatever reason, they&amp;#039;re going to die. If one of the worms tries to get out of that bucket, the others will grab it and pull it back in. It&amp;#039;s so messed up! It&amp;#039;s almost like they have a mentality. And the whole fragmentation thing: If a part of them is injured, they can self-amputate and regrowregenerate. Imagine if humans could do that! That would be so cool. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a6773/five-time-champion-is-a-geeks-coming-of-age-story-sxsw-2011/>