Hidden Figures

Director
 Theodore Melfi

In 2016, Melfi co-wrote, directed and produced Hidden

Figures, for which he received Oscar nominations for Best
Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

• Theodore Melfi is an American screenwriter

• Film Director
• Producer
Author
Margot Lee Shetterly

• A writer, researcher, and entrepreneur.

• The author of
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Blac
k Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.
• Shetterley’s father was a NASA engineer and her mom worked as an
English professor at Hampton University in Virginia.
• Shetterly is the founder of The Human Computer Project, an endeavor
that is recovering the names and accomplishments of all of the
women who worked as computers, mathematicians, scientists and
engineers at the NACA and NASA from the 1930s through the 1980s.
• She wrote “Hidden Figures” to tell the stories of the pioneering
women who worked as mathematicians and ‘computers’ at the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and NASA in the
early days of aeronautics and the American space program. It is the
revelation of those previously unrecognized women.
• Her mission, both in writing the book and heading The Human
Computer Project, is to help little girls around the world — in
particular those of color — know that women who look like them and
share their history helped make the United States great.
Setting
• Hampton, Virginia
(Hometown of the three black Americans)
• NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia
(Their Workplace)
1961
Genre

• COMEDY
• DRAMA
• HISTORICAL FICTION
Critique
• A TV news announcer describes Alan Shepard's first manned launch into
space as him being lifted to "an altitude of 116 miles per hour." That's not
an altitude, that's a speed. It should have just been "116 miles.“
• When Katherine is working out the math in the conference room for John
Glenn's start off to the Bahamas there is no chalk or pencils on the desk,
but they reappear when Al Harrison hands Katherine the chalk. (01:23:40)
• When Katherine realises she can use Euler's Method to calculate how to
bring John Glenn safely back to earth, she is seen wearing a wristwatch
when she's at the chalkboard. The watch is not on her when she leaves to
get a book about Euler's Method. It reappears when she's back at the
chalkboard.
• In a scene where Katherine is writing on the big chalkboard,
calculating the reentry spot (or something similar) for Friendship 7,
her left hand is shown with an engagement ring. Her boyfriend
doesn't propose until a
• In the beginning of the movie when the car is broken down you can
see either a whole bunch of cows are in the field through the
passenger window. When Dorothy starts the car with the screwdriver
the cows are gone. (00:03:10 - 00:05:54)fter this scene. You only see it
for a second.
• When the rocket is about to launch, Dorothy drives to a field. After
she exits the car the camera crane is reflected on the door.