science

FUTURESTATES Season 2

by James McNally on February 28, 2011 · 2 comments

in Film Festivals,SXSW,Television

Futurestates

Last year, I was very excited by the first “season” of FUTURESTATES, a series of shorts com­mis­sioned by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) to explore the fol­lowing ques­tion: ” What will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years?” There was some very strong work in the first group of films, including Play (David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman), Silver Sling (Tze Chun) and Plastic Bag (Ramin Bahrami).

Of the ten new films slated for the second season, six will premiere at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. And I can share that there are some even more powerful films in this batch. I was excited to see that Barry Jenkins, who dir­ected the unique Medicine for Melancholy (review) would be con­trib­uting a film, and his Remigration poignantly explores the themes of race, class, and urban renewal that he touched upon in his earlier fea­ture. Another dir­ector who uncovers some fas­cin­ating issues sur­rounding race is A. Sayeeda Clarke, whose White shows us a society in the grip of cli­mate change where black people are forced to trade their genetic advantage in order to take care of their fam­ilies. I also loved Kimi Takesue’s That Which Once Was which fea­tures a healing rela­tion­ship between an 8-year-old Caribbean boy and an Inuit ice sculptor, both dis­placed and trau­mat­ized by the chan­ging climate.

In addi­tion to high­lighting important issues con­fronting our planet, the best of these films are able to cap­ture beau­tiful images and intro­duce us to mem­or­able char­ac­ters facing issues our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren may yet face. And best of all, FUTURESTATES epis­odes are all avail­able (or soon will be) to watch in their entirety online, free of charge. Not only has the series proven edu­ca­tional on the envir­on­mental front, but I’ve actu­ally dis­covered some new film­makers, the rest of whose work I now want to discover.

Tagged as: #sxsw11, environment, future, science, scifi

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IMAX: Hubble 3D

by Jay Kerr on March 18, 2010 · 3 comments

in Documentaries

IMAX: Hubble 3D

IMAX: Hubble 3D (Director: Toni Myers): I never get tired of space doc­u­ment­aries, espe­cially when they’re as fas­cin­ating as Hubble 3D. The film’s breath­taking IMAX footage com­bined with images from Hubble create a unique cine­matic experience.

The Hubble Space Telescope was put into orbit in April 1990 and is the only tele­scope designed to be ser­viced by astro­nauts. In May 2009, NASA sent the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis to make vital repairs and upgrades to Hubble. Five space­walks were required and each of them was cap­tured by an IMAX 3D camera oper­ated by the astronauts.

Director of Photography James Neihouse trained the astro­nauts for 8 months in basic cine­ma­to­graphy and how to use the cum­ber­some IMAX 3D cam­eras (they weigh over 250 pounds each). A roll of IMAX film runs 5,000 feet, weighs 54 pounds and runs 8 minutes. With only one roll of film there was zero margin for error.

During a Q&A ses­sion I asked Neihouse if he was happy with the camera work of the astro­nauts. He said he was “very pleased with the footage” and ended up using about 90% of it in the final film.

Aside from the space­walk footage, the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis is spec­tac­ular and puts the viewer right on the launch pad. We’ve all seen Shuttle launches before but not like this! The sound recording of the launch is also incred­ible and required quite a number of micro­phones (sev­eral mics were incin­er­ated or blown trying to record the takeoff).

The thing that impressed me most about this film was the quality of the images cap­tured by Hubble. Twenty years of Hubble data was used to create some incred­ible 3D visu­al­iz­a­tions of sev­eral galaxies and solar systems.

“This is star travel, you’re right out there moving in space,” said dir­ector Toni Myers. The IMAX exper­i­ence really does make you feel like you’re floating in space. You quickly realize how small our planet and solar system is in the cosmos. I was truly blown away.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s name is fea­tured prom­in­ently on the movie poster but his voi­ceover nar­ra­tion in the film is under­stated and works quite well. Director Toni Myers gets full marks for using Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s ver­sion of Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World in the soundtrack.

I should also men­tion that the I watched the IMAX ver­sion of the film at the Ontario Science Centre’s OMNIMAX® Theatre and not the IMAX 3D ver­sion of the film. The Ontario Science Centre has an IMAX Dome theatre that wraps around the viewer.

It was inter­esting to hear James Neihouse say that he enjoyed parts of the film more in an IMAX Dome theatre than the 3D ver­sion. I’m curious to see what the 3D ver­sion of the film looks like.

IMAX: Hubble 3D opens in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver on March 19th.

Official site of the film

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: astronomy, hubble, imax, NASA, science

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BLAST! to Air on the Discovery Channel

by James McNally on February 19, 2009 · 1 comment

in Documentaries,Television

BLAST!

BLAST! is an intriguing doc­u­mentary about a team of astro­phys­i­cists who travel to both poles in an effort to launch a massive tele­scope from a hot air bal­loon to dis­cover more about the ori­gins of the uni­verse. The film ori­gin­ally premiered at Hot Docs in 2008 and is airing in Canada on the Discovery Channel on Friday February 21st at 7:30pm EST.

Doc blogger Agnes Varnum caught the film at the Sheffield Doc Fest in November and called it:

a movie about a sci­entific pro­ject but it is also about learning through trial and error, about what we know and don’t know about the uni­verse, and also a smat­tering of faith in science.

Toronto sci­ence blogger Eva Amsen was also enthu­si­astic:

All in all, BLAST! was a blast! I loved that it was so very much focused on the work, not just on the res­ults. The film had some anim­a­tions to explain basic astro­physics con­cepts, but it also showed what the actual meas­ure­ments from the tele­scope looked like (just graphs and num­bers) and it emphas­ized how much work there was still left in actu­ally inter­preting the data. There are also some great shots of sci­ent­ists being either sad or happy depending on how the research went that day, and everyone being bored and irrit­ated when they have to wait for the weather to change. That’s sci­ence in action.

I respect the opin­ions of both of these women, and there­fore I’m looking for­ward very much to seeing BLAST! If you’re at all inter­ested in seeing real sci­ent­ists at work, and won­dering about the curi­osity that drives them to the ends of the earth in search of know­ledge, you won’t want to miss this broadcast.

Official site of the film
Trailer

Tagged as: antarctica, arctic, canada, faith, physics, science

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