Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/680196
FILMMAKING www.postmagazine.com 16 POST MAY 2016 nce again, IMAX has teamed up with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to create a large-format feature that looks at our planet and the future of human- ity — all from outer space. A Beautiful Planet was produced, directed and edited by Toni Myers, and was shot by the crew of the International Space Station. The film is narrated by Jennifer Lawrence and was released in IMAX and IMAX 3D theaters on April 29 th . Myers, who also directed the IMAX films Blue Planet (1990), Space Station 3D (2002) and Hubble 3D (2010), has a long history with the company and its connection to NASA. She recently took time out from post production on A Beautiful Planet to talk to Post about the new feature, the challenges of shooting in space and the evolution of the format. You served as producer, director, writer and editor? "I can be hung out to dry for sure (laughing)!" How did you get involved in all of these space-themed productions? "The origins [date back to] one of the co-inventors and founders of IMAX, Graeme Ferguson, who is a filmmaker himself, and he's still involved. He's my emeritus and mentor. When he and his partners invented the medium, it was rapidly known as a medium that could take people — because of its immersive- ness — to places they couldn't normally go. It allowed them to experience those unique environments first hand in a way that they would never get to do. Of course, space was one of them. "When they put the theater in the Air and Space Museum in Washington, the first director of that museum was Michael Collins, the Apollo astronaut. When he saw the IMAX format, he said, 'This is the only thing that even comes close to being able to reproduce the experience I had going to the moon and looking back at Earth.' "It took us 10 years from when he made that utterance to make it a reality. This was Graeme's initiative. I was writer and editor, he was the director and founder of the space unit. We made a film in 1981 about the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle called Hail Columbia, and we didn't have cameras on-board to fly to space, of course, in that first flight, but what we did do was filmed the launch like they had never been filmed before. And that was our proof of concept to get NASA's attention that this was a great medium for conveying the activities of the space program to the general public, which is actually a law that is written into NASA's constitution. You have a duty, NASA, to share your ac- tivities with the general public. And what better medium than this?" So it really started there? "NASA agreed. It took us a few more years and eventually we formed a part- nership — NASA, The Smithsonian and Lockheed Martin Corporation, who were the film's sponsors, and IMAX. We pro- vided the filmmaking expertise, the cam- eras and the crew training, etc. That was in 1984 — we flew three Shuttle flights. "Bill Shaw, the engineer then, and one of the original partners, built a modified cam- era to go into space, and that was the first film, which was called The Dream is Alive. That came out in 1985, and this is now our seventh. They take quite a long time to do." How are you capturing footage today? Is it film or digital? "That's a good question. We are capturing digitally. When I went to [NASA] with this project, the Shuttle was by then retired. They said, 'We can't fly film cameras any- more… You've got to figure out another way.' Film gets radiated if it sits in orbit for very long. So we tested every digital camera then known — that was James Neihouse, our director of photography — and we chose a pair of Canon high-resolu- tion cameras. That's what we are shooting with. We trained [the crews] with those." Did that transition affect anything? "I would have thought I was a die-hard film fan. Most people who grew up with it are, and it does have its beauties, but I have to say how wonderful [digital] was. As soon as they shot anything — boom — it came right down from orbit to Building A at Johnson Space Center and took a right turn into my cutting room." How does that work? "Via the downlink Ku band straight from the station. The files come down to the photo lab at the Johnson Space Center and they redirect them to us here in Toronto." What did the crews shoot with on this project? "We had two different cameras. What we got of the high-res Earth were individual files that were 5K each, and then from A BEAUTIFUL PLANET BY MARC LOFTUS IMAX & NASA GIVE AUDIENCES A VIEW FROM INSIDE THE INTER- NATIONAL SPACE STATION O The multi-nation crew of the International Space Station.