Exploring Planet Earth: A Roundtable Conversation with Toni Myers for the release A Beautiful Planet
A Beautiful Planet is a breathtaking portrait of Earth from space, providing a unique perspective and increased understanding of our planet and galaxy as never seen before. Made in cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the film features stunning footage of our magnificent blue planet — and the effects humanity has had on it over time — captured by the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
From space, Earth blazes at night with the electric intensity of human expansion — a direct visualisation of our changing world. But it is within our power to protect the planet. As we continue to explore and gain knowledge of our galaxy, we also develop a deeper connection to the place we all call home. Narrated by Jennifer Lawrence and from IMAX Entertainment and Toni Myers — the acclaimed filmmaker behind celebrated IMAX® documentaries Blue Planet, Hubble 3D, and Space Station 3D — A Beautiful Planet presents an awe-inspiring glimpse of Earth and a hopeful look into the future of humanity.
The Fan Carpet's Jay Thomas in association with Acting Hour took part in an exclusive Roundtable with Director Toni Myers about the breathtaking Documentary A Beautiful Planet, she talks about working with the Astronauts from NASA and getting Jennifer Lawrence onboard...
I thought I'd get the ball rolling by asking, How do you see 'A Beautiful Planet' in relation to the other films that you've made, such as Hubble 3D, in terms of reveal something about the natural world and our relative place within it?
Well, the big stand-out for me is that we flew digital cameras, for the first time, on this film. NASA told us that we could no longer fly IMAX 70mm film. We could have gotten a camera up there, but sending film back and forth in a timely fashion was no longer an option, because there is no longer a shuttle to do that. And the "up and down mass" as they call it, is very limited with resupply ships. So we had to switch to digital, and what that gave us was a whole new range of subject matter, because of its dynamic range.
Film was too slow to capture night-time scenes, but with the digital we are now able to see things like the lights on earth at night, stars, Aurora, lightning, and all kinds of things we could never have seen before. And that opens up an almost whole new subject, because it gives you a socio-economic view, you know? You can see where the industrial centres are. You can see how the population distributes itself and where people gather in cities.
That's the biggest difference, looking at Earth in terms of what's happening to it. The increase of pollution clouds and the depletion of the rainforest and so forth. There's been a bit of a balance since our previous film, 'Blue Planet', which was made about the Earth in 1990. Though deforestation has continued, there has also been some replanting initiatives, so it's not all bad. But you can still see the giant smoke plumes and the areas where they cut down trees, and basically just how much is gone in areas like Madagascar and Brazil.
What you don't really see from orbit is the effects of climate change in terms of the melting ice-caps. You can see that there is snow there, but you can't really see how much has actually melted. As we mention in the movie, that is actually affecting the water supply, the fact that so many glaciers and ice-packs are melting.
[Toni indicates to her blue and white scarf]
I tell people that this scarf is the Greenland ice-sheet melting...
[Laughter]
...But it's not actually visible.
One of the things I often write about in my reviews is about the technical aspect, and I was interested in the logistics of a film where you don't know what the framing is going to be or how your cinematography will look. Given that, how did you work around the logistics of what comes back? Did you get rushes? How do you decide what will be seen?
Good question. We spend about twenty-two or more hours training each crew, spread over a certain amount of time. James Neighouse, who is our crew training manager and director of photography, and I train them with everything they need to know in order to make a movie in space. That includes button pushing and operating cameras, but beyond that it is framing, lighting, how long to shoot scenes, concepts of things.
These are guidelines, of course, but at the end of the training cycle, that was ask them to shoot in the simulators their own movies, which they have to light and shoot and direct their fellow crew-members in scenes for interiors. And then we put it up on an IMAX screen to show them. That really is the best training tool you can imagine. It's like seeing your home-movies 60ft by 80ft, and if the focus penny hasn't dropped, it does then, that's for sure. So that's a very effective teaching tool.
Hardly ever is there a problem with them; they're great students. That's probably why they're astronauts, they're the world's best learners. But what's wonderful about this film that we never had before is that the communications from orbit-to-ground have relaxed a lot since we started. So, I would frequently get cell-phone calls from the station.
Wow.
Yeah, that's really fun the first time it happens.
Was there a time delay?
No... Surprisingly, no, the first time it happened was actually on a movie we made called 'Space Station', which was about the building of the space station. Then, I just about fainted. It was 5.30 in the morning, I'm in my nighty, and hello. "Hi," they said, "it's Jim Boss from the space station".
[Laughter]
It's become kind of commonplace now. You can't call them back, but then, when you realise that it's only 250 miles in a different direction, it's not that strange. Except the fact that a call can start over the U.S. and you're still talking when they're over Guam or some place like that.
That's a long way of saying that the communications are much more improved whilst they're up there. And they're up there for six months. Frequently, one of them would call down and say, "I'm kinda thinking about shooting a certain scene", one that we maybe hadn't discussed. They'd ask what we thought about that, and we'd say sure and tell them to go for it, giving them a few guidelines maybe. Then the shot would come down, which, because it's downlinked and not going to the lab any more, I would get in a day or so.
Once we'd been able to look at it, and then I could send back a whole powerpoint. I could do screen grabs from various parts of the scene they'd shot. I could put arrows on it, telling them which way to do it and not do it, and make suggestions. And because we have digital and more storage, they were able to do it. We never had the option of a take two in the film days, ever. It was always about conserving the resources. So, the digital was very liberating in that way, for both sides.
We did start with laundry list, for both Earth scenes and interior crew scenes. But I deliberately don't, especially in the case of the interiors, get very specific about things. For instance, I said, to celebrate a holiday. Just a holiday. I didn't even say Christmas, I don't think. I just wanted to give them the latitude so I didn't know anything about milk and cookies or any of that. I left that all to their creativity, and they are creative, happily.
They do have specific Earth targets that we were looking for, and those didn't change, but sometimes they also had targets of opportunity. Fires and things that we can't predict. So, I would say, with digital, it was a lot easier in terms of shooting a long distance movie.
You've made seven films about space and space-travel. Has that been a life-long interest of yours and where does it come from?
I don't know. I found that the first time we were making a film as a proof of concept for NASA, to see that IMAX was a really effective medium to convey to the public what was going on in the space programme. Working on that project, as well as events like the moon landing and hearing the Sputnik beeps, was enormously exciting to me. And to be right there, where things were launching, meeting and working with astronauts, was pretty amazing. So, you can't stop. You get hooked, and the benefit is that each film is about a different aspect of space exploration.
Each one has been an entire education for me. 'Blue Planet' was all about Earth system science and the things that naturally affect the Earth. Not just humans, but vulcanology, geology, hydrology, and all those things. I had a wonderful committee of scientists that helped me out with that, and it was like a complete education in all of that.
'Hubble 3D' was obviously about the final repairs of the telescope, and was a wonderful education in astronomy and astrophysics. And, likewise, our first film ever shot in space, in order to even support these kinds of films, you have to learn all about orbital mechanics. You can't be sitting in Johnson's Space Centre and not know how the space shuttle orbits and what governs that. Your loss of signal periods and all those sorts of things. So that's another whole engineering thing.
It's just non-stop fascination, really, and I'm very lucky.
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A BEAUTIFUL PLANET IS OUT IN IMAX 3D FROM FRIDAY MAY 27
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