The last time I interviewed Ben Kilminster, the young physicist who's in the rock band, he was wearing a "Bad Mo Fo" T-shirt and talking big about Fermilab's chances to find the Higgs boson.
Possibly he was swaggering a little, since he was about an hour from the big rock show at the Fermilab User's Center where he would be the lead singer, compelling a dance floor full of young, blonde physicists from South America to start shakin' it up. It was great for the camera. He said something like "if we find it, we'll be right on the edge. We might be able to grab the steak just as the Europeans are about to throw it on the grill." A great metaphor.
So, other than impending stardom, what had gotten Ben so fiesty? Why was he suddenly a little more confident in the aging Tevatron's ability to find the Higgs?
He mentioned that electron cooling, something experimental and in the works on the other side of the Fermilab grounds for about 10 years now, had kicked in and was having an effect. If all went well, this would double Fermilab's luminosity (remember, that's essentially the number of collisions they can create --- how many atoms they smash together. The more atoms that get smashed, the more chances they have to find something). Let me say that again: it would DOUBLE the chances to find something. That's pretty big.
How would it do this?
A month or two ago, we were hanging out with John Conway in the detector control room. There was a little black and white monitor that he said they keep checking all day. Essentially, there were two numbers they checked on. One number was the amount of protons, and the other number was the amount of anti-protons.
Why are these numbers so important? Because protons and anti-protons are the things that the Tevatron smashes together. These are the "atoms" in "Atom-Smasher". There's only one problem: the Tevatron can make all the protons it could ever need. They're cheap and easy (as Leon Lederman said, you just go down to Ace Hardware and buy a bottle of Hydrogen, send it through a spark, and you've got protons galore). Remember the cockroft_walton? That great-looking machine that looks like it came from the pages of a Flash Gordon comic book? That's where they make the protons.
But --- making anti-protons is very tough, and it's even tougher to keep them around. Imagine that you're got a reality TV show that features red and blue cars smashing together in the desert. You've got plenty of red cars, but for some reason the blue cars are extremely difficult to make. So you've got lots of red car drivers sitting around, just waiting for a blue car to show up so they can smash into it. Not very efficient. You're starting to lose a lot of viewers to "Survivor."
Electron cooling is like an invention that allows twice as many blue cars to roll out of the factory. Suddenly you can smash twice as many cars in the desert! Ratings soar! Electron cooling can double the amount of anti-protons, thereby doubling the amount of atom smashes that take place in the tevatron. That's good news --- with twice as many collisions come twice as much data, and twice the chances to make a discovery. That's why Ben was exhibiting a little bravado that day before his big rock show.
So Monica and I went down to talk to the guy who had been in charge of this process for ten years --- Sergei Naigetsev. He took us over to the place where the electron cooling happened --- it's a small building with a big tall cylinder inside. The short version of how it works is that they cool the rowdy anti-protons with a calming, sensible beam of electrons. Once they are cooled off a little, they are easier to manage and last longer, and can get packed into the tevatron tighter. We got some nice shots, and he told the story about how he was on a camping trip when the process was officially proven. He was scrambling around on a sand dune with his cell phone, trying to get a signal, heart pounding with the news. That's a nice image.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Thursday, August 18, 2005
"What's your film about?"
"So, what's your film about?"
If you're an artist of some sort, or a maker of media, you tend to get a certain question over and over and over. If you're a writer, when people find out what you do they usually ask "what type of books do you write?" If you're in a band, of course, it's "what kind of music do you play?" Painters get "so, what are your paintings like?" It can be a difficult question for any artist, because what they're working on is often complicated and personal. Most of the time it's easier to play a cut from your cd or show one of your sketches. But a filmmaker can't exactly haul around a theater, and a full-length documentary can be hard to explain in a few sentences.
And yet, filmmakers must answer that question in a clear, compelling way, often in three sentences. Because often that answer is the basis on which a potential viewer decides whether or not to watch the film, or a potential funder decides whether or not to cut you a check. On a blog like this I've got a little more room to expound my ideas, so I'm giving you the 50 cent version.
The truth is, our film is a story about three things, all wrapped up together.
1) Searching for a key puzzle piece in the quest to understand the universe.
An article in the Chicago Tribune a few years ago by Ronald Kotulak described a certain laboratory in suburban Chicago that was in a race to find one of the most important things in the universe. It was a particle that would explain how and why everything had mass, taking us one huge step closer to a full understanding of how the universe worked. This particle is called the Higgs boson. As Mr. Kotulak put it so intriguingly,
"Finding the Higgs particle has become the greatest goal in physics. It will help scientists figure out why the universe is made of something instead of nothing, why there are atoms, people, planets, stars and galaxies. But it also will do much more than that. It will open a door to a hidden world of physics, where scientists hope to find unimagined wonders that will make relativity and quantum mechanics seem like Tinker Toys."
Now, this is a story about science, true. But it's the story of a search --- a search with high stakes. Even if the science doesn't grab you, if none of it makes any sense to you, our intention is to convey the power and the urgency of this search in a way that everyone can understand. But our hope is that the science will speak to you, on some level, because truths about the universe can be incredibly beautiful.
Not only that, but the search is also a race. A bigger, faster, better lab is opening up in Europe. Fermilab has only a couple of years left to solve the mystery, find the particle, and send its physicists to Sweden to claim the Nobel prize.
There's a problem, though. Fermilab is old and money is tight. This brings us to...
2) Fermilab is old, money is tight, and everything is politics. And does anyone care about science?
During the course of our shooting, this point was underscored by some devastating budget cuts which doomed the lab to close in 2009. A few months later, there were rumors of an even earlier closing date, perhaps in 2007. Many of our scientists expressed doubts about the current administration's commitment to their field, and expressed real concern about the role of science in America's future. We wanted to explore that story, too. So we talked to politicians and journalists about the specifics of this budget cut, the administration's attitude towards science, and what the funding cuts mean for the future of Fermilab.
How can Fermilab find the Higgs without support from Washington? Can Fermilab make its case to stay in business past 2007?
And, incidentally, what does the American Public think of all this? After all, the administration was elected by the rest of us.
While the physicists at Fermilab are moving closer to a deep and amazing understanding of the universe, it could be argued that America seems to be moving in different direction. A scientific search must be grounded in a context, and the context for our film is the United States in 2005. Culturally, our nation is becoming more and more conservative. Conservatives are in control of all aspects of the government, and social and moral conservatives are flexing their muscles all across the country. This can be seen in school districts from coast to coast that are under pressure to challenge the teaching of evolution with "intelligent design." This demonstrates a determination on the part of a growing percentage of our population to replace science with belief, a notion encouraged by the president in recent remarks. Scientists have been dismayed at the administration's misuse and misrepresentation of scientific results and analyses. As mentioned earlier, Fermilab's kind of science (pure research), once the crown jewel of America's science program, has fallen behind, squeezed by increases in research for defense. Fewer and fewer students are studying science, and America is forced to import many scientists, although that process itself has been impacted by strict immigration rules after September 11, 2001. With the impending closing of Fermilab's accelerator, most young physicists are itching to relocate to Europe, leading many to speculate about an impending "brain drain."
These issues are happening now, and will greatly impact America's future. They will certainly impact Fermilab's future, and all the people working there. Which brings us to...
3) The people searching for the Higgs boson.
No story is worth watching, reading, or listening to without compelling characters. When we were first discussing this project and doing our initial research, our scientific advisor said "you're at the right place. All the major people are here. And they're all really interesting, too." That was good news for us, because from the beginning our intention is to give another dimension to the "scientist" talking head that you see on NOVA or in interviews on the news. What do these people do when they're not searching for the Higgs boson? What do they think about? Our scientists have been learning the tango, playing in rock bands, attending the opera, playing volleyball, flying remote-control model airplanes, and rollerblading around the ring.
This is how our film will be different from other films about science --- it's also and equally about people and culture. One of our potential funders asked us "why aren't you submitting this to NOVA? Why isn't this a standard PBS science documentary?" Our answer is that we plan to tell this story through the people we meet, whether it's the polo-playing physicist from Argentina, the continent-hopping physicist newlyweds, or the young lead-singer in the Fermilab band who was voted "most likely to be a rock-star" in high school.
Or the character of the Tevatron itself --- Fermilab's aging yet still remarkable 4-mile particle accelerator.
Which brings up the final aspect of our story...
We are constructing this film over the course of one year. Fermilab shuts down the accelerator every October for maintenance and upgrades, and fires it up again in December to run continuously for 10 months. Our film will cover the course from startup to shutdown --- every month exploring the relationship between the search for the Higgs, the culture in which that search takes place, and the people involved in the search. A longer story will emerge from these monthly snapshots, raising questions about Fermilab's future, America's evolving relationship with science, and our understanding of the universe in which we live.
OK, OK, I've got a lot of work to do. Three sentences... whew.
If you're an artist of some sort, or a maker of media, you tend to get a certain question over and over and over. If you're a writer, when people find out what you do they usually ask "what type of books do you write?" If you're in a band, of course, it's "what kind of music do you play?" Painters get "so, what are your paintings like?" It can be a difficult question for any artist, because what they're working on is often complicated and personal. Most of the time it's easier to play a cut from your cd or show one of your sketches. But a filmmaker can't exactly haul around a theater, and a full-length documentary can be hard to explain in a few sentences.
And yet, filmmakers must answer that question in a clear, compelling way, often in three sentences. Because often that answer is the basis on which a potential viewer decides whether or not to watch the film, or a potential funder decides whether or not to cut you a check. On a blog like this I've got a little more room to expound my ideas, so I'm giving you the 50 cent version.
The truth is, our film is a story about three things, all wrapped up together.
1) Searching for a key puzzle piece in the quest to understand the universe.
An article in the Chicago Tribune a few years ago by Ronald Kotulak described a certain laboratory in suburban Chicago that was in a race to find one of the most important things in the universe. It was a particle that would explain how and why everything had mass, taking us one huge step closer to a full understanding of how the universe worked. This particle is called the Higgs boson. As Mr. Kotulak put it so intriguingly,
"Finding the Higgs particle has become the greatest goal in physics. It will help scientists figure out why the universe is made of something instead of nothing, why there are atoms, people, planets, stars and galaxies. But it also will do much more than that. It will open a door to a hidden world of physics, where scientists hope to find unimagined wonders that will make relativity and quantum mechanics seem like Tinker Toys."
Now, this is a story about science, true. But it's the story of a search --- a search with high stakes. Even if the science doesn't grab you, if none of it makes any sense to you, our intention is to convey the power and the urgency of this search in a way that everyone can understand. But our hope is that the science will speak to you, on some level, because truths about the universe can be incredibly beautiful.
Not only that, but the search is also a race. A bigger, faster, better lab is opening up in Europe. Fermilab has only a couple of years left to solve the mystery, find the particle, and send its physicists to Sweden to claim the Nobel prize.
There's a problem, though. Fermilab is old and money is tight. This brings us to...
2) Fermilab is old, money is tight, and everything is politics. And does anyone care about science?
During the course of our shooting, this point was underscored by some devastating budget cuts which doomed the lab to close in 2009. A few months later, there were rumors of an even earlier closing date, perhaps in 2007. Many of our scientists expressed doubts about the current administration's commitment to their field, and expressed real concern about the role of science in America's future. We wanted to explore that story, too. So we talked to politicians and journalists about the specifics of this budget cut, the administration's attitude towards science, and what the funding cuts mean for the future of Fermilab.
How can Fermilab find the Higgs without support from Washington? Can Fermilab make its case to stay in business past 2007?
And, incidentally, what does the American Public think of all this? After all, the administration was elected by the rest of us.
While the physicists at Fermilab are moving closer to a deep and amazing understanding of the universe, it could be argued that America seems to be moving in different direction. A scientific search must be grounded in a context, and the context for our film is the United States in 2005. Culturally, our nation is becoming more and more conservative. Conservatives are in control of all aspects of the government, and social and moral conservatives are flexing their muscles all across the country. This can be seen in school districts from coast to coast that are under pressure to challenge the teaching of evolution with "intelligent design." This demonstrates a determination on the part of a growing percentage of our population to replace science with belief, a notion encouraged by the president in recent remarks. Scientists have been dismayed at the administration's misuse and misrepresentation of scientific results and analyses. As mentioned earlier, Fermilab's kind of science (pure research), once the crown jewel of America's science program, has fallen behind, squeezed by increases in research for defense. Fewer and fewer students are studying science, and America is forced to import many scientists, although that process itself has been impacted by strict immigration rules after September 11, 2001. With the impending closing of Fermilab's accelerator, most young physicists are itching to relocate to Europe, leading many to speculate about an impending "brain drain."
These issues are happening now, and will greatly impact America's future. They will certainly impact Fermilab's future, and all the people working there. Which brings us to...
3) The people searching for the Higgs boson.
No story is worth watching, reading, or listening to without compelling characters. When we were first discussing this project and doing our initial research, our scientific advisor said "you're at the right place. All the major people are here. And they're all really interesting, too." That was good news for us, because from the beginning our intention is to give another dimension to the "scientist" talking head that you see on NOVA or in interviews on the news. What do these people do when they're not searching for the Higgs boson? What do they think about? Our scientists have been learning the tango, playing in rock bands, attending the opera, playing volleyball, flying remote-control model airplanes, and rollerblading around the ring.
This is how our film will be different from other films about science --- it's also and equally about people and culture. One of our potential funders asked us "why aren't you submitting this to NOVA? Why isn't this a standard PBS science documentary?" Our answer is that we plan to tell this story through the people we meet, whether it's the polo-playing physicist from Argentina, the continent-hopping physicist newlyweds, or the young lead-singer in the Fermilab band who was voted "most likely to be a rock-star" in high school.
Or the character of the Tevatron itself --- Fermilab's aging yet still remarkable 4-mile particle accelerator.
Which brings up the final aspect of our story...
We are constructing this film over the course of one year. Fermilab shuts down the accelerator every October for maintenance and upgrades, and fires it up again in December to run continuously for 10 months. Our film will cover the course from startup to shutdown --- every month exploring the relationship between the search for the Higgs, the culture in which that search takes place, and the people involved in the search. A longer story will emerge from these monthly snapshots, raising questions about Fermilab's future, America's evolving relationship with science, and our understanding of the universe in which we live.
OK, OK, I've got a lot of work to do. Three sentences... whew.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Brown Shirt and Crazy Pants
Yesterday we were scheduled to interview Congresswoman Judy Biggert, a Republican representative from Illinois. I wanted to speak to her because she was a Republican, she was chair of the Energy sub-committee of the Science committee, and because she had spoken out against the budget Bush released as being "counter-intuitive." Our plan was to meet on the Capitol steps (Andrew and I were coming from a hotel, Monica was staying with friends) at 10:30. Having to lug all our gear for a couple of miles down streets and in and out of the Metro stations, Andrew and I were running late. As we were huffing it towards the Capitol, I got a text message from Monica:
"Get here! I am being watched! Here they come!"
Andrew and I finally arrived, but were on the wrong side of the Capitol. There were guards and tourists, and I got out the camera to get some shots of the building and down the Mall towards the Washington monument. I called Monica and she said the guards had been circling over on her side. She had mentioned something to them about waiting for the camera crew, and had given them the shpiel about being part of a documentary group, blah blah blah. It sounded like the "business end" of the Capitol was on Monica's side, so we headed over there.
On this side there were limos, men and women in dark suits and ID tags walking quickly in and out, and occaisional smiling politician posing on the steps with a visiting special interest group (that day it was several hundred blue-jacketed Future Farmers of America), and more guards. Up on the stairs were a couple of guards with semi-automatic rifles and mirrored sunglasses. Naturally, I pulled out the camera and started shooting. Right away, of course, a group of three guards came over. To their credit, they were all pretty nice. Even relaxed.
"What are you guys up to?" One of them said. I told them. He nodded and asked a couple of questions about the documentary, actually sounding a little interested. "We saw you on the other side," he said. Monica was right, they had been watching us. I think he was bored and a little diversion was always welcome. I asked about setting up the tripod and ran into an example of procedure trumping common sense.
"No tripods," they all said. "If you want to use a tripod you have to get a permit."
OK, how do you get a permit?
"You can give me your name and I can contact the sargeant of arms and set up an appointment. Usually takes about five days."
Five days?
"Yeah."
But, it was OK to use the same camera without the tripod. Sure, I can understand that they don't want someone setting up a rifle on a tripod to get a good shot at something. But here I am, holding a video camera, not a rifle. Put it on the tripod: ALERT! Take it off the tripod: yawn.
Anyway, I packed up the tripod and walked off to get some wider shots (I actually used a big orange traffic cone as a makeshift tripod). While I was gone, another guard, this one big, bald, and more uptight, came over by Monica and Andrew with a walkie-talkie. Monica heard him say "I'm standing over here by Brown Shirt. Yeah. Over." Monica looked down. Yep, she was wearing a brown shirt. Then the guard said in a not-so-quiet voice, pointing in my general direction. "Is she with Crazy Pants?"
Crazy Pants?
The other guard nodded. Monica, extremely amused, asked the guard who had been speaking conversationally with us, "did I hear right? Did he just call my co-director 'crazy pants?'" The guard looked a little embarassed and said, softly, "some of these guys are a little more hard-core than others."
But, Crazy Pants??
When she related this to me, I must confess I looked at myself in the mirror every time I went into the bathroom. My pants were black, cotton, nothing special. Monica and Andrew both assured me there was nothing special about my pants.
It does highlight the different world we live in now --- Monica said she remembers a time when anyone could just walk in to the Capitol, go right up to the observation gallery and watch them on the house or the senate floor, and even walk right into the office of your representative or senator. Just walk right in. If you tried that now, they would shut down the capitol and you'd be arrested. Not that you'd ever get that close, with semi-automatic rifles, guards, and their keen powers of observation. They've got you pegged from the moment you step near the Capitol.
But, really. Crazy Pants???
"Get here! I am being watched! Here they come!"
Andrew and I finally arrived, but were on the wrong side of the Capitol. There were guards and tourists, and I got out the camera to get some shots of the building and down the Mall towards the Washington monument. I called Monica and she said the guards had been circling over on her side. She had mentioned something to them about waiting for the camera crew, and had given them the shpiel about being part of a documentary group, blah blah blah. It sounded like the "business end" of the Capitol was on Monica's side, so we headed over there.
On this side there were limos, men and women in dark suits and ID tags walking quickly in and out, and occaisional smiling politician posing on the steps with a visiting special interest group (that day it was several hundred blue-jacketed Future Farmers of America), and more guards. Up on the stairs were a couple of guards with semi-automatic rifles and mirrored sunglasses. Naturally, I pulled out the camera and started shooting. Right away, of course, a group of three guards came over. To their credit, they were all pretty nice. Even relaxed.
"What are you guys up to?" One of them said. I told them. He nodded and asked a couple of questions about the documentary, actually sounding a little interested. "We saw you on the other side," he said. Monica was right, they had been watching us. I think he was bored and a little diversion was always welcome. I asked about setting up the tripod and ran into an example of procedure trumping common sense.
"No tripods," they all said. "If you want to use a tripod you have to get a permit."
OK, how do you get a permit?
"You can give me your name and I can contact the sargeant of arms and set up an appointment. Usually takes about five days."
Five days?
"Yeah."
But, it was OK to use the same camera without the tripod. Sure, I can understand that they don't want someone setting up a rifle on a tripod to get a good shot at something. But here I am, holding a video camera, not a rifle. Put it on the tripod: ALERT! Take it off the tripod: yawn.
Anyway, I packed up the tripod and walked off to get some wider shots (I actually used a big orange traffic cone as a makeshift tripod). While I was gone, another guard, this one big, bald, and more uptight, came over by Monica and Andrew with a walkie-talkie. Monica heard him say "I'm standing over here by Brown Shirt. Yeah. Over." Monica looked down. Yep, she was wearing a brown shirt. Then the guard said in a not-so-quiet voice, pointing in my general direction. "Is she with Crazy Pants?"
Crazy Pants?
The other guard nodded. Monica, extremely amused, asked the guard who had been speaking conversationally with us, "did I hear right? Did he just call my co-director 'crazy pants?'" The guard looked a little embarassed and said, softly, "some of these guys are a little more hard-core than others."
But, Crazy Pants??
When she related this to me, I must confess I looked at myself in the mirror every time I went into the bathroom. My pants were black, cotton, nothing special. Monica and Andrew both assured me there was nothing special about my pants.
It does highlight the different world we live in now --- Monica said she remembers a time when anyone could just walk in to the Capitol, go right up to the observation gallery and watch them on the house or the senate floor, and even walk right into the office of your representative or senator. Just walk right in. If you tried that now, they would shut down the capitol and you'd be arrested. Not that you'd ever get that close, with semi-automatic rifles, guards, and their keen powers of observation. They've got you pegged from the moment you step near the Capitol.
But, really. Crazy Pants???
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
On the Potomac
I'm sitting in the lobby of our little hotel. Today we interviewed John Marburger, the president's science advisor. He was sincere and honest, although, understandably, at times a mouthpiece for the administration. It was interesting to hear particle physics put in a large context, though --- he said "when you're working on a project, of course it's the most important project in the world. When it gets canceled, of course you think it's the worst thing that could have happened. But there are other things more relevant to human progress than particle physics." Yesterday we heard from our physicists from Fermilab as they argued for continued funding for Fermilab at a High Energy Physics Advisory Panel meeting --- I don't think they would have appreciated the kind of marginalizing rhetoric that Marburger employed, but it will be an interesting spot for the viewer of our movie in which to find him/herself: so, what is the importance of particle physics? Why should I care?
And, of course, that's one of the main questions we will be asking.
Also got some B-roll of the white house, to locate us here. Tomorrow we meet with Judy Biggert, a senator from Illinois, and the chairwoman of the science subcommittee, followed by Chris Mooney, a journalist specializing in the intersection between science and politics. Alas, Natalie Angier had to cancel due to a family emergency, and House Speaker Hastert had to cancel due to his schedule.
Must get to bed now --- more later.
And, of course, that's one of the main questions we will be asking.
Also got some B-roll of the white house, to locate us here. Tomorrow we meet with Judy Biggert, a senator from Illinois, and the chairwoman of the science subcommittee, followed by Chris Mooney, a journalist specializing in the intersection between science and politics. Alas, Natalie Angier had to cancel due to a family emergency, and House Speaker Hastert had to cancel due to his schedule.
Must get to bed now --- more later.
Monday, July 11, 2005
DC, here we come
Today Andrew and I fly out for Washington DC. Monica drove out over the weekend, so she's already there. We've got several interviews scheduled, so it should be a busy three days. It's an amazing statement of electronic engineering to say that everything (our camera, our lights, our sound gear, and our video tapes) can fit into one medium-sized rolling suitcase. Add the tripod and you have an incredibly portable rig. At this fidelity, this was not possible even 10 years ago.
Wish us luck...!
I'll try to post once or twice from the road.
Wish us luck...!
I'll try to post once or twice from the road.
Wednesday, July 6, 2005
At last, and pictures
I apologize for the strange spacing --- I can't quite figure out the html code to make this neater.
We managed to get the tiny wireless video camera strapped into place on the wing. Dr. Zager brought along a couple of strips of velcro, which he mounted perfectly on the right side. He and Andreas, the Swedish Physicist, devised a terrific plan to acquire the shot we wanted.
If you remember, I was looking for a shot of the Fermilab hi-rise (the main building in the facility) from the air (see "bird's eye view - sort of"). The plane that they strapped the camera to belonged to the Barnstormer's club, and was what they call a "trainer." This is sort of like the cars that they used in Driver's Ed in high school, the ones with the extra brake on the instructor's side. There were two remote control consoles wired together. One of them was the "trainer" console and the other was for the student. The trainer could assign control to the student and then take it back in an emergency (such as a nose-dive).
It was Andreas' idea to try to fly the airplane by watching the video feed --- in other words, he was going to sit at the picnic table with one eye smashed against the viewfinder of the video camera and fly the plane by, in essence, looking through the wireless camera on the wing. Imagine mounting a video camera on the hood of a car and trying to drive by watching the feed on a TV. Heck, it's basically a video game.
Anyway, Dr. Zager had the trainer console and they took it up in the air. After about 10 minutes they started to get the hang of it. We heard a lot of "Do I have it?" "You have it." "OK, I'm taking it back." "Do you have it?" "Do you want it?" "Give it to me." "No, I've got it." "Take it!" "Where is it?" "Who has it?" It was really quite exciting. And I think we got our shot. They had a lot of fun, and are extremely excited to get the footage from the flight.
Here are some pictures from CDF, which is the huge building that houses one of the two detectors. The detectors are located on opposite sides of the 4-mile ring, and they are two spots where the protons crash into the anti-protons. In a sense, the detector is like a giant MRI tunnel. The collisions happen (millions per second) and the giant donut shape takes "pictures" of the resulting sub-atomic debris. These pictures are some of the more photogenic equipment we found in there...
We managed to get the tiny wireless video camera strapped into place on the wing. Dr. Zager brought along a couple of strips of velcro, which he mounted perfectly on the right side. He and Andreas, the Swedish Physicist, devised a terrific plan to acquire the shot we wanted.
If you remember, I was looking for a shot of the Fermilab hi-rise (the main building in the facility) from the air (see "bird's eye view - sort of"). The plane that they strapped the camera to belonged to the Barnstormer's club, and was what they call a "trainer." This is sort of like the cars that they used in Driver's Ed in high school, the ones with the extra brake on the instructor's side. There were two remote control consoles wired together. One of them was the "trainer" console and the other was for the student. The trainer could assign control to the student and then take it back in an emergency (such as a nose-dive).
It was Andreas' idea to try to fly the airplane by watching the video feed --- in other words, he was going to sit at the picnic table with one eye smashed against the viewfinder of the video camera and fly the plane by, in essence, looking through the wireless camera on the wing. Imagine mounting a video camera on the hood of a car and trying to drive by watching the feed on a TV. Heck, it's basically a video game.
Anyway, Dr. Zager had the trainer console and they took it up in the air. After about 10 minutes they started to get the hang of it. We heard a lot of "Do I have it?" "You have it." "OK, I'm taking it back." "Do you have it?" "Do you want it?" "Give it to me." "No, I've got it." "Take it!" "Where is it?" "Who has it?" It was really quite exciting. And I think we got our shot. They had a lot of fun, and are extremely excited to get the footage from the flight.
 | Jim Zager, Barnstormers president, prepping the plane |
 | The camera, mounted with velcro |
 | Andreas, aka "The Swedish Physicist" |
 | The plane, ready to fly |
Here are some pictures from CDF, which is the huge building that houses one of the two detectors. The detectors are located on opposite sides of the 4-mile ring, and they are two spots where the protons crash into the anti-protons. In a sense, the detector is like a giant MRI tunnel. The collisions happen (millions per second) and the giant donut shape takes "pictures" of the resulting sub-atomic debris. These pictures are some of the more photogenic equipment we found in there...
 | I'm sure there must have been a plan |
 | I don't know why they need liquid helium, but they do |
 | Beautiful, in its own way |
 | The Control room in the detector, where they monitor the collisions. Not to be confused with the Main Control Room, where they run the entire accelerator and where we got yelled at (see "trouble in the control room" |
 | The Control Room, wide shot |
Sunday, July 3, 2005
Andrew comes through
Andrew, as I said, has been working furiously to prepare for our trip to Washington D.C. While Monica and I were interviewing the Fermilab archivist, Monica's cell phone beeped with a text-message. It was from Andrew. "We got Marburger!"
John Marburger is President Bush's science advisor. It's a little daunting to think we'll be speaking to a fairly high-ranking member of the Bush Administration...
It's amazing what you can accomplish if you just ask. Plus, Andrew writes a mean email.
PS we achieved radio-controlled airplane cinematography. Images to come.
John Marburger is President Bush's science advisor. It's a little daunting to think we'll be speaking to a fairly high-ranking member of the Bush Administration...
It's amazing what you can accomplish if you just ask. Plus, Andrew writes a mean email.
PS we achieved radio-controlled airplane cinematography. Images to come.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
tomatoes, barns, and champagne
Just a quick update, with a more detailed one to come early next week.
Last Friday we attended the celebration of a Tevatron milestone, complete with champagne and speeches: they had achieved One Inverse Femtobarn.
Huh?
That's what we thought. We asked a few physicists there "so, what is luminosity? And what's an inverse femtobarn?" We got a lot of "uhh, well... um... kind of complicated... let's just say it's a lot of collisions..." etc. In other words, they didn't want to get into a 30 minute lecture on something too complicated for us to understand.
As you hopefully know by now (if not, rest assured in the next couple of posts I'll be giving a layman's primer on how a supercollider works), Fermilab smashes protons together and looks at what happens from the collision. As I've said earlier, scientists hate exceptions and love trends, so the more collisions the better to base their conclusions on. And, of course, they count (or rather, a network of computers counts) the number of collisions they achieve.
In this "run," which is called "Run II" and started in June 2001, they have now achieved a huge amount of collisions. Millions. But, rather than just listing the number of collisions, they use a very complicated method of measuring, which I will attempt to summarize here, quoting liberally from an article in the Stanford newspaper (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/july21/femtobarn-721.html)
At dinner one night in December 1942, physicists M. G. Holloway and C. P. Parker were lamenting the lack of a catchy unit name for discussing the size of an atomic nucleus of uranium. They considered naming a unit of this area "the Oppenheimer" or "the Bethe," after physicists leading a project involving uranium cross sections.
Since Holloway and Parker were on the campus of Purdue University in Indiana, the barn, a dominant feature of Midwestern U.S. farmlands, naturally came to mind.
This is appropriate for Fermilab, since there are lots of barns on the property. Some of them, in fact, were imported from other farm locations. And don't forget the buffalo.
So, we know where the "barn" of "femtobarn" comes from. Now for the "femto."
Start with a half. We all know what that means. Then, a quarter, an eighth, a 100th, etc. Remember scientific notation? 10 to the negative 2 means you move the decimal to the left by 2 places, resulting in 0.1, or one tenth. "Femto" means a factor of 10 to the negative 15th: or 0.00000000000001, or a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth. A femtobarn, then, is a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of the nucleus of an atom of uranium. Said another way, that's 10 to the negative 39 square centimeters --- an incomprehensibly small unit of area.
Still with me? Here comes one of those great scientific analogies that can make everything make sense.
Imagine you throw enough tomatoes at a barn to get an average of two tomato hits per square foot. If the barn door is 10 feet by 15 feet, then the cross section for tomato-barn door interactions is 150 square feet, and the number of tomatoes that splat on the door is given by:
150 square feet x 2 tomatoes per square foot = 300 tomato interactions.
So, that's what Fermilab does, except it replaces square feet with femtobarns and tomatoes with protons.
Huh?
I don't really get it either. Let's just say it's a lot of collisions. (I invite Dr. Oreglia, our science advisor, to comment).
More later, including our third attempt at getting our wireless video camera aloft tomorrow and hopefully meeting the new incoming director, Pierre Odonne.
Last Friday we attended the celebration of a Tevatron milestone, complete with champagne and speeches: they had achieved One Inverse Femtobarn.
Huh?
That's what we thought. We asked a few physicists there "so, what is luminosity? And what's an inverse femtobarn?" We got a lot of "uhh, well... um... kind of complicated... let's just say it's a lot of collisions..." etc. In other words, they didn't want to get into a 30 minute lecture on something too complicated for us to understand.
As you hopefully know by now (if not, rest assured in the next couple of posts I'll be giving a layman's primer on how a supercollider works), Fermilab smashes protons together and looks at what happens from the collision. As I've said earlier, scientists hate exceptions and love trends, so the more collisions the better to base their conclusions on. And, of course, they count (or rather, a network of computers counts) the number of collisions they achieve.
In this "run," which is called "Run II" and started in June 2001, they have now achieved a huge amount of collisions. Millions. But, rather than just listing the number of collisions, they use a very complicated method of measuring, which I will attempt to summarize here, quoting liberally from an article in the Stanford newspaper (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/july21/femtobarn-721.html)
At dinner one night in December 1942, physicists M. G. Holloway and C. P. Parker were lamenting the lack of a catchy unit name for discussing the size of an atomic nucleus of uranium. They considered naming a unit of this area "the Oppenheimer" or "the Bethe," after physicists leading a project involving uranium cross sections.
Since Holloway and Parker were on the campus of Purdue University in Indiana, the barn, a dominant feature of Midwestern U.S. farmlands, naturally came to mind.
This is appropriate for Fermilab, since there are lots of barns on the property. Some of them, in fact, were imported from other farm locations. And don't forget the buffalo.
So, we know where the "barn" of "femtobarn" comes from. Now for the "femto."
Start with a half. We all know what that means. Then, a quarter, an eighth, a 100th, etc. Remember scientific notation? 10 to the negative 2 means you move the decimal to the left by 2 places, resulting in 0.1, or one tenth. "Femto" means a factor of 10 to the negative 15th: or 0.00000000000001, or a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth. A femtobarn, then, is a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of the nucleus of an atom of uranium. Said another way, that's 10 to the negative 39 square centimeters --- an incomprehensibly small unit of area.
Still with me? Here comes one of those great scientific analogies that can make everything make sense.
Imagine you throw enough tomatoes at a barn to get an average of two tomato hits per square foot. If the barn door is 10 feet by 15 feet, then the cross section for tomato-barn door interactions is 150 square feet, and the number of tomatoes that splat on the door is given by:
150 square feet x 2 tomatoes per square foot = 300 tomato interactions.
So, that's what Fermilab does, except it replaces square feet with femtobarns and tomatoes with protons.
Huh?
I don't really get it either. Let's just say it's a lot of collisions. (I invite Dr. Oreglia, our science advisor, to comment).
More later, including our third attempt at getting our wireless video camera aloft tomorrow and hopefully meeting the new incoming director, Pierre Odonne.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Listening, dancing, and nano-seconds
A weekend full of tango. On Friday night Monica and I went to a tango club in River North, sort of a warehouse district here in Chicago. It was very quiet at first, and then a series of nice cars quietly began arriving and unloading nicely dressed men and women in stiletto heels. We set up and got some footage, but all in all the place was dark, crowded, our time was limited, and we might not use much of it.
However, the next night, we went to the home of Dr. Marcela Carena, Argentinian tango-dancing, polo-riding (and, as we found out Friday, hang-gliding) theoretical physicist. It was great--- there were two instructors there and a house full of couples. They had cleared out the living room and dining room, and a cd full of music was playing in the background. After a glass of wine, couples started shuffling to the dance floor to "warm up." They danced slowly, occasionally stopping to quietly ask each other "does my foot go there, or there?" After about 30 minutes, the lesson began. The instructors, a male and a female, demonstrated, coached, cajoled, critiqued, praised, and encouraged. They split the group into halves and made them swap partners and made everyone watch a particularly successful couple. Marcela and her husband were working on a particularly slow move in which Marcela dragged a toe in a circle on the floor ... they were working on the timing of when Carlos would move his shoulders and go to the next point in the dance.
As Monica pointed out, the Tango is a complex dance of relationships --- it's all about shifting control, about leading and following. There is often a certain amount of tension between the two dancers; in fact, one version of the dance involves what looks like a gentle shoving match between the man and the woman. There are complicated steps, moves, postures and poses that can look effortless when a skilled couple is on the floor but for the rest of us could feel a bit like a math equation set to music.
It turned out that nearly everyone in the room was a physicist --- even the male teacher! During a break in the evening, I asked Marcela if physicists made good dancers. She immediately laughed and said, definitively, "no." She said physicists were often too procedural --- because the Tango is a series of steps, a sequence, physicists often latch onto that far too strongly, since it's in their nature and their work to do so. "That makes it difficult for them to listen, to feel the dance," she said. Another female physicist from South America (the instructors were the only Americans present, besides us) was standing nearby and said "the men don't make good dancers. The women are much better." They both laughed but pressed the point. The men get hung up on procedure and sequence worse than the women, it seemed. "They perform this series of steps no matter what," the other physicist said, "even if the music is doing something completely different. They don't always listen."
"It's all about listening," Marcela said. "Not just listening to the music, but listening to the other person." The male, traditionally, leads the dance. But as Marcela explained, that doesn't mean the male decides what to do and the female just follows. "The leader of the dance, in a sense, asks permission for a move. Can I do this? And the female responds yes or no. The leader has to listen with his body, responding to the moves and communication of his partner. And all of it happens non-verbally, in a nano-second."
So, what does this have to do with the Higgs boson? Why are we filming physicists dancing?
There are ways a filmmaker can tell a story, or make a point, and there are ways for a filmmaker to find moments in which the story tells itself. Those are usually the better moments in a film. For me, that evening in Marcela's house was one of those moments. In addition to showing a terrific unexpected side to a theoretical physicist (what, you mean they don't just sit around writing equations all day?), the Tango itself became a really nice metaphor. The idea that there is tension between the partners who are dancing together is very apt for our film, as there are many tension-filled dualities we've come across (Fermilab & CERN, high-energy physics and the Bush budget, the CDF & D0 detectors). Each of those pairings is engaged in a dance of sorts, pushing and pulling while trying to move in the same direction.
More important and interesting for me, though, is the idea Marcela spoke of: a delicate balancing act between the procedure and the instinct that the physicists engage in while dancing the tango. While a rigorous search for anything involves a combination of hard work and intuition, the search for the Higgs boson carries this combination to an extreme level as it involves arguably the highest intellect AND the largest leap of faith of just about anything going. In a sense, like the Tango, such a search is the perfect meeting point of the left brain and the right brain, intellect and spirit, science and art (I found it very telling that Marcela and her friend theorized that women have an easier time with this). So for me, the search for the Higgs boson was beautifully encapsulated in this strange scene of dancing physicists struggling to remember their steps while trying to let the music move them, listening, listening, and all of it happening for the length of a song and in the space of a nano-second.
During the evening, Marcela's 4-year old son, Julius, was racing around, entertaining himself (the baby-sitter had failed to show up). At one point Julius was at the top of the stairs with his dad's cell phone, taking pictures of us. He kept telling us to say "cheese!" He started to get a little cranky and tired, and Marcela sat with him on the sofa for a few minutes, speaking softly and rapidly in Spanish to him. I could only make out a few words but it sounded as though she were explaining that they were dancing, and he was trying to tell her SHE needed to go to bed. She asked if he wanted to go to bed on the sofa. No. Where, then? He decided the recliner. They pulled it out and extended it, and Julius kept opening and closing the reclining chair as Marcela hit a second wind and went back to dancing. It was nearly midnight. Monica shook her head in amazement. "I don't see how she can do it all."
However, the next night, we went to the home of Dr. Marcela Carena, Argentinian tango-dancing, polo-riding (and, as we found out Friday, hang-gliding) theoretical physicist. It was great--- there were two instructors there and a house full of couples. They had cleared out the living room and dining room, and a cd full of music was playing in the background. After a glass of wine, couples started shuffling to the dance floor to "warm up." They danced slowly, occasionally stopping to quietly ask each other "does my foot go there, or there?" After about 30 minutes, the lesson began. The instructors, a male and a female, demonstrated, coached, cajoled, critiqued, praised, and encouraged. They split the group into halves and made them swap partners and made everyone watch a particularly successful couple. Marcela and her husband were working on a particularly slow move in which Marcela dragged a toe in a circle on the floor ... they were working on the timing of when Carlos would move his shoulders and go to the next point in the dance.
As Monica pointed out, the Tango is a complex dance of relationships --- it's all about shifting control, about leading and following. There is often a certain amount of tension between the two dancers; in fact, one version of the dance involves what looks like a gentle shoving match between the man and the woman. There are complicated steps, moves, postures and poses that can look effortless when a skilled couple is on the floor but for the rest of us could feel a bit like a math equation set to music.
It turned out that nearly everyone in the room was a physicist --- even the male teacher! During a break in the evening, I asked Marcela if physicists made good dancers. She immediately laughed and said, definitively, "no." She said physicists were often too procedural --- because the Tango is a series of steps, a sequence, physicists often latch onto that far too strongly, since it's in their nature and their work to do so. "That makes it difficult for them to listen, to feel the dance," she said. Another female physicist from South America (the instructors were the only Americans present, besides us) was standing nearby and said "the men don't make good dancers. The women are much better." They both laughed but pressed the point. The men get hung up on procedure and sequence worse than the women, it seemed. "They perform this series of steps no matter what," the other physicist said, "even if the music is doing something completely different. They don't always listen."
"It's all about listening," Marcela said. "Not just listening to the music, but listening to the other person." The male, traditionally, leads the dance. But as Marcela explained, that doesn't mean the male decides what to do and the female just follows. "The leader of the dance, in a sense, asks permission for a move. Can I do this? And the female responds yes or no. The leader has to listen with his body, responding to the moves and communication of his partner. And all of it happens non-verbally, in a nano-second."
So, what does this have to do with the Higgs boson? Why are we filming physicists dancing?
There are ways a filmmaker can tell a story, or make a point, and there are ways for a filmmaker to find moments in which the story tells itself. Those are usually the better moments in a film. For me, that evening in Marcela's house was one of those moments. In addition to showing a terrific unexpected side to a theoretical physicist (what, you mean they don't just sit around writing equations all day?), the Tango itself became a really nice metaphor. The idea that there is tension between the partners who are dancing together is very apt for our film, as there are many tension-filled dualities we've come across (Fermilab & CERN, high-energy physics and the Bush budget, the CDF & D0 detectors). Each of those pairings is engaged in a dance of sorts, pushing and pulling while trying to move in the same direction.
More important and interesting for me, though, is the idea Marcela spoke of: a delicate balancing act between the procedure and the instinct that the physicists engage in while dancing the tango. While a rigorous search for anything involves a combination of hard work and intuition, the search for the Higgs boson carries this combination to an extreme level as it involves arguably the highest intellect AND the largest leap of faith of just about anything going. In a sense, like the Tango, such a search is the perfect meeting point of the left brain and the right brain, intellect and spirit, science and art (I found it very telling that Marcela and her friend theorized that women have an easier time with this). So for me, the search for the Higgs boson was beautifully encapsulated in this strange scene of dancing physicists struggling to remember their steps while trying to let the music move them, listening, listening, and all of it happening for the length of a song and in the space of a nano-second.
During the evening, Marcela's 4-year old son, Julius, was racing around, entertaining himself (the baby-sitter had failed to show up). At one point Julius was at the top of the stairs with his dad's cell phone, taking pictures of us. He kept telling us to say "cheese!" He started to get a little cranky and tired, and Marcela sat with him on the sofa for a few minutes, speaking softly and rapidly in Spanish to him. I could only make out a few words but it sounded as though she were explaining that they were dancing, and he was trying to tell her SHE needed to go to bed. She asked if he wanted to go to bed on the sofa. No. Where, then? He decided the recliner. They pulled it out and extended it, and Julius kept opening and closing the reclining chair as Marcela hit a second wind and went back to dancing. It was nearly midnight. Monica shook her head in amazement. "I don't see how she can do it all."
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Tango, anyone?
On Friday and Saturday we are scheduled to meet with the elusive Dr. Marcela Carena, an Argentinian theoretical physicist whom everyone describes as "fiesty," "dynamic," "full of life," "a real spitfire," or something similar. She's pretty amazing, and we've gotten footage of her in her office, in meetings, and on a horse taking polo lessons. When we first went to her house, we met her husband (a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, a facility nearby) and her two sons. The younger one (I can't think of his name) was about four, and apparently mistook me for someone from Fermilab and immediately grabbed my hand and wanted to show me his toys and have me watch a cartoon. He never left my side the whole time we were there.
On Friday we'll be in a club, where we expect some fancy footwork since Dr. Carena will be with her Tango instructor. On Saturday night we'll actually be at her house, where she teaches Tango lessons to other physicists from Fermilab. If you've been reading, you've seen me use the term "camera gold" before to refer to priceless moments that will almost certainly make the cut in the editing room (Robin Erbacher's red hard hat with her name in stick-on letters comes to mind). A room of physicists learning how to tango? Ahem.
Thanks to Tickmeister for asking some good followup questions about the budget. See those comments for more clarification. I'll try to make a post which concisely sums up the budget problems for Fermilab.
Our trip to Washington DC is in the planning stages for mid-July. We're interviewing a journalist named Chris Mooney --- he's built a career on writing about the Bush administration's relationship to science. Here's his site. Granted, he's a bit left of center. We'll be balancing that out with interviews we hope to get with Bush's science advisor, John Marburger, and the Department of Energy's Ray Orbach. Andrew is working on setting those up. Not an easy task. Now we just have to figure out how to pay for our airfare...
On Friday we'll be in a club, where we expect some fancy footwork since Dr. Carena will be with her Tango instructor. On Saturday night we'll actually be at her house, where she teaches Tango lessons to other physicists from Fermilab. If you've been reading, you've seen me use the term "camera gold" before to refer to priceless moments that will almost certainly make the cut in the editing room (Robin Erbacher's red hard hat with her name in stick-on letters comes to mind). A room of physicists learning how to tango? Ahem.
Thanks to Tickmeister for asking some good followup questions about the budget. See those comments for more clarification. I'll try to make a post which concisely sums up the budget problems for Fermilab.
Our trip to Washington DC is in the planning stages for mid-July. We're interviewing a journalist named Chris Mooney --- he's built a career on writing about the Bush administration's relationship to science. Here's his site. Granted, he's a bit left of center. We'll be balancing that out with interviews we hope to get with Bush's science advisor, John Marburger, and the Department of Energy's Ray Orbach. Andrew is working on setting those up. Not an easy task. Now we just have to figure out how to pay for our airfare...
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Bird's eye view - not yet
If scientists are careful people, engineers are cautious people.
We went down to the Barnstormer's club official June meeting. We had two miniature wireless cameras and were ready to interview and send the cameras aloft. But weather intervened --- too much wind. And a bolt of lightning in the distance made the club president a little too nervous. "I'm not a risk-taker," he said. Engineers are cautious people (except the Swedish physicist. He was ready to go). They sure love our miniature spy video cameras, though.
We went down to the Barnstormer's club official June meeting. We had two miniature wireless cameras and were ready to interview and send the cameras aloft. But weather intervened --- too much wind. And a bolt of lightning in the distance made the club president a little too nervous. "I'm not a risk-taker," he said. Engineers are cautious people (except the Swedish physicist. He was ready to go). They sure love our miniature spy video cameras, though.
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
An audience with the chief
Dr. Michael Witherell is the outgoing head of Fermilab. A lot has happened on his watch: they discovered the Top Quark there (a huge milestone in particle physics), 9/11, and now a potentially devastating budget cut. He was very candid when we spoke with him --- one of the things we've had to get used to in making this documentary is what I've described in other posts: scientists who are accustomed to presenting perfect data. This affects how they think about interviewing, causing them to assume we want only clear ideas perfectly expressed. They strip away the rough edges and the emotions and the politics and the strange day to day oddities. In their defense, they spend a lifetime ignoring oddities (as Ben Kilminster told me, it's bad science to pay attention to exceptions) so it's only expected that they think that's what we would want, too. I mentioned in an earlier post the scientist whose career was devastated by the budget cut and refused to be interviewed because he thought he would become too emotional and couldn't conduct a calm interview with a clear presentation of the facts, which is what he thought we wanted.
Some scientists, though, really want to be on camera. After another interview that was not particularly riveting, our interviewee followed us out and asked what he could do to be a better interview subject. Apparently he could sense that it was not camera "gold" that we were getting.
I had to stop and think --- I didn't really know what to say. I realized it's very easy for us behind the camera to recognize what's working and what's not, but it's not so easy to explain how to get there to someone on the other side without sounding sensationalist. It made me realize how easy it is to step on that slippery slope towards being the camera that zooms in on the tears, that shows the close-up of the blood stain, that chases the victims and shoves a microphone in someone's face and says "how do you feel?" In our disappointment that the emotional scientist (see how fascinating that phrase sounds? Can you see why we're so obsessed with it?) didn't want to be on camera because he couldn't keep it together, there's a twinge of guilt that we actually ARE looking for the oddities, the exceptions.
So I said something about "truth" and "honesty" in answers and about being brief and not using long rambling sentences, all of which are true. But then Monica said simply "you must be provocative." I stopped and realized how true that was, and yet how strange it made me feel to actually hear it said that way. But if we have over two hundred hours of raw footage (which is what we're expecting), consider what happens when you have two scientists discussing a career-changing budget cut. One says, sitting upright and expressionless, "Needless to say, we are very disappointed, but the scientific community must respond to the wishes of the political community, and often this is at odds with our intentions and our hopes as we move forward towards a better understanding of the universe. However, other opportunities for growth still exist at this facility and we will doubtless reallocate our resources to pursue these avenues." The other scientist says, leaning forward and gesturing, "It sucks! I was really mad! I thought, 'what are these idiots in Washington thinking? How could they do this?'"
We had both of those responses. As an editor, as a viewer, as a cameraperson, and as a director, the second response is much more interesting. But is it as accurate? Is it true? Is it honest? Is it entertaining? Is it exploitative? Less sophisticated? More sophisticated? Is it an oddity? Is it bad science?
Luckily, making documentaries is not science. Sometimes oddities tell the same story much better.
Dr. Witherell was a great interview subject because he fell right in the middle. He, like Judy Jackson, is part politician. But he's also an intensely passionate scientist, and this makes him great in front of the camera. We were fearing lots of careful answers, guarded responses, but he was engaging and honest. He immediately plunged into his take on the Bush administration, America's relationship to science, the troubles Fermilab has seen recently, the search for the Higgs (here he gave us both: he said something careful about how the particle physics community will all benefit whomever finds it and how they are cooperating in the search wherever it leads, but then with a slight push admitted "of course I want to find it here!") and a realistic look at its future. He was, in a word, great. The only trouble was Stef was not present and I'm afraid my camera and lighting arrangements were not, in a word, great.
Dr. Witherell's last day in office is June 30. He is due to lay off 100 people before he leaves. Not sure how we're going to address this.
Some scientists, though, really want to be on camera. After another interview that was not particularly riveting, our interviewee followed us out and asked what he could do to be a better interview subject. Apparently he could sense that it was not camera "gold" that we were getting.
I had to stop and think --- I didn't really know what to say. I realized it's very easy for us behind the camera to recognize what's working and what's not, but it's not so easy to explain how to get there to someone on the other side without sounding sensationalist. It made me realize how easy it is to step on that slippery slope towards being the camera that zooms in on the tears, that shows the close-up of the blood stain, that chases the victims and shoves a microphone in someone's face and says "how do you feel?" In our disappointment that the emotional scientist (see how fascinating that phrase sounds? Can you see why we're so obsessed with it?) didn't want to be on camera because he couldn't keep it together, there's a twinge of guilt that we actually ARE looking for the oddities, the exceptions.
So I said something about "truth" and "honesty" in answers and about being brief and not using long rambling sentences, all of which are true. But then Monica said simply "you must be provocative." I stopped and realized how true that was, and yet how strange it made me feel to actually hear it said that way. But if we have over two hundred hours of raw footage (which is what we're expecting), consider what happens when you have two scientists discussing a career-changing budget cut. One says, sitting upright and expressionless, "Needless to say, we are very disappointed, but the scientific community must respond to the wishes of the political community, and often this is at odds with our intentions and our hopes as we move forward towards a better understanding of the universe. However, other opportunities for growth still exist at this facility and we will doubtless reallocate our resources to pursue these avenues." The other scientist says, leaning forward and gesturing, "It sucks! I was really mad! I thought, 'what are these idiots in Washington thinking? How could they do this?'"
We had both of those responses. As an editor, as a viewer, as a cameraperson, and as a director, the second response is much more interesting. But is it as accurate? Is it true? Is it honest? Is it entertaining? Is it exploitative? Less sophisticated? More sophisticated? Is it an oddity? Is it bad science?
Luckily, making documentaries is not science. Sometimes oddities tell the same story much better.
Dr. Witherell was a great interview subject because he fell right in the middle. He, like Judy Jackson, is part politician. But he's also an intensely passionate scientist, and this makes him great in front of the camera. We were fearing lots of careful answers, guarded responses, but he was engaging and honest. He immediately plunged into his take on the Bush administration, America's relationship to science, the troubles Fermilab has seen recently, the search for the Higgs (here he gave us both: he said something careful about how the particle physics community will all benefit whomever finds it and how they are cooperating in the search wherever it leads, but then with a slight push admitted "of course I want to find it here!") and a realistic look at its future. He was, in a word, great. The only trouble was Stef was not present and I'm afraid my camera and lighting arrangements were not, in a word, great.
Dr. Witherell's last day in office is June 30. He is due to lay off 100 people before he leaves. Not sure how we're going to address this.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Blessed
Scientists are very careful people.
It makes sense. They don't want to say anything until they're absolutely sure. They don't want people to think they're trying to make a provocative claim that they can't back up, or to claim a discovery only to see it get disproved because they made a tiny mistake somewhere in the fine details. It's about credibility --- especially when a scientist represents one of the most important facilities in the world, like Fermilab.
But it can be hell for a filmmaker.
More important than just about anything for our story is the process: we want to see the scientists at work. We want to see them scratching their heads, getting excited, getting confused, getting frustrated. We're much less interested in a calm presentation of vetted results. Unfortunately, that's the way most scientists are accustomed to dealing with the outside world. Do everything behind closed doors until you are absolutely certain, then allow the public to see the results. But really, where's the fun in that?
Fortunately, we have a good advocate: John Conway, one of our physicists, is getting the hang of what we're looking for. Mostly, anyway. He invited us to a "blessing," where his research group questioned a data result for the last time, asking final questions, putting away all doubts, before finally giving it the official stamp of approval. (Of course, we were interested in a step or two before that point, where they were wrestling with what the data meant, but perhaps, in time...) Other physicists in the group were reluctant --- they were planning on asking us to leave at a certain point, or requesting that we allow them to see the footage and approve it. Before the meeting, however, John stood firm on our behalf and insisted we be allowed to attend nearly all the meeting (all that we needed, anyway) and not have to submit footage for their approval. Of course, that's something that we wouldn't have done anyway, but he framed it nicely and appropriately as an issue of free speech, and reminded them that we were not antagonistic to their cause; in fact, just the opposite. They agreed and we got some very interesting footage of the meeting.
Not only that, but we keyed into a couple of important story moments: there was a particular result, a single collision, that they were buzzing with some excitement about. We followed John and two of his colleagues back to his office where they seemed to completely forget about our camera and become totally engaged with hashing out this particular subatomic collision. They whipped out a piece of paper and started drawing diagrams, got out laptops and looked at charts and graphs, and seemed to focus on a particular area on plot which could potentially yield information about the location of the Higgs boson (or where it could be ruled OUT --- nearly as important information).
And here's where the strength of our film can be found, in my opinion. It's very clear that hardly anyone in our audience (including ourselves, let's be honest) will understand P-bars, Giga-electron Volts, Muons decaying into Tau particles, W-bosons, and the rest of the terminology flying around the room in their exchange. It's also clear that the charts and graphs will be nearly meaningless. However, this scene, this moment, communicates something we've been looking desperately for since our filming began: scientists searching. Not scientists explaining, or presenting, or describing, which we have plenty of. But scientists actually excited, drawing diagrams and debating, wondering, agreeing and disagreeing. The fact that we don't know or understand what exactly it is they're searching for diminishes in importance. We can all understand what it means to be hot on the trail of something. Or a sudden spike in a long, slow search --- we all can relate to the surge of adreneline. That's the kind of connection we're hoping for between audience and scientist; that's our story.
To underscore, we had another lucky break: because of this significant event (we can't call it a discovery, of course) in the search, John and his colleagues got their picture in the Fermilab newsletter. And guess who was in charge of taking the picture? John's wife and our major character, Robin! We followed the group outside and got footage as Robin lined them up and shot a couple of photos. As soon as the issue comes out, I'll post a picture here.
Here's the link to that page:
Fermilab Today Newsletter
It makes sense. They don't want to say anything until they're absolutely sure. They don't want people to think they're trying to make a provocative claim that they can't back up, or to claim a discovery only to see it get disproved because they made a tiny mistake somewhere in the fine details. It's about credibility --- especially when a scientist represents one of the most important facilities in the world, like Fermilab.
But it can be hell for a filmmaker.
More important than just about anything for our story is the process: we want to see the scientists at work. We want to see them scratching their heads, getting excited, getting confused, getting frustrated. We're much less interested in a calm presentation of vetted results. Unfortunately, that's the way most scientists are accustomed to dealing with the outside world. Do everything behind closed doors until you are absolutely certain, then allow the public to see the results. But really, where's the fun in that?
Fortunately, we have a good advocate: John Conway, one of our physicists, is getting the hang of what we're looking for. Mostly, anyway. He invited us to a "blessing," where his research group questioned a data result for the last time, asking final questions, putting away all doubts, before finally giving it the official stamp of approval. (Of course, we were interested in a step or two before that point, where they were wrestling with what the data meant, but perhaps, in time...) Other physicists in the group were reluctant --- they were planning on asking us to leave at a certain point, or requesting that we allow them to see the footage and approve it. Before the meeting, however, John stood firm on our behalf and insisted we be allowed to attend nearly all the meeting (all that we needed, anyway) and not have to submit footage for their approval. Of course, that's something that we wouldn't have done anyway, but he framed it nicely and appropriately as an issue of free speech, and reminded them that we were not antagonistic to their cause; in fact, just the opposite. They agreed and we got some very interesting footage of the meeting.
Not only that, but we keyed into a couple of important story moments: there was a particular result, a single collision, that they were buzzing with some excitement about. We followed John and two of his colleagues back to his office where they seemed to completely forget about our camera and become totally engaged with hashing out this particular subatomic collision. They whipped out a piece of paper and started drawing diagrams, got out laptops and looked at charts and graphs, and seemed to focus on a particular area on plot which could potentially yield information about the location of the Higgs boson (or where it could be ruled OUT --- nearly as important information).
And here's where the strength of our film can be found, in my opinion. It's very clear that hardly anyone in our audience (including ourselves, let's be honest) will understand P-bars, Giga-electron Volts, Muons decaying into Tau particles, W-bosons, and the rest of the terminology flying around the room in their exchange. It's also clear that the charts and graphs will be nearly meaningless. However, this scene, this moment, communicates something we've been looking desperately for since our filming began: scientists searching. Not scientists explaining, or presenting, or describing, which we have plenty of. But scientists actually excited, drawing diagrams and debating, wondering, agreeing and disagreeing. The fact that we don't know or understand what exactly it is they're searching for diminishes in importance. We can all understand what it means to be hot on the trail of something. Or a sudden spike in a long, slow search --- we all can relate to the surge of adreneline. That's the kind of connection we're hoping for between audience and scientist; that's our story.
To underscore, we had another lucky break: because of this significant event (we can't call it a discovery, of course) in the search, John and his colleagues got their picture in the Fermilab newsletter. And guess who was in charge of taking the picture? John's wife and our major character, Robin! We followed the group outside and got footage as Robin lined them up and shot a couple of photos. As soon as the issue comes out, I'll post a picture here.
Here's the link to that page:
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Bird's eye view - sort of
Making fiction films is a radically different process than making non-fiction films. In the former, you have nearly complete control over everything: everything that happens from start to finish, everything the characters say, what their expressions look like, what they wear, what the light looks like, whether they're standing in an office or in a field, what sounds you hear, and not only what you see but how you see it. A fiction filmmaker therefore hopes for occasional moments of the UNexpected --- happy accidents, random occurrences, unexpected surprises. They can make the difference between a good scene and a fantastic film moment.
Non-fiction filmmakers --- documentarians --- experience nearly the complete opposite. You have almost no idea what will happen or when, what a person will say, how they say it, what things look like and how anything appears on camera. It's understandable that the documentarian will long for what the fiction filmmaker has: a little bit of control. Control over ANYthing. Documentarians have a lot of patience, and can be comfortable with a large amount of unknowns and loose ends, but occasionally they just want to make something happen in just the right way. Filmmakers like us who have done some of both are either cursed or blessed (depending on your perspective) with a familiarity with both worlds, and with the insight that both worlds can inform each other.
All this to say: I thought of a really cool opening shot for the film.
We had been in contact with the Barnstormers, as you know if you've read other posts. They are the Fermilab radio controlled model airplane club. Monica had recently obtained a tiny remote video camera, and we kicked around the idea of attaching this camera to one of their planes and sending it aloft. I thought the perfect shot would be of the Fermilab hi-rise --- seen from an impossible bird's eye view, probably distorted, definitely strange-looking, possibly tainted by some static here or there. It would be the first image in the film; our introduction to Fermilab, as seen through a disembodied presence half in and half out of this world. Sort of like a subatomic particle. Later, as the film progressed, the viewer would be introduced to the Barnstormers, see the plane, and understand what the image had been.
So, on Thursday Monica and I met Alan Hahn and a Swedish physicist (unfortunately, I can't remember his name and don't have my notes as I write this, so will refer to him by the cryptic and slightly dramatic title of "the Swedish Physicist") over the lunch hour in a field on Fermilab's grounds near the cemetery. We were scheduled to meet the Barnstormers earlier in May, but were rained out. But Alan told us a couple of them head out there nearly every lunch hour during good weather, and as we pulled up at 12:30 the clouds were just starting to break.
The first thing we saw was a guy tuning up a dark blue plane that sounded like a swarm of hornets buzzing. He knelt beside it with a helper, revving it up. Finally, he dashed a few feet away and picked up a handle that was laying on the grass. His helper stayed beside the plane, holding it by the tail. The guy with the handle signaled, the helper let go, and the plane took off and started whizzing around in a circle with the guy in the center. I believe they called it "controlled line" flying. Anyway, he spun and spun in the circle, making the plane do loops and tricks. The helper trotted over to us, and it was Alan Hahn.
He and the Swedish Physicist were very excited to check out our remote video camera. They were confident they could get it onto the plane and into the air. We walked with them to a picnic table and I got footage of them as they pored over a yellow and white airplane on the ground, taping and strapping our camera to the plane with rubber bands, tape, and tiny bungee cords. Finally, they were ready. We stood back. Monica watched the video feed from the plane on the monitor and I filmed the flight. The Swedish Physicist twisted knobs and levers on his hand-held control. The little plane had a wingspan of about three feet, and it "taxied" down the close-mowed stretch of ground, did a nice 180 degree turn, and revved up its engine. It shot across the ground and was suddenly airborne. "We've got a picture!" Monica said.
By this time the sun was blazing, which made the colors bright as I had hoped. In short, it was perfect weather. However, as anyone who has spent much time behind the eyepiece of a video camera knows, it becomes extremely difficult to see what's going on in your camera in bright sunlight. The flip open screen becomes useless, so you must close it and mash the eyepiece cup to your eye, trying to block out all the other light as you struggle to see what's happening. Forget about trying to focus --- you must rely on the auto focus (although in light this bright most everything will be in focus anyway, since the iris is barely open). Then, your eye adjusts to that small, dark eyepiece, so that when you pull your head away you're blinded by the daylight.
I was too busy trying to negotiate the eyepiece to look at the video feed coming to our monitor from the tiny radio camera on the plane, but later I saw that the image was slightly fuzzy, shot through occasionally with static, and featured a blur in the center which was the rapidly spinning propeller. In short, just what I had expected. Alan directed the Swedish Physicist to turn the plane so that we could see the Fermilab hi-rise in the distance, which was the shot I had been looking for. Sure enough, there it was --- but for just a second or two, and tiny in the distance. I had visualized a long, slow, deliberate shot, but as Monica has pointed out several times there can be a huge gap between what you visualize and what you actually get on camera. Even between what you remember getting on camera and what's actually there. For example, both Monica and I visualized Leon Lederman's hands as he drew diagrams in the air during our interview, but for technical reasons the shot was much tighter and showed none of his hands waving. But that's part of the fun --- things also get captured that you don't remember, don't know at the time, and don't expect. That's why the editing room is such an enormously important place. We're grocery shopping now --- the editing process is where the cooking actually begins. Our job is to get all the ingredients we could possibly dream of needing, so that when the chef asks for paprika, we not only have it but can ask "Dried? Powdered? Chilean? Andean? Peruvian? Sweet? Red? White? or Hungarian?"
Near the end of the flight, the tiny engine suddenly cut out. "Stick only!" Alan called out. The Swedish Physicist did not panic. He brought the plane down, slowly, carefully, and it bounced once or twice and rolled to a perfect stop. The camera was unharmed, and they had to get back to work so we packed it all up as they sprayed down the plane with windex. We made plans to meet them again during their next actual Barnstormers club meeting, viewing this as more of a test flight. We all agreed that the camera ought to be strapped onto the wing rather than the fuselage, so we could get unobstructed views.
Non-fiction filmmakers --- documentarians --- experience nearly the complete opposite. You have almost no idea what will happen or when, what a person will say, how they say it, what things look like and how anything appears on camera. It's understandable that the documentarian will long for what the fiction filmmaker has: a little bit of control. Control over ANYthing. Documentarians have a lot of patience, and can be comfortable with a large amount of unknowns and loose ends, but occasionally they just want to make something happen in just the right way. Filmmakers like us who have done some of both are either cursed or blessed (depending on your perspective) with a familiarity with both worlds, and with the insight that both worlds can inform each other.
All this to say: I thought of a really cool opening shot for the film.
We had been in contact with the Barnstormers, as you know if you've read other posts. They are the Fermilab radio controlled model airplane club. Monica had recently obtained a tiny remote video camera, and we kicked around the idea of attaching this camera to one of their planes and sending it aloft. I thought the perfect shot would be of the Fermilab hi-rise --- seen from an impossible bird's eye view, probably distorted, definitely strange-looking, possibly tainted by some static here or there. It would be the first image in the film; our introduction to Fermilab, as seen through a disembodied presence half in and half out of this world. Sort of like a subatomic particle. Later, as the film progressed, the viewer would be introduced to the Barnstormers, see the plane, and understand what the image had been.
So, on Thursday Monica and I met Alan Hahn and a Swedish physicist (unfortunately, I can't remember his name and don't have my notes as I write this, so will refer to him by the cryptic and slightly dramatic title of "the Swedish Physicist") over the lunch hour in a field on Fermilab's grounds near the cemetery. We were scheduled to meet the Barnstormers earlier in May, but were rained out. But Alan told us a couple of them head out there nearly every lunch hour during good weather, and as we pulled up at 12:30 the clouds were just starting to break.
The first thing we saw was a guy tuning up a dark blue plane that sounded like a swarm of hornets buzzing. He knelt beside it with a helper, revving it up. Finally, he dashed a few feet away and picked up a handle that was laying on the grass. His helper stayed beside the plane, holding it by the tail. The guy with the handle signaled, the helper let go, and the plane took off and started whizzing around in a circle with the guy in the center. I believe they called it "controlled line" flying. Anyway, he spun and spun in the circle, making the plane do loops and tricks. The helper trotted over to us, and it was Alan Hahn.
He and the Swedish Physicist were very excited to check out our remote video camera. They were confident they could get it onto the plane and into the air. We walked with them to a picnic table and I got footage of them as they pored over a yellow and white airplane on the ground, taping and strapping our camera to the plane with rubber bands, tape, and tiny bungee cords. Finally, they were ready. We stood back. Monica watched the video feed from the plane on the monitor and I filmed the flight. The Swedish Physicist twisted knobs and levers on his hand-held control. The little plane had a wingspan of about three feet, and it "taxied" down the close-mowed stretch of ground, did a nice 180 degree turn, and revved up its engine. It shot across the ground and was suddenly airborne. "We've got a picture!" Monica said.
By this time the sun was blazing, which made the colors bright as I had hoped. In short, it was perfect weather. However, as anyone who has spent much time behind the eyepiece of a video camera knows, it becomes extremely difficult to see what's going on in your camera in bright sunlight. The flip open screen becomes useless, so you must close it and mash the eyepiece cup to your eye, trying to block out all the other light as you struggle to see what's happening. Forget about trying to focus --- you must rely on the auto focus (although in light this bright most everything will be in focus anyway, since the iris is barely open). Then, your eye adjusts to that small, dark eyepiece, so that when you pull your head away you're blinded by the daylight.
I was too busy trying to negotiate the eyepiece to look at the video feed coming to our monitor from the tiny radio camera on the plane, but later I saw that the image was slightly fuzzy, shot through occasionally with static, and featured a blur in the center which was the rapidly spinning propeller. In short, just what I had expected. Alan directed the Swedish Physicist to turn the plane so that we could see the Fermilab hi-rise in the distance, which was the shot I had been looking for. Sure enough, there it was --- but for just a second or two, and tiny in the distance. I had visualized a long, slow, deliberate shot, but as Monica has pointed out several times there can be a huge gap between what you visualize and what you actually get on camera. Even between what you remember getting on camera and what's actually there. For example, both Monica and I visualized Leon Lederman's hands as he drew diagrams in the air during our interview, but for technical reasons the shot was much tighter and showed none of his hands waving. But that's part of the fun --- things also get captured that you don't remember, don't know at the time, and don't expect. That's why the editing room is such an enormously important place. We're grocery shopping now --- the editing process is where the cooking actually begins. Our job is to get all the ingredients we could possibly dream of needing, so that when the chef asks for paprika, we not only have it but can ask "Dried? Powdered? Chilean? Andean? Peruvian? Sweet? Red? White? or Hungarian?"
Near the end of the flight, the tiny engine suddenly cut out. "Stick only!" Alan called out. The Swedish Physicist did not panic. He brought the plane down, slowly, carefully, and it bounced once or twice and rolled to a perfect stop. The camera was unharmed, and they had to get back to work so we packed it all up as they sprayed down the plane with windex. We made plans to meet them again during their next actual Barnstormers club meeting, viewing this as more of a test flight. We all agreed that the camera ought to be strapped onto the wing rather than the fuselage, so we could get unobstructed views.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Rollerblading
Ben Kilminster, the young hipster physicist in the Fermilab rock band, agreed to let us shoot him as he rollerbladed around the ring. This was not on the inside of the ring, of course, because that's a cramped hallway (currently filled with lethal radiation since the accelerator is in operation) but rather above, on the one-lane service road that runs above the accelerator tunnel. We engaged some high-tech filmmaking wizardry: to get the shot, I brought along my bike and we gaff-taped a tripod to my bike cross bar so that it floated above my back tire. For good measure, we used nearly a quarter roll of gaff-tape, and the result was an ugly black misshapen ball with a lens poking out. But it was solid, by god.
I hopped on the bike and started pedaling, and overtook Ben. I wanted to get the shot of the movement around the ring first, and then Ben drifting into the frame. We set the iris a little too wide and I'm afraid the first pass was a bit washed out. The sky lost it's color and became white. On the second pass, coming back, I just turned the auto-iris back on and it looks better.
While he was rollerblading, puffing for breath, I asked him a couple of questions. He said once when he was stuck and needed to come up with a new way of looking at things, he came out and rollerbladed backwards. Another nice comment came when he said he needed to get out of the lab and look at some big things for a change, things that were far away. It's true, I would imagine: looking at things at the sub-atomic level might make you want to get next to a giant pine tree (or a 1000-pound buffalo). And, of course, the idea that this guy watches protons and anti-protons as they race around the ring then takes a break and gets inspiration by ... racing around the ring ... is a nice one.
Along those lines, I took Stef up to the 15th floor of the hi-rise and got a shot of Ben skating from 150 feet up. We used cell phones to communicate --- I told him "go!" and he started skating. Stef was in a tight shot and did a beautiful zoom-out/tilt to follow him and reveal the huge size of the 4-mile circumference ring. Later Ben joked that we should speed up the image to make it look like he was travelling at the speed of light. "I'll hold a torch," he said. "I'll be the proton." Luke said I could be the anti-proton on my bike, holding a torch coming the other way. The problem is, of course, that we'd have to crash, and our production insurance wouldn't cover that.
I hopped on the bike and started pedaling, and overtook Ben. I wanted to get the shot of the movement around the ring first, and then Ben drifting into the frame. We set the iris a little too wide and I'm afraid the first pass was a bit washed out. The sky lost it's color and became white. On the second pass, coming back, I just turned the auto-iris back on and it looks better.
While he was rollerblading, puffing for breath, I asked him a couple of questions. He said once when he was stuck and needed to come up with a new way of looking at things, he came out and rollerbladed backwards. Another nice comment came when he said he needed to get out of the lab and look at some big things for a change, things that were far away. It's true, I would imagine: looking at things at the sub-atomic level might make you want to get next to a giant pine tree (or a 1000-pound buffalo). And, of course, the idea that this guy watches protons and anti-protons as they race around the ring then takes a break and gets inspiration by ... racing around the ring ... is a nice one.
Along those lines, I took Stef up to the 15th floor of the hi-rise and got a shot of Ben skating from 150 feet up. We used cell phones to communicate --- I told him "go!" and he started skating. Stef was in a tight shot and did a beautiful zoom-out/tilt to follow him and reveal the huge size of the 4-mile circumference ring. Later Ben joked that we should speed up the image to make it look like he was travelling at the speed of light. "I'll hold a torch," he said. "I'll be the proton." Luke said I could be the anti-proton on my bike, holding a torch coming the other way. The problem is, of course, that we'd have to crash, and our production insurance wouldn't cover that.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Data Taking
Monica went to San Francisco for her mother's 90th birthday party, so she couldn't come with Stef, Luke and me as we interviewed Gregorio Bernardi at Fermilab. Despite his Italian name, he's French, and seemed much more able and willing to call a spade a spade when it comes to what our country is doing wrong on the science front. We were there primarily to get footage of him as he heads a data-taking session at the D-zero detector, so I asked just a few questions about the budget cuts and America's relationship to science. He said, in a sense, that America had better get it's act together or it would be in serious trouble. Something only John Conway and Rocky Kolb have been willing to say on camera so far. It's strange to contrast that with comments from Chris Quigg who said "it's a wonderful time to be a scientist in America" or Judy Jackson's optimism. Dr. Bernardi poked some fun at Bush's idea to send people to Mars, which he said would really add very little to America's scientific advancement.
Once we went inside, we descended four stories to D-zero's control room. He did a shift change procedure (it reminded me a little of a new captain taking control of one shift of a battleship's operations). He explained some things to us and we got footage of him going about his business. At one point they had to stop the detector and start it again, which is a standard procedure which happens every four hours, and involves the main engineer ringing a little bell and announcing "Detector Stop!" About 60 seconds later, he rings the bell and says "Detector Start!" It was a little humorous: here they are, surrounded by unfathomable technology, and they've got a little "ring bell for service" type dinger on the desk that he taps lightly with his hand. Of course, I had Stef get a close up of the bell ringing. I loved the irony there. Plus the engineer seemed to get a kick out of that tiny act of low-tech physicality.
Dr. Bernardi gave us one of the best moments yet on tape, in my opinion, in terms of the science leg of our story: the actual search for the Higgs boson. It came when we were asking him about the different screens, monitors, and displays flashing all around the room. I pointed to a big one with what looked like a 3D-bar graph on a giant 30-inch TV monitor. About once per second, the graph changed. Sometimes there were a couple of different tall lines, and sometimes there were dozens of multi-colored bars, short and tall. It was hypnotizing. Dr. Bernardi's eyes lit up.
"Oh, that one," he said, "that's what the detector is seeing. Each spike is a collision." He pointed at the screen. "When there are two or three large spikes like this, that's good. That's two or three discrete events. That's good data." Then the graph changed to a multi-colored mess, with lots of different bars of all sizes. It looked complicated and fascinating.
"That's junk," he said. "Useless."
I asked him if he ever found himself just staring at that monitor, looking at the spikes, the collisions. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I've stared at this quite a bit. Maybe one of those spikes is the Higgs boson, you know?"
I had Stef shoot that screen in a few different ways, including a really tight close up, with the bars changing, for about a minute. The idea of the Higgs boson being one of those spikes really caught my attention, and I think it's one of the few visual, comprehensible (and even poetic) ways the audience can relate to this notion of a search. I found myself staring at that screen a long time.
Once we went inside, we descended four stories to D-zero's control room. He did a shift change procedure (it reminded me a little of a new captain taking control of one shift of a battleship's operations). He explained some things to us and we got footage of him going about his business. At one point they had to stop the detector and start it again, which is a standard procedure which happens every four hours, and involves the main engineer ringing a little bell and announcing "Detector Stop!" About 60 seconds later, he rings the bell and says "Detector Start!" It was a little humorous: here they are, surrounded by unfathomable technology, and they've got a little "ring bell for service" type dinger on the desk that he taps lightly with his hand. Of course, I had Stef get a close up of the bell ringing. I loved the irony there. Plus the engineer seemed to get a kick out of that tiny act of low-tech physicality.
Dr. Bernardi gave us one of the best moments yet on tape, in my opinion, in terms of the science leg of our story: the actual search for the Higgs boson. It came when we were asking him about the different screens, monitors, and displays flashing all around the room. I pointed to a big one with what looked like a 3D-bar graph on a giant 30-inch TV monitor. About once per second, the graph changed. Sometimes there were a couple of different tall lines, and sometimes there were dozens of multi-colored bars, short and tall. It was hypnotizing. Dr. Bernardi's eyes lit up.
"Oh, that one," he said, "that's what the detector is seeing. Each spike is a collision." He pointed at the screen. "When there are two or three large spikes like this, that's good. That's two or three discrete events. That's good data." Then the graph changed to a multi-colored mess, with lots of different bars of all sizes. It looked complicated and fascinating.
"That's junk," he said. "Useless."
I asked him if he ever found himself just staring at that monitor, looking at the spikes, the collisions. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I've stared at this quite a bit. Maybe one of those spikes is the Higgs boson, you know?"
I had Stef shoot that screen in a few different ways, including a really tight close up, with the bars changing, for about a minute. The idea of the Higgs boson being one of those spikes really caught my attention, and I think it's one of the few visual, comprehensible (and even poetic) ways the audience can relate to this notion of a search. I found myself staring at that screen a long time.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Buffaloed
Part of our story involves portraying the passage of time, as this is a year in the search for the Higgs boson at Fermilab. We've been careful to get shots of the seasons as they progress along the prairie at Fermilab, and what better way to illustrate spring than a new crop of baby buffalo?
For those of you who don't know, Robert Wilson (the physicist who envisioned and designed Fermilab) wanted the facility to embrace nature as much as possible. After all, these physicists are not creating new particles, creating toxic waste or developing murky new substances. They're simply trying to understand how things work. They are intimitely tied with nature, trying to unlock its secrets, and their facility reflects that. The whole place consists of one high-rise and a few low warehouse buildings in the middle of a huge prairie. And, per Dr. Wilson's design, that prairie features natural prairie grasses, lots of wildlife, and a herd of buffalo.
Everyone knows about the buffalo at Fermilab. They're a big tourist draw. Any time a news story, magazine article, documentary, or photo shoot features Fermilab, you can almost guarantee the buffalo will be mentioned, along with some kind of attempt to make the connection between high-energy physics and nature via the buffalo (much as I just did in the preceding paragraph). We're no exception, of course.
Yesterday Monica, Stef and I met Mr. Pleses, the guy in charge of the buffalo herd at Fermilab. He was a few minutes late, so we killed some time by shooting some "spring" footage: birds chirping, buds budding on trees. I spied a security guard adjusting his belt before getting into the car. He was eating an ice cream cone. I wandered over and started asking questions. He said there was all kinds of wildlife at Fermilab: foxes, deer, coyote. Just the other morning he had heard some coyote pups yipping. But the buffalo, of course, were the main draw. He said that the herd had been there since the 60s, and that people from all over had come to see them.
"Contrary to what people say, they're actually bison," he said. He said that every year they sell off the calves.
"For meat?" I asked.
"For whatever. To whoever," he said. Then he told me that the first one had actually been born the day before easter.
"The next day I came in," he said, "and I saw the momma buffalo chasing off two coyote, and there were two more having breakfast. No more baby buffalo."
I asked if he would mind if we asked him a couple of questions on camera. "Not a chance," he said, laughing. "Not a chance."
Finally the actual buffalo herder showed up. He was a youngish guy, probably around 40, and he had hair that was styled perfectly, short in the front and long in the back. He had two or three earrings, a shiny belt buckle, and gator-skin cowboy boots with polished metal toe-tips. He was a little nervous and thought that we were "newspaper people." The presence of the camera seemed to stump him a little, but he was game. We wired him up with the mic and asked him a few questions. We asked if we could go out with him in the huge pen.
"It's a little dangerous," he said. "We should probably go in the truck. You never know how they're going to react. Especially with all the little calves." He said ever since he got charged once by a nervous mother he keeps a ladder in there as a quick escape route.
I got in the cab of the tractor with him, and it was a tight fit since it was a single-seat tractor. I had to huddle in behind him, pressed against the rear glass, and try to shoot from overhead as we bounced along the field. The buffalo looked at us sideways and shuffled out of the way at the very last moment. He drove by the troughs and dumped feed. Then we came back and climbed on board the flat-bed pickup. Stef took the camera again and we got footage as he peered through binoculars, counting the calves and reading the eartags of the mothers. There was one that was about 24 hours old, lying on the grass. It's mother stood over it, licking it.
We drove around and asked him some more questions --- careful to get some shots of the buffalo with the high-rise of Fermilab in the background. We asked him if he had heard the rumor about the buffalo: that they were not really a tourist attraction, not really a gesture to nature on the part of the scientist who envisioned the facility, but in fact served as "canaries in the coalmine." If they all dropped over dead, the rumor said, then the scientists knew it was time to high-tail it out of there. Radiation leak. Another rumor claimed you could see the buffalo glowing at night, they were so charged with radiation. God only knew what those scientists were doing down there. But, no, he hadn't heard those rumors. We thought it was strange --- if anyone had heard them, we thought it would be him.
For those of you who don't know, Robert Wilson (the physicist who envisioned and designed Fermilab) wanted the facility to embrace nature as much as possible. After all, these physicists are not creating new particles, creating toxic waste or developing murky new substances. They're simply trying to understand how things work. They are intimitely tied with nature, trying to unlock its secrets, and their facility reflects that. The whole place consists of one high-rise and a few low warehouse buildings in the middle of a huge prairie. And, per Dr. Wilson's design, that prairie features natural prairie grasses, lots of wildlife, and a herd of buffalo.
Everyone knows about the buffalo at Fermilab. They're a big tourist draw. Any time a news story, magazine article, documentary, or photo shoot features Fermilab, you can almost guarantee the buffalo will be mentioned, along with some kind of attempt to make the connection between high-energy physics and nature via the buffalo (much as I just did in the preceding paragraph). We're no exception, of course.
Yesterday Monica, Stef and I met Mr. Pleses, the guy in charge of the buffalo herd at Fermilab. He was a few minutes late, so we killed some time by shooting some "spring" footage: birds chirping, buds budding on trees. I spied a security guard adjusting his belt before getting into the car. He was eating an ice cream cone. I wandered over and started asking questions. He said there was all kinds of wildlife at Fermilab: foxes, deer, coyote. Just the other morning he had heard some coyote pups yipping. But the buffalo, of course, were the main draw. He said that the herd had been there since the 60s, and that people from all over had come to see them.
"Contrary to what people say, they're actually bison," he said. He said that every year they sell off the calves.
"For meat?" I asked.
"For whatever. To whoever," he said. Then he told me that the first one had actually been born the day before easter.
"The next day I came in," he said, "and I saw the momma buffalo chasing off two coyote, and there were two more having breakfast. No more baby buffalo."
I asked if he would mind if we asked him a couple of questions on camera. "Not a chance," he said, laughing. "Not a chance."
Finally the actual buffalo herder showed up. He was a youngish guy, probably around 40, and he had hair that was styled perfectly, short in the front and long in the back. He had two or three earrings, a shiny belt buckle, and gator-skin cowboy boots with polished metal toe-tips. He was a little nervous and thought that we were "newspaper people." The presence of the camera seemed to stump him a little, but he was game. We wired him up with the mic and asked him a few questions. We asked if we could go out with him in the huge pen.
"It's a little dangerous," he said. "We should probably go in the truck. You never know how they're going to react. Especially with all the little calves." He said ever since he got charged once by a nervous mother he keeps a ladder in there as a quick escape route.
I got in the cab of the tractor with him, and it was a tight fit since it was a single-seat tractor. I had to huddle in behind him, pressed against the rear glass, and try to shoot from overhead as we bounced along the field. The buffalo looked at us sideways and shuffled out of the way at the very last moment. He drove by the troughs and dumped feed. Then we came back and climbed on board the flat-bed pickup. Stef took the camera again and we got footage as he peered through binoculars, counting the calves and reading the eartags of the mothers. There was one that was about 24 hours old, lying on the grass. It's mother stood over it, licking it.
We drove around and asked him some more questions --- careful to get some shots of the buffalo with the high-rise of Fermilab in the background. We asked him if he had heard the rumor about the buffalo: that they were not really a tourist attraction, not really a gesture to nature on the part of the scientist who envisioned the facility, but in fact served as "canaries in the coalmine." If they all dropped over dead, the rumor said, then the scientists knew it was time to high-tail it out of there. Radiation leak. Another rumor claimed you could see the buffalo glowing at night, they were so charged with radiation. God only knew what those scientists were doing down there. But, no, he hadn't heard those rumors. We thought it was strange --- if anyone had heard them, we thought it would be him.
Saturday, April 9, 2005
The Ring Cycle part II
Getting down to Chicago's Lyric Opera House on a Saturday at 5 proved to be a little more difficult than I suspected. I was coming from a music class I was teaching, Monica was coming from her house, and Stef and Andrew were already downtown filming for another project. I took the Brown Line elevated train, and if you are from Chicago you know that's a good way to get into the city because (unlike the Red Line) the Brown Line winds through the city on a track about 20 feet above the street level. It's a beautiful way to get downtown.
And it was a beautiful day, too. Andrew had made arrangements for us to arrive and meet the manager of the Lyric Opera (he had warned us all to dress a little nicer than normal) and to get shots inside the lobby, which was very generous of the Lyric and worked well for us.
Rocky and his wife, Adrienne, showed up a few minutes late, but dressed perfectly. Rocky was looking quite relaxed and poised, and Adrienne clung to his elbow. We "staged" a little event where they walked up and handed their ticket to an usher before the crowd was allowed in, since they were anticipating a full house and a really loud, crowded lobby. Then we took them back outside and strolled down the columned sidewalk and asked Rocky some questions. He is perhaps the most skilled interviewee of anyone we've spoken to so far, and today, in his expensive suit at the Opera with his wife on his arm, he was in fine form. His answers were polished, clean, and the perfect length. Unfortunately, at times, it sounded a bit rehearsed, perhaps something more along the lines of a Nova episode. However, what he said was provocative and interesting: he expressed some real concern about the future of science in America. He also made a couple of nice connections between the opera and high-energy physics, admitting that he loved to come to the opera in part because "where else can you sit for three hours with no one talking to you? It's the perfect place to think about physics."
The whole time he was talking, a Streetwise guy was leaning against the wall shouting "Streetwise! Get your Streetwise!" hoping for a donation. During the last part of the shot, I think Stef framed him in the shot, which was nice. Later Monica and I wished we had thought to get a shot of the Streetwise guy all alone (Monica thought of it at the time, but didn't push for it since we had Rocky and his wife for a short time).
Then we went back inside the lobby, made our way up to the upper level, and shot the crowd as they entered. We said goodbye to the Kolbs and went back outside where Stef got some great shots of the outside of the building.
On the way back, Monica handed me the tiny remote video camera which we plan to strap on to one of the model airplanes when we meet with Barnstormers, Fermilab's Remote Control Model Airplane Club....
And it was a beautiful day, too. Andrew had made arrangements for us to arrive and meet the manager of the Lyric Opera (he had warned us all to dress a little nicer than normal) and to get shots inside the lobby, which was very generous of the Lyric and worked well for us.
Rocky and his wife, Adrienne, showed up a few minutes late, but dressed perfectly. Rocky was looking quite relaxed and poised, and Adrienne clung to his elbow. We "staged" a little event where they walked up and handed their ticket to an usher before the crowd was allowed in, since they were anticipating a full house and a really loud, crowded lobby. Then we took them back outside and strolled down the columned sidewalk and asked Rocky some questions. He is perhaps the most skilled interviewee of anyone we've spoken to so far, and today, in his expensive suit at the Opera with his wife on his arm, he was in fine form. His answers were polished, clean, and the perfect length. Unfortunately, at times, it sounded a bit rehearsed, perhaps something more along the lines of a Nova episode. However, what he said was provocative and interesting: he expressed some real concern about the future of science in America. He also made a couple of nice connections between the opera and high-energy physics, admitting that he loved to come to the opera in part because "where else can you sit for three hours with no one talking to you? It's the perfect place to think about physics."
The whole time he was talking, a Streetwise guy was leaning against the wall shouting "Streetwise! Get your Streetwise!" hoping for a donation. During the last part of the shot, I think Stef framed him in the shot, which was nice. Later Monica and I wished we had thought to get a shot of the Streetwise guy all alone (Monica thought of it at the time, but didn't push for it since we had Rocky and his wife for a short time).
Then we went back inside the lobby, made our way up to the upper level, and shot the crowd as they entered. We said goodbye to the Kolbs and went back outside where Stef got some great shots of the outside of the building.
On the way back, Monica handed me the tiny remote video camera which we plan to strap on to one of the model airplanes when we meet with Barnstormers, Fermilab's Remote Control Model Airplane Club....
Thursday, April 7, 2005
The Ring Cycle
We've made arrangements this weekend to interview Rocky Kolb, an astro-physicist, and his wife Adrian (who happens to be Fermilab's archivist) at the Wagner opera. We're meeting them a couple of hours before the event in order to avoid the rush. We're not able to film inside the opera house (the Lyric has forbidden that) but the lobby and exterior are acceptable.
And Sunday we'll be at Fermilab bright and early to get footage of the buffalo. A pretty exciting weekend...
And Sunday we'll be at Fermilab bright and early to get footage of the buffalo. A pretty exciting weekend...
Saturday, April 2, 2005
Buffalo-ing
We heard back from the buffalo keepers. They said they'd be happy to do the interview. There's a chance we might get the call tomorrow, in which case we'd really have to scramble. I'm hoping, secretly, that it will be next week.
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