Behind the scenes of Hubble 3D IMAX movie

Toni Myers is my kind of big-time Hollywood director. She’s worked on such famous space-themed IMAX movies as Space Station 3D, Destiny in Space, and 1985’s The Dream is Alive. I remember seeing Dream is Alive when I was just a kid, and it played no small role in my fascination with the skies. She’s also the director, writer, and editor of the upcoming IMAX movie Hubble 3D, due to be widely released in IMAX theaters March 19, 2010. Even though she’s still hard at work editing, I talked to Myers recently about NASA, movies, and the tyranny of deadlines. Here are some of the highlights, slightly edited for clarity.

Astronomy: What made you start making movies about space?
 
Myers: Well, at the time of the first IMAX space film, I was part of a team founded by Graeme Ferguson (the co-inventor of IMAX). When the IMAX projector was put in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Mike Collins, the director at that time [and an Apollo 11 astronaut] saw IMAX and said, “This is the medium. This is the only thing that can really convey what we experienced.”

Graeme heard that loud and clear. We’d made other films on other topics before, but once he heard [how Collins felt] we launched a campaign to try and get the IMAX camera into space. That was the start of actually making films in space, and it was really spearheaded by Graeme, who founded the unit.

Astronomy: Have you ever wanted to branch out beyond space and try making other types of movies?

Myers: We do do other films, though we seem to specialize in airless environments. Our units have produced three 3-D underwater films. We make those in collaboration with a very wonderful cinematographer/director by the name of Howard Hall, and we first made one in 1994, Into the Deep. That’s an adventure of a different kind in a different direction. But we do seem to come back to space a lot. One thing just leads to another, and it is a topic of endless fascination. I’d love to go myself!

Astronomy: Speaking of going to space, you must work pretty closely with NASA to make these films. What’s that like?

Myers: The collaboration has been absolutely wonderful, right from the beginning. We supply the training and the cameras and the filmmaking expertise; NASA supplies the astronauts and the spacecraft. I think NASA could see right away how these films bring an experience that is only the privilege of a small sector of people to absolutely everybody, from the age of 3 to 103. Actually, I think the biggest fans of the films are the NASA engineers and crews because they’re seeing things in the film that they don’t get to see normally. There’s a level of detail that isn’t readily available anywhere else. Even when we saw the first footage come back for The Dream is Alive, all of us sat absolutely jaws-on-the-floor at seeing what the Earth looked like 6 stories high. It was absolutely like being there.

Astronomy: With your latest film, Hubble 3D, are you focusing on the science the Hubble Space Telescope has done, or the story of getting it to work, or something else entirely?

Myers: There will be some early material of its original deployment in space, and we’ll track the story a little bit about the flawed mirror and the first service mission. But the main mission that we’ll focus on is last May’s STS-125, which is the last service mission. We also plan several flights through Hubble data, which we’re animating in 3-D — for instance, one is from Earth right to the heart of the Orion Nebula. We basically want to allow people all over the world to see some splendid examples of how Hubble has changed our whole idea of what our universe is. But, it won’t be everything, that’s for sure!

Hopefully, as with some of the other films, we can inspire people to pursue a career in astronomy. An example of that – totally unexpected by us – is when Susan Helms was going to be one of the first permanent “inmates” of the International Space Station. She was interviewed on the Today show, and they asked her what had inspired her to become an astronaut, and she said, “The IMAX film The Dream is Alive.” We didn’t plan that one, believe me! You can’t begin to cover all the science there is on any given topic in 40 minutes. What you can do is really open people’s eyes as to what is out there. Our goal is to have people leaving the theater wanting to know more.  

Astronomy: Do you know what your next project might be?

Myers: I actually don’t. We were doing our last underwater film, Under the Sea 3D, in conjunction with this one, so the two films were going in parallel for about 18 months. I haven’t had a minute to think forward. I should, but I think my biggest challenge right now is getting this one finished. I’d love to do more space films, and there are lots of science films that are very interesting. But I really just have been so totally immersed in this I haven’t given it much thought.

Astronomy: Maybe a vacation’s in order?

Myers: Uh, yeah! That always looms as a nice thing, but then you start worrying, “Well I better get the next project going!” You know how it goes with deadlines.

Astronomy: A little too well, in fact. On that note, then, my last question: Anything else you’d like to add?

Myers: I’d like to say that the crew of the final repair mission (STS-125) was absolutely superb in terms of the work they did. They had an incredibly difficult mission in terms of the intricacies of what they had to do outside on their spacewalks, and I’m in awe of what they accomplished. Also, we wouldn’t be doing this film if it weren’t for Warner Brothers. Going into space was a new adventure for them, and I’m just so thrilled that they wanted to do it. So I do want to give them credit for agreeing to launch with us to the stars!

And finally, I just wanted to highlight the fact that I think the legacy of Hubble itself is absolutely astonishing. Every time I look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and some of those gravitational lens photos and things, it’s just life altering, isn’t it? I think a lot of people haven’t had that experience, and I hope this film gives them a little bit of it.