Michael Jones
We developed a work path to guide us through the project. That process began with the formation of national and local advisory teams to begin the process of evaluating "big ideas" for the shows. Our national advisors were flown to Hawai'i in order to experience firsthand astronomy at Mauna Kea and Polynesian voyaging aboard a twin hull canoe. Their input was extremely helpful in making sound decisions on style and content.
A show theme was decided on and a treatment written. From this, a detailed storyboard was built. The storyboard was digitized and mounted on a non-published web site accessed by our advisors for their evaluation and comments.
A draft show script was written from the storyboard. Our advisors read the draft script and suggested changes. Once revisions were done the script was finalized and a shoot list was made. Production began with making graphic and panorama slides. Video elements were edited and a master digital BetaCam tape was sent to a laser disk duplication facility.
Our music composer was given the script to begin scoring music for the show. A finished master file was sent out for CD duplication.
A beta version of the show was tested in Seattle Washington, Corsicana Texas and Charlotte North Carolina. Each site installed and ran the show. Audiences were asked to fill out surveys, which were used to revise the final product.
The finished show was duplicated, boxed and shipped.
We had to overcome problems of tracking down ownership of images from old photo archives and securing use of images used from WWW. A file was started that contained the necessary documents and releases for all imagery and art used in the program.
Early on, we decided on a "look" to the show. Color, typeface and logo were standardized for use in all Explorers Project work.
We had three people working on images and soon realized that we all had to be using the same slide aspect ratio (1:1.5), same dpi for slide output, and image size. Similar standards were developed for anything going to print or publication.
Every output device had to be adjusted to display or produce the same colors and hues. We had three people working on images and soon realized that we all had to be looking at the same color palette.
A great deal of time was spent finding images. At least four image archives were used. Perhaps the most important step in slide production was the quality control loop. Slides were carefully checked by at least three people before they were placed in the final show rack.
There were many technical challenges. We did not shoot any original slides other than graphic/text slides and original art done by our contract artists and all this was done in the computer and shot in the film recorder. Every slide we used had moderate to major problems with either exposure, physical damage such as mildew, scratches, fingerprints or emulsions damage. Many slides were duplicates and suffered from generational sharpness loss, which was partially corrected in PhotoShop.
Before making pans, we surveyed many planetarium directors to find out what everybody was using for pan setups. We settled on 25% overlaps and 6 panel pans for our 3600 sets and 25% overlaps and 3 panels for our half-pans or 1800 sets.
We also asked people how much room they had in their trays. This helped us decide how many pans to include in the show. We found that few domes were using all-sky's so we did not include any in this show.
We decided to build panoramas done with Digi-Dome in order to quickly turn out perfectly match sets of pans. Digi-Dome will do the morphing and soft edging of the left and right sides of a chip but will not build a soft edge mask for the top of the slide. This had to be done in PhotoShop. We received the GOTO files on 20 CD's which were scanned at very high resolution and file size. At 300 Mb per raw pan, we had to install more RAM in our primary graphics workstations because these files were crashing our systems. Work sped up when we experimented and found that we could reduce files down to 160 dpi and not detect any image loss.
We wanted to take advantage of new technologies in digital image processing. Our recommendation- get the biggest, fastest, computer you can afford to do this sort of work. Keep in mind that as files get bigger, PhotoShop requires more RAM to do its job properly about 5 times the image file size. If your image file is 100 Mb, PhotoShop needs about 500 Mb of memory to manipulate the image. 512 Mb of RAM or more is a good place to start for serious graphics work.
Say goodbye to floppy disks. At 1.44 Mb, none of our images would fit on a single disk. Zip and Jaz disks are the standard media for moving work around the office. We are connected together via a 100 kbs ethernet LAN that speeds up transfer of work between workstations. In addition, a CD burner is essential for archiving and transporting work outside our office,
Library music is cheaper by far, but cannot equal the quality and seamless matching that a composer brings to a project. Original music is very time consuming to produce and takes very close collaboration with the producer.
In our planetarium survey work, we found that most people use a stereo audio CD as a dub master, usually taping it on a 1/4" reel-to-reel machine or ADAT. For the big guys, we wanted to take advantage of multitrack sound systems. We produced an 8 track DA-88 tape mastered to IMAX- Sonics specifications. The DA-88 show tape is offered in our custom show kit at no extra charge.
Whereas the first show used other people's images, we will be shooting our own stills for the second program. Weather and altitude will conspire to make shooting difficult. Wind speeds often exceed 70 mph, in which case the mountain is closed to everyone. We will be working during the coldest part of the year Dec, Jan, Feb. Snow in the tropics may seem strange but is a reality at the summit. Hypoxia dulls the mind and makes simple tasks difficult. Altitude sickness is a threat to anyone spending time at Mauna Kea's observatories. Medical help is at least 2 hours away.
Look for our next program in the spring of 2000.
