Kevin Cain, Digital Capture Supervisor for Maya Skies, demonstrates his innovative image-capture process that replaces expensive custom hardware with affordable consumer equipment.On this week’s TV episode of QUEST, we go behind the scenes of Tales of Maya Skies, the new film produced by Oakland’s Chabot Space and Science Center.  The half-hour film about Maya astronomy opens at the center’s planetarium on November 21.

The film is groundbreaking for a couple of reasons.  It’s the first time the Chabot center is using state-of-the art laser scanning technology to create one of its films.  For Tales of Maya Skies, a team of 25 people spent seven weeks scanning the ruins of the ancient city of Chichén Itzá, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.  This technology is widely used by Hollywood productions because of the flexibility it gives a creative team.  Once they’ve scanned a particular site, they can play with any one of its variables: they can create the illusion that the camera is moving in crazy ways; they can manipulate the light conditions, and they can change the look of the location in any way they want.

The creative team behind Tales of Maya Skies, made up of, among others, Emeryville nonprofit Insight, the San Francisco animation companies Digitrove and Palma VFX, the ARTS Lab at the University of New Mexico, producer Konda Mason and director Jin An Wong, are taking advantage of all the possibilities that the scanning of Chichén Itzá provides.  The audience will be immersed in full-color animations that go beyond showing the ruins of Chichén Itzá as they exist today.  Instead, through laborious historical research, the creative team has reconstructed what the monumental city must have looked like at its peak 1,200 years ago, with temples painted in bright reds, greens, blues and yellows, and incense burning and flags waving atop them.

By using the 3-D digital images created through laser scanners as the raw material for the animations in Tales of Maya Skies, the film is also breaking ground in more indirect, but perhaps even more important, ways.  Insight, the Emeryville nonprofit that oversaw the scanning at Chichén Itzá, as well as the Orinda-based CyArk, another nonprofit that worked on the project, are engaged in scanning irreplaceable sites around the world, documenting them for the benefit of the archaeologists charged with preserving them, as well as for generations to come, which might lose the real thing to natural disasters, war, or the passage of time.  CyArk’s co-founder, Ben Kacyra, has set out to use laser scanners to document 500 sites in five years.

But laser scanners, for all the wonderful detail, speed and flexibility they offer, are expensive.  They can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000.  That’s why Kevin Cain, Insight’s director, has been testing an alternative system that can accomplish the same thing at a fraction of the cost. All the gear he needs is a digital camera, a flash and software, at a total cost of under $2,000.  Here’s how it works.  For every 32-square-foot swatch of an object, Cain takes 10 still photos with his camera and flash.  Then he uses the photos to reconstruct the object based on the brightness of each individual point on its surface.  The system is based on a principle of physics discovered in the 18^th century.  The high quality of today’s cheap digital cameras is what makes it possible to apply this principle to create an inexpensive image-capturing system.

“With this new technique, our ultimate goal is to be able to provide very low-cost, very usable results for archaeologists,” Cain said, “because until the price goes almost to zero, archaeologists aren’t going to be able to adopt it, just given the realities of their field.”  To illustrate those realities, Cain used the example of the work that Insight has done in Egypt for the past decade.  Each year they join a team of archaeologists for their field work at the Tomb of Ramses.  A complete yearly field season costs under $50,000, many times the cost of an inexpensive laser scanner.

The Cove opened on August 7.

The Cove is a documentary like no other I have seen. Like other such films, it aims to inform viewers of an issue or species, but unlike others, it also hopes to use its creative powers to send you sailing out of your seat screaming, “Get out of my way, I want to help!” I knew this already, as I attended the premier of the film in San Francisco last Friday, and wondered if it would work for me, a Conservation Manager who has seen many, many movies about the plights of animals.

So, I sat back, marveled at the audience rich with environmental leaders, munched my popcorn, and proceeded to have my world rocked. The Cove is indeed a nature and conservation movie, but throw in spy movie, hero movie, horror movie and action flick and you have a more accurate description.

The main character is Ric O’Barry, the original trainer for Flipper the bottlenose dolphin, TV star of the 70’s. Ric believes it was partly his doing that brought the world to love these marine mammals too much, leading to their exploitation. He is determined to help a tragically suffering population of dolphins in one cove in Japan. As we are introduced to the issues, we feel Ric’s pain, and his quiet hopefulness. He longs to reveal to the world the truth about this cove and we long for his success.

And then, somehow, it gets fun.

Ric enlists friends. Talented friends. Lots of them. Louie Psihoyos is one of them. Master photographer and nature documentarian, he and his group, the Ocean Preservation Society (OPS), take on the job of movie making, though they have never done such a thing before. "We’re all professionals", they joke, "just not at this." Louie steps up as Film Director and seeks out other adventuresome teammates. On board jumps an Expedition Director, as well as a Head of Clandestine Operations, giving me a serious case of job title envy. Throw in two world-class free divers, a DNA scientist and various mold makers from Industrial Light and Magic’s Prop Shop, cue the thriller music, and the game is on.

As we, the audience, experience the thrill of their journey to covertly make the film, we are amazed by their courage, compassion and humor and are reminded that humans can be phenomenally brave, powerful and imaginative. We are schooled in the reality of certain industries and asked to make entertainment and recreation choices with knowledge and compassion. We are awoken to the fact that dolphins are likely more wonderful and fantastical than we ever dreamed and it is simply a privilege to live on this planet with them.

At the very end, the film offers the audience ideas of how we each can help. It invites us to climb aboard their ship of dreamers and change-makers, and exposes the media’s greatest strength; the power to inspire change for the better.

As the credits rolled, the free dolphins soared through the clear water and the Wallflowers brought us home with “I want to swim, like dolphins can swim…” My heart pounded, my eyes teared-up and my hands clenched into fists. I think I ran over three environmental leaders as I busted into the hallway screaming “Get out of my way, I want to help!” I guess it worked for me.

See if it works for you.

Volunteers have a whale of a time working to save our seas. Join the fun this weekend!

Friday may be National Doughnut Day, but the real party this weekend is on June 8th in celebration of World Ocean Day. WOD, the brainchild of our Canadian brethren, is a worldwide effort to raise awareness and promote personal connection with the oceans that sustain life on this planet. Because we are lucky to have the ocean as our neighbor here in the Bay Area, there are a number of incredible events surrounding the celebration:

Ocean Beach Cleanup
When: Sunday, June 7th, 10 AM -12 noon
Where: Ocean Beach at the Judah Street Entrance, San Francisco
OceanHealth.Org teams up with the San Francisco Chapter of Surfrider for our annual World Ocean Day beach cleanup in San Francisco at Ocean Beach. There will be gloves and bags. Just bring yourself and dress for variable weather. The event is co-sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences & the Aquarium of the Bay.

I have quite the personal connection to SF’s Ocean Beach. For the past 2.5 years, I have led the Ocean Beach Foundation, working to preserve the beach with the fire pit installations as well as organizing weekly cleanups. It’s quite amazing what you can find out on the beach during cleanups…I’ve found everything from a huge Barbie dollhouse to an old school Radio Flyer (the toy of my youth!). I hope you’ll take part in the Ocean Beach cleanup.

World Oceans Day Film Festival
When: Wednesday, June 10th, 7-10 PM
Where: Victoria Theater, San Francisco
OceanHealth.org is celebrating World Ocean’s Day by screening a few short ocean films. We hope that you'll join us in this great location to share our love of the oceans and to view a variety of films showing perspectives on the ocean.

Purchase advance tickets at http://www.victoriatheatre.org or purchase tickets at the box office on the day of the film. Cost $10.

Some of the great films you'll see:
A Sea Change, End of the Line, Silent Snow, Keeping Coast, Favela Surf Dreams, Papa Tortuga, Revolution of the Crabs

Sustainable Seafood at Cal Academy’s Nightlife
When: Thursday, June 11th, 6-10 PM
Where: California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
The Academy and its partners in the San Francisco Seafood Watch Alliance are pulling out all the stops to encourage visitors to make sustainable seafood choices.

Local celebrity chefs will whip up tasty treats during sustainable seafood cooking demonstrations: Eric Magnani from Global Gourmet Catering, Kin Lui and Casson Trenor from Tataki Sushi & Sake Bar, Craig Stoll from Delfina, and Loretta Keller from COCO5OO and The Moss Room. Also, we’ll host a screening of “The End of the Line,” a new film about overfishing that received rave reviews at Sundance.

Nightlife often sells out, it is suggested to buy your tickets ahead of time.

For even more events, check out OceanHealth.org

Is this you in the kitchen?Here in the Bay Area, we're known the world around as foodies, especially given the recent popularity of the Slow Food Festival. As we approach the biggest food holiday of the year, it's a great opportunity to think about the science behind all of these scrumptious meals.

Last year, I stumbled across a new series of lectures on Food Ethics & Environment at Stanford University. Headlining the series was the incomparable Michael Pollan, who led an interactive discussion on the evolution of food culture in the U.S. I was amazed at the level of passion in the audience and moreover the knowledge level of the audience. I left inspired to take my time with food and eat a little healthier (that worked for about a week).

This year, Stanford again delivers a stellar lineup. Over the next few weeks and months– there will be discussions ranging from water, the affect of global warming on our food, fair trade coffee, and even a conversation with a organic farmer (it's Joel Salatin, one of the heroes from the "Omnivore's Dilemma").

So before you give thanks next week, consider a heaping serving of food science.

All events are free. They take place at the Annenberg Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus. The events are usually held on Thursday nights at 7pm. For more info, check out the Stanford Ethics Website.

January and February are exciting months for movie buffs like me. And no, I'm not referring to Golden Globes, Oscar nominations, or Screen Actors Guild awards. I'm talking about two wonderful "green" film festivals, both right here in our own watershed: the recent Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Nevada City, and the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival.

For The Bay Institute, this year's Wild & Scenic Film Festival was particularly exciting because it included the first public screening of "Taking Root," a film-in-progress about our STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) Project. I recently talked to David Donnenfield, who is co-producing the film with Kevin White (Kevin also has two films in this year's Ocean Film Festival: Restoring Balance: Removing the Black Rat from Anacapa Island and Returning Home: Bringing the Common Murre back to Devil's Slide Rock.) I asked David how the two came to be making a movie about kids working to save an endangered freshwater shrimp.

Taking Root is part of a larger project entitled How on Earth, which began with the goal to survey the spectrum of restoration work happening across the country. David and Kevin wanted to look at projects large and small, in different regions and involving different constituencies and different issues. They also were interested in documenting projects initiated by kids-one of the things that drew them to our STRAW Project, founded in 1992 by a class of fourth-graders.

David attended film school at UCLA (after he "got the bug" while starring in a high school film), but says he was always more interested in social issues than theatrical production. As to why he finds the topic of environmental restoration of particular interest, David points to the late environmentalist David Brower's 3-part concept of "Global CPR"– Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration. While we've all heard about conservation and preservation, David notes, "We felt that very little of the story of restoration had been told." That's a critical oversight, since "in the face of worldwide environmental decline, there is less and less to preserve but more to restore."

In talking about their process for making films, David explains that they do a lot of research up front to understand the issues, the players, and how the story fits into the "big picture." But there is also that sense of "serendipity and discovery" when they actually get out into the field, and that's a large part of what they bring back to the editing room.

And, in fact, editing is the next big challenge for Taking Root. Production on the full-length film (which will run about 1/2 hour) is nearly complete, but David and Kevin are still raising funds to complete the editing. Meanwhile, folks around our office are already looking forward to next year's Wild & Scenic Film Festival, where we hope to be nibbling organic popcorn and cheering the completed film's premiere.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."