Spheres within spheres (29th of August, 2011; material from year 2005)

Press play in the window above to start the video. (WARNING! The video has 150 MB)

Year 2005 was pronounced by International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (and endorsed by United Nations) to be the >> World Year of Physics. The occasion was the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "miracle year" (Annus Mirabilis) in which he explained the microscopic background of Brownian motion, introduced the special theory of relativity, and he also quantized light in order to explain the photoelectric effect. That year, the physicists all over the world tried to explain the importance of their profession for society. I also got involved in activities popularizing science. In year 2005, I published a book "Universe as a jigsaw puzzle" (Svemir kao slagalica, Školska knjiga, 2005), and I lead a pilot-project of the Multimedia Centre of the Institute of physics, "Spheres within spheres" (Sfere unutar sfera). The goal of that project was to show that activities aimed at popularizing science can be maintained within research institutes, and that high-quality educational visual content can be produced. I tried to prove that statement by making a "prototype" of a popular-science movie that you can stream from YouTube in the window above.

That project could have probably finished even better than it did, had I found more understanding in our public and national television. But I didn't. Yet, and regardless, the project, of course, made it even without them. It was a tough job, since the project was nowhere near financed to the level that it could be realized by mere ordering and paying (for animation, camera, sound, montage... the making of the movie is a complex business). That is why I had to do the most of the work myself.

The movie is a combination of computer animation and recorded footage, mostly in front of the green background. This technique is called the chroma key, and the green pixels can be "excised" in a digital manipulation of the video. A desired image/background can be inserted in their place (see the montage above that, in addition to the layer "behind" the recorded scene, uses also a layer "in front" of it). In a particular realization of the chroma key technique that I used, the problem was always a good light (ambient, diffuse, direct) which would make the background sufficiently monotonous so that it can be extracted with sufficient quality, using algorithms for manipulation of digital video.

I made an improvised "studio" main component of which was the large wooden surface/board monotonously painted in Irish green (see the photo above). Around that board, I carefully arranged four reflectors which produced a monotonous light on the background, producing as little as possible shadows on the green board. The extraction of the green background sometimes resulted in the rest of the scene looking more violet (un-excised part of the footage; [red, green, blue] - [green] = [red, blue] = [violet/magenta]) and that can be seen in certain parts of the movie.

The movie was made following an original script that mostly follows my book "Universe as a jigsaw puzzle" (Svemir kao slagalica). I was also helped by Matko Milin, especially in parts that concern nuclear physics and astrophysics. The collaborators on the projects were, in addition, Aleksandar Maksimović and Danijel Jurman, but they could not fully engage in the work on the project, which, in the end, turned out to be a lot more demanding than we expected.

Every good documentary and popular-science movie demands an original score. I especially enjoyed working on that part of the movie. I made more than 20 minutes of original music. I will perhaps single out something of that in some future post. The music played an important role in the movie, and some parts seem quite good to me even six years after the movie (e.g. the part which accompanies the explosions of supernovas - that piece is called "Galaxy in the background").

The whole project was documented during a period of about two years on the portal "Spheres". There one could read news regarding the making of the movie and see parts of material. In this post you can see pieces of that material (desktop backgrounds of "Spheres within spheres", photographs, frames or parts of frames from the movie ...). The movie ends with a link to portal "Spheres", which could be, a long time ago, found at sfere.ifs.hr.

A montage of the video, including the "normal", camera footage and the computer generated pieces, was made in a professional application for video editing which enabled chroma key effect and layered composition of video and sound. The sound was recorded independently of the video and synchronized as it was almost impossible to record a video and sound of good quality simultaneously. This was the most boring and tiresome part of the movie making as the application used to hang or crash in the most inconvenient stages - video editing is the process that is both RAM and CPU demanding and you have to take into account that one could not harass the computers in year 2005 as one can harass them now, in year 2011.

The movie was planned quite pretentiously. Its aim was to explain the atomic structure of matter and the way it appears, and is described in physics, chemistry and biology. I wanted to introduce nanoscience and nanotechnology by pointing at the similarities that exist in the three descriptions. I also wanted to discuss the concept of nanobots/nanorobots that was very present in the media in those days. That was a whole lot of material, and to show it properly would require much more than 35 minutes, which is the running time of "Spheres within spheres".

That is why I always saw this movie as a sort of an introduction to the next three sequels that were planned to show the atomic structure of matter from physical, chemical and biological standpoints. Those three sequels were never realized, but "Spheres within spheres" have nevertheless enjoyed quite a decent promotion. The magazine "Drvo znanja" ("Tree of knowledge") published the movie on a DVD distributed in its October 2006 issue. The circulation of that magazine was at the time, as I was told, about 15-20 000.

I intended for a long time now to make English titles for the movie, but it came to realization only now, six years later. So, this is a worldwide promotion of the movie "Spheres within spheres" on the pages of "Construction of Reality"! Click on CC box in the YouTube player control area in order to choose English or Croatian titles (UPDATE: (26th of August, 2013) The file was moved from YouTube to local server, so no titles at this point, sorry).

By the way, the name "Spheres within spheres" comes from the omnipresence of spheres on all spatial scales: starting from stars and planets, through soap bubbles and drops, to cell nucleus, viruses, fullerenes, atoms, atomic nuclei, ... Passing through the dimensions and spatial scales, we pass through spheres within spheres.

<< Bob Dylan revisited

Vacation sketches >>

Last updated on 26th of August, 2013.