Time: Monday,
December 10, 2001 at 9:00 AM
Location: Sony
IMAX Theater at Metreon,
101 4th Street (across from the AGU/Moscone
Center)
A 20-minute selection of some
of the first extensively illuminated super-high fidelity footage of the deep
ocean will be presented on the IMAX screen. Filmed from Alvin in the 15/70mm
giant screen film format, the footage includes shots from hydrothermal vent
sites in the Atlantic and Pacific (600m to 4000m). The raw footage being
presented is part of “Voyage into the
Abyss" (working title) a giant screen film now in production and scheduled
for release September 2002.
The screening is in follow-up
to the Principal Investigators report at the DESSC meeting and includes footage
from the recent August Mid-Atlantic Ridge cruise for the project. The
presentation is also open to AGU attendees.
Voyage into the Abyss is a collaborative science education outreach effort produced by Volcanic Ocean Films Inc., an affiliate of The Stephen Low Company, together with Rutgers University. Major financial support for the project comes from the National Science Foundation. Project contributors include: the New England Aquarium (Boston), the Museum of Science and Technology (Syracuse) and the University of South Florida. Filming for the project has been completed principally with submersible Alvin and the deep submergence resources of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and brings together the latest advances in submarine imaging and lighting technology including a new lighting array configured specially for the submersible and the unique demands of this project.
The final film will be the
culmination of over six years of development and the first concerted effort to
light and capture a diversity of the ocean’s extreme environments in a
high-definition presentation. Via the giant screen, the Voyage into the
Abyss project will give audiences around the world a ‘being there’
experience of dimensions of the planet that most have never truly seen before:
including submarine volcanoes, hydrothermal vents and strange communities of
deep-sea organisms.