Documenting

Speaking of film projects involving science, I’m involved in two new ones I’ve been meaning to tell you about. I’m working on producing a short film about the Aspen Center for Physics, to be used in the upcoming 50th Anniversary celebrations. My partner in crime on this is Bob Melisso, who I’ve worked with before a number of times, and it’s already been interesting, and fun. I think that the final piece ought to be interesting at the very least. I’ve been trying to work in a very particular look and feel for the film that reflects something about the nature of the work that goes on at the center (both its content and how it is done), and so there’ll be lots of chalk, scribbling on boards, reflections on the creative process and how a place like the Aspen Center helps, and so on and so forth.

We’ll be shooting from time to time over the early and middle Spring, and doing the editing and other post production work in time for delivery the early Summer. To the left is a still I took of Caltech’s John Schwarz on set during some shooting we did recently. He’s chatting with Bob and our DP Dave. In the background on the board is little about the famous computation he did with Michael Green while at the center many years ago that showed how to make consistent superstring theories for the first time. This “anomaly cancellation” result essentially kicked off what some call the First Superstring Revolution.

Stay tuned for more!*

Best,

-cvj

*Oh, right. I’ll tell you about the second project in a later post. Time to make dinner.