I M A X

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 16:00:14 -0700, "Callistus Valerius"
wrote:

Just curious, will you be watching the IMAX that followed Tyler during
this years TDF, when it comes out? Would it be cool for a cyclist to watch
this, or uncool?

From NY Times Aug 5

From a Speeding Bicycle, a Look at the Brain.
by Ian Austen




PARIS— Early on during this year's Tour de France, the American
cyclist Tyler Hamilton stumbled out of a crash with two fractures in
his collarbone, an anxious time for him, his teammates and family. To
JoAnna Baldwin Mallory and Bayley Silleck, the accident threatened an
elaborate project.

The pair were leading a crew of 48 people filming Mr. Hamilton's
experiences at the three-week bicycle race to create an IMAX movie
about the human brain. Backed by Partners HealthCare, a Boston-based
hospital group, and with $3 million in National Science Foundation
financing, the two realized they might lose the star of their $9
million production.

"Frankly, I was at a loss as to what to do," said Mr. Silleck, the
director of the film tentatively titled "Brain Power." "I was prepared
to jump out a window at that point."

But Mr. Hamilton not only stayed in the race despite his painful
injury, he won one of the Tour's most difficult daily races, or
stages, and finished fourth over all behind his former teammate Lance
Armstrong.

Sitting in the television production area adjacent to the Tour's
finish line along the Champs Élysées, Ms. Baldwin Mallory, the film's
senior producer, talked about the film's genesis and Mr. Hamilton's
role.

A former documentary producer, Ms. Baldwin Mallory has been managing
an office for new ventures at HealthPartners for the last five years.

"We train doctors," she said. "When we talked about extending that
mission to looking at partners as an institution that also engages in
public science education, not just professional education, we received
a great deal of support at the top."

Since IMAX theaters, which typically have screens about seven stories
high, are often situated in science centers, they seemed an obvious
way to extend Partners' teaching role to a wider public.

And the idea of using the Tour de France was immediately appealing,
said Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe, a professor of neurological diseases at
Harvard and an adviser to the film.

"My initial reaction was that this was a very smart and clever way to
illustrate the healthy brain," he said. "The rider is using the mind
to integrate a huge amount of information and executing a plan to beat
the competition."

Rolling to the starting line for the final stage of the Tour, Mr.
Hamilton spoke enthusiastically about IMAX films, and his
participation in this one. "I thought this film was a good idea and
also good for the sport of cycling," he said.

The on-screen images of brain activity won't actually be from the
race, since no one can ride a bicycle and undergo a PET scan at the
same time. And while some scans of Mr. Hamilton's brain activity will
probably be made, many of the medical images will be from other
people.

"We're not looking for something that's in his brain but not in the
rest of us," Mr. Silleck said. "We're simply using his brain as a
metaphor for everybody's brain."

A portion of the film dealing with perception will move between what
Mr. Hamilton sees on the road, say the summit of a mountain pass, and
medical images showing how different areas of the brain work together
to create vision. Other brain concepts will be explained with
graphics. One sequence, for example, is likely to show how Mr.
Hamilton sorts through a variety of conflicting and powerful brain
messages: feelings of pain, fatigue, thirst and hunger, screams from
spectators, memories of his daily race strategy and the image of a
fast looming pothole. Mr. Silleck's current plan is to have artists
create a "vast legislature of Tyler Hamilton's mind."

"Every few thousandths of a second your brain is making a decision on
what to do and then sending out messages to the motor cortex and then
to the muscles and the nerves," Mr. Silleck said. "There are a lot of
competing influences in the rider's brain at the Tour de France. It is
your `self' through willpower or volition that to some extent decides
which of those committees you're going to listen to at any given
moment.

"In Tyler's case, he's able to overcome pain that's screaming out,
`Let's go home, forget about this.' Much more powerful is his
personality, his memory and his sense of who he is."

Mr. Silleck, who has worked on seven IMAX films, including one about
astronomy and another on the environment, had to overcome a lot of
obstacles in filming the race. The bulky IMAX cameras proved daunting
on a course, especially since about 7,000 official followers were
already congesting the path of the Tour de France, to say nothing
about the millions of fans. He used a custom-made motorcycle rig with
gyroscopes to stabilize the camera. But that left no room for a camera
operator. He ultimately ran the camera by remote control from a
helicopter 2,000 feet above the race.

Some sections of the Tour route, particularly in the mountains, were
too narrow to safely use the rig when all the riders were present,
forcing Mr. Silleck to substitute one of Mr. Hamilton's teammates to
act as a body double riding through the crowds ahead of the race while
wearing Mr. Hamilton's race number.

To integrate the racing with brain science, Mr. Hamilton visited a
Paris studio just before the Tour's start. Carefully guided digital
cameras and laser measurements were used to create a 3-D computer
model of his body. As the film moves onto its post-production phase,
the virtual Mr. Hamilton will allow special effects designers to zoom
from the race action into images of the brain's inner workings.

"We've known from the very beginning that an event as powerful as the
Tour de France can overwhelm a film," Ms. Baldwin Mallory said. "Our
challenge now is to knit together the science story with what can be
an overwhelmingly powerful event. I'm very confident we're up to the
task. But this is a very specific film and this is a very specific
event so we have to be very careful."