Filmmaker David Sington can hardly be accused of taking the easy road
when it comes to picking topics. Gamma-ray bursts, magnetic fields, Einstein's
cosmological constant—these are just a few of the tough-to-visualize
subjects he has tackled in recent years. Sington, a veteran of more than two
dozen science documentaries, believes there are some simple rules for making
any movie, even one that takes on high-level science. Here's his recipe:
It's the people, stupid
By far the most important ingredients in any film—drama or
documentary—are the people who appear in it. A successful film will have
interesting characters with whom the audience wants to spend time. For me,
deciding to make a film about something is usually deciding to make a film
about someone.
"The Ghost Particle" had its origins in my friendship with physicist Dave Wark,
whom I got to know while making a program for Channel 4 in England called
"Einstein's Biggest Blunder." Dave told me about his work at the Sudbury
Neutrino Observatory during a Thanksgiving party at our house. The science was
fascinating, and Dave assured me that neutrino scientists were good company,
which proved to be the case. Of course, those who appear in "The Ghost
Particle" are there because of their roles in the story and their ability to
explain the science clearly, but they are also in the film because I liked them
and I thought the audience would too.
Don't forget the kitchen sink
Unfortunately, however engaging your contributors, it's all too easy to end up
portraying them merely as experts, as sources of information. But, of course,
scientists have significant others, children, pets, and hobbies just
like everyone else, though you would never know it from the typical science
documentary. I often choose to film scientists at home with their families
rather than in the lab or the office. In my films scientists make dinner for
their kids, go jogging, play the violin, and visit the pub.
These activities may not seem very relevant to the subject, but by showing the
viewers the people behind the science, the films are given a psychological and
emotional depth they might otherwise lack. The kindness of Anna and Ray Davis
in allowing us to film at their house on Long Island, for example, provided "The Ghost
Particle" with its key scene, without which the film would be much poorer.
There's no test
Science documentaries are not about teaching the audience science (at least
mine aren't). "The Ghost Particle" is not trying to prepare viewers for a quiz
on the basics of particle physics. The purpose of the
film is simply to give pleasure to its viewers. But it's the pleasure of
finding things out, the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of understanding
something about the world: the same pleasures, in fact, that motivate
scientists to do their science.
Of course, scientists need to know a lot in order to make their discoveries,
but a viewer may be able to vicariously share the experience of discovery while
remaining ignorant of some very basic science. For example, in "The Ghost
Particle" we deal with the nucleus without mentioning neutrons. You cannot
understand radioactive decay without knowing about the neutron, but you can
follow our story just fine.
Make 'em feel clever
It was the great Hollywood director Ernst Lubitsch who said, "Let the audience
add up two plus two. They'll love you forever." This certainly applies to
science documentaries. Most science films are built around a puzzle or mystery.
In this regard they are like whodunits, and a good science film, like a good
murder mystery, should scatter clues that enable the alert viewer to finger the
culprit before the denouement. An answer that is a complete surprise,
that is a rabbit pulled from a hat, is as unsatisfactory in a science film as
it is in "Murder She Wrote".
In "The Ghost Particle", the three-faced nature of the neutrino is introduced
in the restaurant scene well ahead of where it is used to help solve the
central mystery. My hope is that many viewers will see the connection before it
is made explicit—not just because they'll feel clever and enjoy the film
more, but also because I know from experience that "getting it" yourself is
tremendously empowering. I want viewers to come away thinking not "Gee,
scientists are very clever," but instead, "I got that. Being a scientist isn't
so hard!"
To me the social value of what I do lies not in feeding the audience scientific
information (see Rule 3) but in allowing the audience to see and feel for
itself the power of the scientific way of thinking—to experience what it
is like to think as a scientist, if only for 50 minutes. A bit of intellectual
self-confidence is all that's required to engage with those vital scientific
issues, from biomedical research to global warming, that will shape our
future.
Don't be afraid to be difficult
This is the corollary of Rule 4. If a science film is a mystery, and the
pleasure lies in solving that mystery, then it must be a challenge to be really
enjoyable. It's like a crossword puzzle: no fun if it's impossibly difficult,
but also no fun if it's too easy.
Unfortunately, many television types seem to think that a viewer who is
intellectually challenged is more likely to reach for the remote, and so most
science films end up being too easy. I don't think people turn the channel
because they are a bit mystified; they switch because they are bored, and being
spoon fed information, however "amazing" or "incredible," is boring as well as
vaguely insulting. Viewers should work a little for their
understanding—we all appreciate more the things we've had to struggle
for.
Don't rely on CGI
Computer Generated Imagery has transformed feature films. But while its effect
on drama has often been to liberate the imagination, in science films it too
often seems to impose a straitjacket of confining visual literalism. CGI makes
it relatively easy to visualize things that are in reality invisible, or to put
a virtual camera in places a real one could never go (such as inside a magma
chamber deep beneath a volcano). The trouble is, in making the unreal real, the
CGI designer is usually forced to rely on a set of tired and predictable visual
clichés. CGI invites the visual simile ("the neutron looks like a
billiard ball"), but metaphors are often more powerful.
For example, in "The Ghost Particle" the invisible neutrino is
visualized as a CGI wave travelling through space (a visual simile), but also
as drops of water from a fountain, sparks from a grinder, and (my personal
favorite) as a ballerina in a white tutu. This visual metaphor of the dancer,
inspired by Wolfgang Pauli's remark in the founding document of neutrino
physics that he was going to a ball, doesn't pretend to show you what a
neutrino looks like, but it gives the particle a kind of personality, which is
something CGI usually lacks.
Pick a great team
This is the most important rule of all, the only one you must never break!
Filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise that relies on the diverse talents of
a large number of people. It's a basic truth that there are no unimportant jobs
in our business—even the lowliest runner can wreak havoc with your
production—and so it's absolutely vital to work only with really good
people. That was certainly my good fortune on "The Ghost Particle." Three stand
out: our director of photography Clive North, who has that mysterious "eye"
that means the rushes never look ordinary; our film editor Louise Salkow, whose
flair and imagination are evident in every sequence of the film; and my
associate producer Sarah Kinsella, who always saw the human story in the
science and whose warm and sympathetic personality is reflected in the film she
did so much to shape.
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Documentary producer David Sington basks
in a shower of a hundred trillion solar neutrinos. Other filmmakers might find
the subject of invisible subatomic particles daunting, but Sington couldn't
resist it.
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The people at the heart of "The
Ghost Particle": John Bahcall, left, and Ray Davis (with his wife Anna).
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Keep it simple. You might not ace a physics
test after studying this diagram (as seen in the film), but you'll learn enough to follow Sington's
narrative.
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It's elementary: like any
good detective story, a movie should let audiences "solve" the mystery for
themselves.
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Rule #7 is the most critical of all: work with the best. Here, "The Ghost Particle"'s director of photography, Clive North (left), and sound recordist Kevin Meredith
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