Images from the animation take the viewer from space (shown top) to the Bay Area and down into the linac (shown bottom)

By Miriam Boon

Guests were wowed when "SLAC: The Movie" played for the first time on the day of the 40th Anniversary Celebration in early October. Since then, over 200 people have viewed the 13-minute video on SLAC’s Web site.

From grainy historical footage and photographs showing the birth of the lab to 3-D animation taking us all the way from outer space down to the collision of subatomic particles, the video weaves an exciting path through the lab’s history. The movie combines these elements with animation and the colorful photographs award-winning international photographer Peter Ginter took this past summer. "The archive footage was found and digitized in mid-September. We didn’t know it existed until then," said Chip Dalby (TIS), who led development of the video. "It was a fortunate find for us and added a great deal of character and history to the project."

As with so many efforts at SLAC, making the video was a collaborative project. Last spring, the 40th Anniversary Committee asked Jean Deken (TIS) to begin assembling pictures and conducting research for the 40th Anniversary photo history book. In September, Neil Calder (COM) asked Dalby, who art directed and designed the book, to make a slide show from materials Deken had assembled. Dalby suggested doing a video instead, and Calder approved it on the spot. "I thought it was a great idea," Calder said.

Terry Anderson and Michael Hyde (both of TIS) had previously been working on high-quality animations about the Lab and SLAC’s research projects for use in education, research and public relations. When this group got together to discuss the video Dalby had begun work on, the idea of incorporating the animation was an immediate winner.

"By starting with the sepia-toned old footage complete with natural degradation, traveling through the still shots of people here and now, then moving onto the animation and Peter Ginter’s photos, the movie spans past, present and future," said Hyde. "The animation is futuristic, starting in space and zooming into the subatomic level using a hyper-real color palette. Peter Ginter’s photographs give a similar effect, using time-lapse photography and an incredible palette to create a surreal feeling."

"SLAC: The Movie" can be seen at: http://www-project.slac.stanford.edu/streaming-media/events/40th/Celebration.html