Many scenes in NOVA's miniseries "The Elegant Universe" draw
directly upon the book by physicist Brian Greene on which the
series is based. With its lively descriptions, analogies, and
illustrations, Greene's book gave NOVA producers Joe McMaster
and Julia Cort a concrete road map for telling the story of
string theory, an extremely abstract and counterintuitive
subject, to a general audience. With Greene's book in hand,
the NOVA production team—including the producer, camera
crew, animator, and editor, to name a few—created
innovative visualizations of invisible things, such as extra
dimensions, parallel universes, and black holes.
In this interactive, you will see how a single concept from
Greene's book evolved into a finished film sequence, a process
repeated many times over throughout the making of NOVA's
miniseries. From the book's illustration of hidden spatial
dimensions that inspired the sequence, to the collection of
storyboards used to plan the director's shot list, to outtakes
from the rough footage, to the finished scene, click on the
image on the top at left and see for yourself the painstaking
process of interpreting The Elegant Universe for the
screen.
We also invite you to browse a collection of behind-the-scenes
photographs of NOVA's "Elegant Universe" film crew on location
in London, New Mexico, New York, and Boston. To launch this
slide show, click on the bottom image at left.—Lexi Krock
