- Hurricane on the Bayou (2006)
- Greece: Secrets of the Past (2006)
- Coral Reef Adventure (2003)

Hurricane on the Bayou

“…Hurricane on the Bayou is a graceful film, beautifully edited and photographed. The film leaves moviegoers with two very important things: hope that the wetlands can be recovered and the spirit-lifting sound of another of Louisiana’s great natural resources, music.”

-- John Wirt, Baton Rouge Advocate

“The…footage—of crumbled homes, a cargo ship hurled onto a freeway, and water-sunken neighborhoods—is familiar yet powerful, and the giant IMAX® screen offers a sense of scale that simply isn’t possible on television…A film free of political fury, but full of activist optimism…"

-- Chuck Wilson, LA Weekly

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Hurricane on the Bayou, a giant screen production featuring one of the most vibrant places in America—the Louisiana bayou and the City of New Orleans—was originally slated as a film about the ongoing erosion of the region’s wetlands ecosystem. This erosion, at the speed of one acre every thirty minutes, is constantly removing the natural buffers that protect the region from hurricanes.

The filmmakers were in the process of simulating the effects of a hypothetical Category 5 hurricane when Hurricane Katrina struck. Beyond tragically illustrating the warnings contained in the film—and causing the filmmakers to return to New Orleans to record Katrina’s aftermath—Katrina became the most devastating and costly natural disaster in US history.

This unprecedented before-during-and-after coverage, in the tremendous scale of IMAX® photography and with an unparalleled, indigenous, musical soundtrack, tells the Louisiana story as no one else has. It reveals individual stories of human experience along with the environmental story of destruction. The wetlands that have been depleted by human intervention form the same ecosystem from which people receive wealth, cultural vitality, and protection from deadly storm surges.  This poignant human-nature relationship is revealed as an intricate tapestry of interdependence.  The film is now playing in theatres worldwide.

Musicians Tell the Story

“Katrina literally re-wrote our script,” Greg MacGillivray noted. The film’s message of wetlands restoration, and its new, terribly real clarion call to rebuild the “soul of America,” now had to be blended together. Greg MacGillivray considered the best, most authentic way to do that. “Musicians have always been the heroes of Louisiana,” he explains, one of the environmental spices that make the area so irresistible." And so the filmmakers chose to follow some of Louisiana’s most celebrated musicians through their dramatic experiences with the hurricane, and with the place they call home.

Allen Toussaint Rock ‘n roll Hall-of-Famer and world-famous jazz pianist	Tab Benoit Cajun rock ‘n blues guitarist	Marva Wright Gospel legend (featured artist)	Chubby Carrier Zydeco accordion master	Amanda Shaw 14-year-old Cajun fiddler

Greg MacGillivray: “We set out originally to tell the story of a future, hypothetical hurricane and how the rapid erosion of the wetlands left New Orleans more vulnerable to flooding—but when Katrina struck in the middle of doing that, we were no longer filming what might happen, we were suddenly more like news reporters filming what did happen. We had to completely rethink the film, which evolved in to a much broader and more deeply emotional story than we ever imagined. We realized we had a unique ability to capture…this story in a way that captures the humanity of it, the essential role of the wetlands environment and the undeniable, musical magic of the city all at once. Hurricane on the Bayou is not just the moving story of how several remarkable musicians survived Katrina and are facing the future, nor is it just the story of how destruction of the wetlands is wreaking devastation for both humans and animals. I think it is really about the tremendous value of New Orleans and Louisiana to our nation. I hope we reveal what a treasure this city is—a wild swampland that turned into a fantastic center for music, food and the enjoyment of life itself. To lose New Orleans would be an unthinkable tragedy.”

Greece: Secrets of the Past

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A sweeping archeological journey back in time, the film sets out on a quest to uncover the buried secrets of one of the world’s most enlightened societies—ancient Greece—that for 100 years, from approximately 500 BC to 400 BC, became the center of human thought and creativity and laid many of the foundations for the way we live today.

	How did the Greek empire of some 2,500 years ago flourish so fantastically?
	What was life like in the Golden Age of ancient Greece?
	And why did it suddenly fall?

Helping bring these questions into contemporary focus with her trademark wit and style is the film’s narrator, Greek-American Nia Vardalos, the writer and star of the runaway hit feature My Big Fat Greek Wedding, for which she received an Oscar® nomination for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.

At the heart of the film’s journey is Dr. Christos Doumas, an impassioned Greek archeologist who, inspired by his love of Greek culture, is working feverishly to piece together the puzzle of ancient Greece and better understand its influence on life today. Also playing a key role is Doumas’ friend and fellow scientist, Dr. George Vougioukalakis, a volcanologist studying the devastating explosion on the island of Santorini in 1646 BC, which changed life in the Aegean Sea forever.

Doumas weaves a compelling story about how archeology has unearthed the ways in which the early Greek’s rapid progress in science, politics, philosophy, sports and art in turn resulted in perhaps the greatest explosion in human advancement ever seen. Among the greatest gifts from ancient Greece is the powerful concept of democracy itself, which evolved in fifth century Athens. Other legacies the Greeks bestowed upon us include the creation of the Olympic Games, the imaginative Greek myths, the beginnings of modern theatre and entertainment, as well as the study of mathematics, physics, architecture, biology, zoology, politics and ethics, among other academic fields that have changed the world.

Technological Highlights:

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Although the camera crews’ adventuresome journeys to contemporary Greece provided compelling images of breathtaking ruins, archeological projects and oceanic vistas, the filmmakers wanted to go even further. They hoped to viscerally recreate an intimate, “virtual” experience of two key hallmarks of Greek history now lost to time: the brilliant sculptural beauty and democratic symbolism of the Parthenon before it was reduced to ruins; and the devastating volcanic explosion that blew an island to smithereens and buried a thriving culture under ash and rock on Santorini.

Especially spectacular in the history of IMAX® filmmaking, recreating the Parthenon as it hasn’t been seen in the last 2,000 years was a daunting undertaking. The building was once lavishly decorated and brightly painted, and contained a towering 42-foot-tall gold and ivory statue of the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena, as well as other sculptures. The recreation became the most expensive, labor-intensive single CGI scene ever in a giant screen film.

The real-life eruption of the Santorini volcano was one of the largest in history, and certainly the most massive volcanic explosion in the last 10,000 years. In 1646 BC, pyroclastic flows—1,000-plus-degree avalanches of gas, rock, and lava that travel more than 100 miles per hour—knocked down, carried away, shattered, or burned every object they encountered. In order to simulate that ancient event, technicians melded computer-generated images with footage of recent, actual pyroclastic flows.

In addition, this crew took unprecedented aerial IMAX®-format photography, in which a camera was flown 15,000 feet above the Greek Isles. And high-tech modern archeology techniques such as ground-penetrating radar were used to locate undetected building walls buried deep beneath the ground.

Coral Reef Adventure (2003)

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Coral Reef Adventure follows the real-life expedition of two ocean explorers and underwater filmmakers, Howard and Michele Hall, on a daring 10-month journey to document some of the world’s largest, most beautiful and most endangered coral reefs. On their journey from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the majestic islands of Fiji and Tahiti and the mysterious Rangiroa atoll, the Halls meet with scientists and naturalists such as famed ocean explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau and deep reef ichthyologist Richard Pyle, who are all part of a growing global effort to build a stronger understanding of these fragile and essential ecosystems.

Featuring songs written and recorded by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and narrated by Liam Neeson.

Film Firsts:

	First time a diver has taken an IMAX® camera down to 370 feet in the open ocean.
	106 miles of 15/70 film was shot—more than any other IMAX® theatre film.
	2,421 dives and 2,810 hours of underwater time were logged—more than any other IMAX® documentary.
	Five new fish species were discovered in Fiji during filmmaking.
	First time that IMAX® filmmakers are characters in an IMAX® documentary.
	At $10 million, the most expensive MacGillivray Freeman Film up to the time of that production.

Deep Dive Filming:

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Underwater cinematography is an extremely specialized art to begin with, often considered one of the most complex and perilous forms of filmmaking. The entire crew must be certified divers and all the film equipment—hi-tech cameras, underwater housings and lights—must be specially designed to withstand the crushing water pressure found at depth. Add to these challenges the IMAX® process. If audiences are meant to feel as if they are actually submerged deep in the ocean, filmmakers have to take the notoriously cumbersome IMAX® camera down deep.

This process included frequent dive computer failures, flooded cameras, imploding underwater lights, building modified housings that could withstand the pressure, and camera motors that literally could not push the film because of the pressure. Humans had special challenges, too. They used cutting-edge life support systems known as mixed-gas closed-circuit rebreathers which extended “bottom time.” They breathed exotic gas mixtures to help their bodies cope better with physiological changes.  Even with all of the safety measures and high-tech equipment, lead character and filmmaker Howard Hall developed “the bends” during the filming, spending time in a recompression chamber to recover.