Filmmaker Interview Part 2: Justin T. Lee and Lindsay Lee

The theme of this Miikshi movie is volcano imaging.  What are your thoughts about volcano imaging using muography?  What are the main features of this technique that you wanted to highlight?

Using muons to “see” inside volcanoes is an amazing application of muography, and we’re particularly inspired by this technique’s life-saving possibilities. For “Miikshi: Cosmic Rays 2”, we wanted to introduce the idea of predicting a volcano’s eruption with muography and illustrate how a volcano’s density affects how many muons travel through it. Since we can’t go into too much detail during the story, we’re always happy that Prof. Dogwyn Tanaka appears at the end to recap and expand on the science! These end segments are very much inspired by “The Magic School Bus”, a series we grew up watching that also elaborated on their story’s science at the end.

Typically, the second film in a series is the most challenging since it is inevitably compared with the first movie.  What was your strategy for bravely meeting the high expectations of the audience? 

For a Miikshi story, the first Cosmic Rays was a big, ambitious production that we all took very seriously. With “Cosmic Rays 2”, our goal right away was to have a lot of fun with the characters and universe — so Miikshi and Chickelyna got to bicker more as old friends do, there was more physical action like the branch that smacks Chickelyna in the face, and we introduced the mysterious and ridiculous Igneous Otters.

What was it like working with Tom Scott and Mat from @Techmoan in this episode? 

We consider Mat from Techmoan a “Miikshi good luck charm”. He kindly did a guest voice in the very first Miikshi short film in 2018 and has now guest-voiced in every Cosmic Rays mini-movie, for which we’re incredibly grateful. We were also very excited to have Tom Scott guest voice a version of himself in “Cosmic Rays 2”, especially as communicating science is what he does!

The volcano island itself is very enormous and stunning on screen.  Did you construct all of these sets physically as miniature models?  If so, how big are these sets?  Do you use digital effects?

We’re glad to hear the island looked big on screen! All shots of the Isle of Clam began as physical model miniatures created from foam by sculptor Graeme Black Robinson. In reality, the model of the full island is really tiny, although the top of the volcano was a much larger, separate piece about half a meter wide. We photographed the full-size island model from many angles and used photogrammetry software called Polycam to create a digital copy to use in shots of the Hay Ewe approaching the island.

At the beginning of “Miikshi: Cosmic Rays 2” there is a large crowd in the tv show audience (including Prof. Dogwyn Tanaka). Having such a large audience of characters is very captivating and has a great impact, I think.  How many puppeteers were working on that?  Did you have one puppeteer moving each puppet at the same time?

We’re glad you spotted Prof. Dogwyn Tanaka in the audience (of course he’d be attending a televised event about a cosmic potato)! Short crowd shots are always fun to film. The puppets were performed by about five crew members, and costume supervisor Angelica LeMinh would quickly redress them between takes to help give the impression that there were more characters!

Could you please describe your experience participating in the recent “Miikshi Cosmic Rays” screenings and puppet making workshops in the United States and Japan?   Do you have plans for more workshops in the future?

We’ve absolutely loved the “Miikshi: Cosmic Rays” screening events that have taken place so far in both Japan and the US. These have been for both adults and younger viewers, and it’s fantastic to get such an immediate response. Our favourite comments in particular are when people say they learned about muography and were also entertained, which is exactly what our goal with this series is! The screenings that were paired with a puppet-making workshop were also incredibly rewarding — seeing kids build their own puppet characters and start to perform them with each other was so heartwarming. We hope there’ll be more events to come!