"Looking very good." "Look at the camera." "Really good." "Excellent." "Smile." "Cut it." "Intimate Universe, The Human Body, is a television series that takes cameras to places they've never been to before." "It allows us to look in captivating detail at how our bodies work, following the journey we all make from the moment of conception to our last breath." "This a six-week-old foetus, a real image enhanced by our own unique computer animation technique." "(BABY CRIES)" "And this is a new-born baby." "We show you images of babies crawling never seen before." "Hormones crystalising." "And with a revolutionary technique, we can show you a woman's ovulation for the first time." "A ruptured follicle releasing one of its eggs." "You'll see a remarkable new view of the adult brain." "Blood pumping around your body." "And individual blood cells flowing through your veins." "You'll see how your skin looks when it's aged." "And that same skin magnified a thousand times." "The human body from birth to death." "In this programme, I want to show you how we captured some of these remarkable images." "For me, it's been quite an adventure." "Not only have I witnessed incredibly intricate filming like this, but I've also seen what some of the most exciting places in the world can tell us about the bodies we all inhabit." "My own body's been through quite a lot as well." "Here I explored how the human body began." "Here we are, 8,OOO feet above sea level, in America's Yellowstone National Park." "If you'd been on the surface of the planet Earth 3 billion years ago, it would have looked something like this." "Here in Egypt, I discovered why a child learning to speak feels like a tourist in a foreign country." "Do you understand?" "Right over, outside Cairo, in the desert?" "Do you understand English?" "Can you take me to the Pyramids, where the kings are buried?" "And here, I put my climbing skills to the test, because the Pyramids hold one of the keys to the human body's ability to learn." "Some time long, long ago, this lot and I shared a common ancestor." "This is Hirudo Medicinalis, better known to you and me as a leech." "Morning sickness." "It's rather unpleasantly like being seasick." "First, you're worried you're going to die." "Then you're worried you're not." "This blazing inferno, like all fires, requires oxygen for its power." "The rollercoaster ride of puberty inspired this episode." "And in the interests of science, the producers kindly got me drunk." "lust say action, and I'll be on the ball." "Action." "I'm not sure I can get my head round this completely now." "Once I'd got over my hangover, it was back to work." "New-born babies have another reflex which is much more mysterious." "In fact, it's an ability so odd that until recently we didn't even realise it existed." "Actually, it's a reflex we all had in the first six months of life." "And what an ability." "To film this magical sequence, it took thirty people twelve hours and a huge amount of equipment." "You can't imagine how much I'm looking forward to this." "In fact, it's been an ambition of mine, actually, to drown." "Of course, I wasn't the only one going under water." "The crew came too." "And with them came enormous waterproof lights." "They also had to figure out how to get my co-stars," "me and my bubble helmet, and a watertight camera, into the pool." "What We're trying to do today is to actually show the diving reflex Which all babies have." "They have it for the first six months or so of life." "It allows them to hold their breath under Water." "But also they almost start swimming, and they can swim for a very short distance." "We're going for a take now." "OK." "Turnover." "OK, and action." "And ready..." "Go!" "Now we put the theory to the test." "OK." "Rob, can you move a little bit back?" "But in some mysterious Way the babies are actually very calm and relaxed" "When they go under the Water." "When you're filming under Water, one of the things that's quite difficult to sort out is actually synchronising the sound With the picture." "OK, action!" "Normally, When you're above Water, you just use a clapper board." "But When you're under Water, it's not possible to use a clapper board, so What I had to do Was tell Robert to actually bang the side of his helmet, and that "bang" We could then use as a mark point," "and We could then match up the sound With the picture." "Bang, Robert." "Brilliant." "That Was brilliant." "Looking very good, actually." "OK, so that's a Wrap for Robert now." "I might be finished, but those fantastic water babies have still got some work to do." "There's a lot more to making this sequence than meets the eye." "The mums and helpers in blue will disappear for the final film... and the babies will swim into shot at precisely the right moment." "Or so the experts in the editing suite tell me." "The aim of this entire shoot Was to make the babies appear on cue in a Way Which Would be impossible in reality because you'd have to hold the baby under Water until Robert had said his lines right," "and let go of them so they could swim up past the camera." "So We had to film the babies separately and put them over the top so they appear When he finishes saying certain Words and swim across the scene." "The people in the pool Wear blue because it's furthest away from skin tone." "There isn't any blue in human skin." "This computer looks for the blue and makes it disappear, Which enables us to cut the babies out in a shape With a nice clean edge and put them over the clean Water frames," "Which are specially-shot backgrounds Which We used behind all the babies and the shots of Robert to give the impression he's in a very large pool or the sea, because the pool We Were filming in Was so tiny." "And this is what we ended up with - a skill babies have and adults can only marvel at." "The truth is, we don't even understand the origins of this remarkable ability." "For the moment, at least, it remains a delightful mystery." "Another mystery was why I allowed a different team of experts to cover my head in cornflour." "They told me it was to make hair reflective for a scan of my head." "Enough to make a man turn grey." "One of the things We Wanted to do Was link the outside World that We can shoot With normal cameras and the inside World that We can shoot With tiny ones," "Which We can image using medical imaging technology." "The best Way is to make a seamless journey from the big World into the tiny World." "So We needed to get an image of a person's head into our computer." "There is a Way of doing that called cyber scanning, and it's actually a Way you make a laser scan, Which uses the same kind of laser you scan your groceries With at the supermarket." "It travels around the head and paints a very intricate picture in the computer of the topography, of the contours, of someone's head and then that can be folded up to make an image of the face Which We can manipulate on computer." "The cyber scan allowed us to start this amazing sequence, a journey from my head into my ear canal - uncharted territory." "The fleshy outer ear collects the sounds that surround us and channels them down the ear canal to vibrate the ear drum." "On the other side of the drum, these vibrations are transmitted through the middle ear by minute bones." "These are the only bones that stop growing soon after birth." "An adult has ear bones the same size as a new-born baby." "We went even further into the detail of the ear with another imaging technique, Scanning Electron Microscopy." "If we zoom right the way in with an electron microscope, we should see something remarkable:" "the secret of how sound is transmitted to the brain." "They're rows of minute hairs a few thousandths of a millimetre high." "As noise vibrates them, they send electrical signals to the brain, which we experience as sound." "An SEM, Scanning Electron Microscope, is a special microscope that uses electrons instead of light to look at something." "With this microscope, We can magnify about times three hundred thousand." "But for most biological specimens, times fifty thousand is plenty." "At times fifty thousand, you could see details on the surface of individual bacteria." "To prepare an SEM, Paul puts the tiny specimen through a complex process of fixing, to preserve it." "Then he dips it in chemicals to remove all traces of water." "If I Was to put a specimen straight into the microscope, With it containing Water, the vacuum inside the microscope Would cause the specimen to explode." "It then goes in a pressure chamber to finish the dehydration process." "Believe it or not, it's then coated in 24-carat gold to make it visible in an electron beam." "Once coated, the specimen can be put onto the microscope on this special motorised stage." "The camera position is so the microscope is fixed." "So the only Way We can get movement in the sample is to move the sample." "I create the moving sequence With stop-frame animation." "Stop-frame animation is a painstaking technique, a bit like making cartoons." "This is an egg in the Fallopian tube." "Hundreds of still pictures are taken, each time in a slightly different position, to create movement." "A 3O-second sequence like this can take surprisingly long to make." "The process for one specimen can take about three days from start to finish." "With SEMs, we've been able to show you some amazing details." "Here, the surface of the tongue." "And here, hair growing." "And different types of hair." "Asian hair is circular in cross section, so it tends to hang straight." "Black people have hair which is a flat oval, so it naturally tends to form tight curls." "Caucasians, or white Europeans, have hair halfway between the two, so tend to have slightly wavy hair." "And here, a human egg and, a hundred times smaller, human sperm on its surface." "Images like this might make conception look easy." "But it's not." "Kate Hardy is a member of my research team at Hammersmith Hospital, London." "For our programme on pregnancy, she filmed a remarkable sequence never seen before on television." "This microscope enables us to look at the embryo at a high magnification, so We can see What the embryo's doing While it's developing." "Round the microscope We've got this perspex box." "The embryo can't grow at room temperature." "We have to keep it at 37 degrees Centigrade," "Which is the same temperature as the human body." "We find the embryo, focus on it, set the video recorder going, so that We have one shot every two seconds, and We leave the embryo there for about a Week." "This is a very nice technique for looking at development over a long period." "We compact it into a short period to see the changes taking place." "You start off With a fertilised egg, Which is a large cell, and this cell Will divide about once every day, initially." "These cells carry on dividing until there are about eight or sixteen cells, about three days after the one-cell stage, and finally it gets to the stage Where it Wants to hatch out of the jelly coating that has been protecting it during earlier development," "and then it's ready to implant in the lining of the Womb." "I think the most exciting thing We've seen so far is the Way the cells divide, the speed that it happens over." "You get a real feel for the fact that there's a long period When nothing happens, then suddenly you get a cell division, then another day Where nothing happens, then another cell division." "It's amazing Watching that on screen." "It's one thing to film an embyro under a microscope, it's quite another to film the foetus growing in the womb." "The only Way you can get into the human body" "Without cutting it open and seeing inside is to use an endoscope, a mini telescope that can look through small holes, or naturally occurring orifices, Without having to damage the patient." "The endoscopes have a dual system." "One is an optical system for getting the image out, the second is a fibre optics system to take light in." "You use a big endoscope to look at something big, like the gut." "If you look into something very small, Where you need a narrow scope, then the light problems get Worse." "Here's another example where David used an endoscope in the series." "Food doesn't fall from your mouth to your stomach." "When your brain tells you to swallow, it triggers waves of muscle contractions." "They squeeze things along in your oesophagus at around 4 centimetres per second." "The first scheduled stop is the stomach." "Essentially a biological liquidiser, its lining is covered in delicate folds which allow it to expand with each mouthful." "Inside, a mixture of enzymes and hydrochloric acid start to digest your food." "Very probably, your dinner's still in there." "It churns away for about four hours." "Soon, it'll be released into your small intestine, and, at a cue from your brain, bile will be added." "This will help you break down fats." "You'll be carrying tonight's dinner for about 24 hours." "So I hope you liked it." "These are the light guides, the lens..." "David also needed good pictures of the vocal chords in action." " Yeah." " ..until We see the vocal chords." "We Want to do some shots Where We'll try to track across the tongue." "but We'll do it in reverse, so We'll get lined up and get you to sound a note, hold it and then We'll Work out." "All I'm going to do is Watch and instruct." "When you make a sound, your vocal chords vibrate from anything from 1OO to maybe 5 or 6 hundred vibrations a second." "If you look at them directly, under direct light, they're just a blur." "If you use a strobe light, you can "halt" the movement of the chords." "Even though they're vibrating, you stop their apparent movement," "Which allows you to see all the interesting little ripples on the surface." "That's phenomenal." "I agreed to do this because I thought it Would be an interesting experience." "I've never seen my vocal chords before and they do look quite cool on the screen." "I'd never seen them move, I had no idea how they Would Work." "It Was just very interesting to see." " What do you do for a living?" " I'm a sword swallower." "Another day, another orifice..." "The ear." " It's not showing What We Want." " There's nothing Wrong With my ears." "They look very good actually." "The endoscope doesn't go that far into the head, probably about a centimetre." "Ear canals tend to be quite bendy and curvy, so you need this little device to get you round the corner." "You can go right up, almost touching the drum." "If you do and the eardrum is clear and clean enough," "We can see the bones on the other side." " Are you happy?" " I'm happy." "Throughout the series, we combined documentary filming with endoscopic shots to reveal the intricate workings of the body." "However, you can't film everything in the body with an endoscope, so we used another remarkable technique, medical scanning." "When We started the series, We Were keen only to show things you really could see inside the body." "Obviously, there are places you can't reach With a camera." "So We needed a graphic technique, some representation of the body, that Was accurate, What Was really going on inside the body." "In our film on pregnancy, we scanned our mum-to-be, Phillippa, in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging - or MRI - machine." "We did this before she was pregnant to illustrate the geography of her body." "The machine uses magnetic fields to scan slices of her body which are put together to create the whole image." "The difficulty is the Way it's used in medicine is very opaque." "It's very difficult, unless you're really trained, to make sense of that information." "What We set out to do Was use the data medicine can give us - big scanners, CT scans, MRI scans - to try and bring to that some of the aesthetic charm and style of television graphics," "the kind of things We're all used to seeing on TV in computer games, fly through things, voyage around them." "So We Worked With a medical imaging company to Write a computer programme that could do that for us - take What's going on inside the body, but look at it in an exciting, stylish Way." "Here, We've sculpted out the kidneys, the spleen, and the liver here." "That Was quite easy to do." "You've coloured them this Way so you can see them for the moment." "They're pretty much arbitrary colours." "The main thing you find is that things don't look all symmetrical and neat, as they do in books." "how they actually are inside the body is quite different." "For all my work on fertility," "I've never seen an image of a woman's body quite like this." "Look at her ovaries, in white, and the Fallopian tubes next to them." "The sequences lasting about 3O seconds take several months to create, because, from the very beginning, from gathering the data, doing the scan ourselves, or getting the scan data from somewhere in the World that's done that scan" "to actually getting into a visual form, there's a number of steps involving several dozen people and at least two months a sequence." "Here's the brain scan from our puberty programme." "Peering deep inside the head, you can see where it all happens." "Shaded white is the body's autopilot, a tiny gland that constantly adjusts things like temperature, blood pressure, thirst and hunger." "It's the hypothalamus, and it's the driving force behind puberty." "We don't have to be inside the body to watch it at work." "Using time-lapse photography, we recorded the amazing activity and growth of the body, which normally goes unnoticed." "This is what hair standing on end looks like." "And hair growing." "By filming three generations of the same family, we've shown the unflattering side of growing old." "Time-lapse can also trace the growth of the bones in the hand, over twenty years." "You can even watch a nail grow." "Cathy and Richard Ibbetson, both dentists, carried out a unique time-lapse experiment on their daughter." "Fiona is the youngest of our three children." "She turned 1 in January." "We also have two boys, 5 and 3." "When the BBC contacted us, she Was no more than 2 months." "The task was to film Fiona's teeth actually growing." "The main problem Was how to fix her head, and We abandoned the idea of doing her lower teeth, because We couldn't fix those at all, and We looked at Ways of fixing the upper teeth as they Were coming through." "And I suppose the biggest concern Was Whether or not that Would be possible, how upsetting it Would be to her to hold her head completely still for the time required to do the filming." "Although she didn't like it and she didn't like the bright light shining in her face, I knew I Wasn't causing her any pain." "One of the problems We encountered Was that as she got older and bigger it Was more difficult to fix her, so We had to develop a Way of keeping her arms down close to her body so her hands Wouldn't come up" "and start shaking the contraption about, so that did become a problem." "I couldn't get over how long it took the teeth to come through." "On a professional basis, I Was totally unaware of the length of time from When the teeth first appear through the gum to When they Were erupted and you could see a fair bit of tooth." "I didn't bargain on this taking six months plus." "Some of the pictures I found most impressive are called time slice." "You wouldn't think it, but this is a camera, a time slice camera." "It's 12O cameras, mounted side by side on this unwieldy frame." "Chris Spencer, the director, decides where it should go, because once it's in position it's going to be difficult to move." "Each camera will take a still photograph from its own position in the semi-circle around the subject - here, a metal workshop." "They will all capture the same exact moment." "When these stills are edited together, they will allow your eye to move around the picture as if a single moment has been frozen in time." "Designer Tim MacMillan lines up the 12O lenses." "Great." "That's the exposure length We'll have, is it?" " A quarter of a second?" " A half second." "That's almost too long." "We could do one at a half and one at a quarter." "I think I'll bracket a bit With the speed." "It's losing detail on that." "Can We close the doors, please?" "Watch out for the crucial moment..." "There!" "Some shots happened quickly, others took 9 months to complete." "We wanted a single shot to represent an entire pregnancy." "To achieve this, we filmed mother-to-be, Phillippa, every 3 weeks, in the same position, with the same camera moves." "We then combined all these pictures to create one moving image." "It was a meticulous process made possible by a motion-control camera... a computer-operated device which, once programmed, performs exactly the same move each time." "With the camera lined up, the subject has to be precisely lined up, too." "We have one variable" " Phillippa." "She's the only thing in this set-up" "We have to Work out to get right." "Shooting this, We've learned that the posture changes during pregnancy." "We Wanted Phillippa in a posture that Was no longer natural for her, until We realised, by looking at the sequence, that her posture is changing as she's becoming more pregnant." "We had to go With that, so We looked at making that a careful progression." "Lens cap." "(LAUGHTER)" "After all that preparation, you'd think he'd remember the lens cap." "The biggest problem lining up these shots is lining up Phillippa." "Can you drift forward slightly, please?" "We had to ensure she Was in the right place on the treadmill each time and that the rhythm of her Walking Was the same each time." "The guy's developed a little piece of music for me so I know When it goes "ping" I have to be right foot forward." "That helps, because once We start and the turntable starts turning," "I don't have to think about it, because I'm in the rhythm before We started to move it round." "I just try to keep my eyes on the same level as I move around the room." "It's strange." "Some shots Work first time." "It always seems to be a different one causing the problem." "I come for a session about every 3 Weeks." "Sometimes there's very little change and sometimes there's a lot." "I don't like having my photograph taken, so it Was a bit strange not to mind having to take my clothes off." "Once you're doing it, it's not nearly so bad." "The end shot Will be Wonderful because it'll be incredible to see the change in the size and shape of my tummy as my bump has grown." "I'm looking forward to seeing it at the end," "Which is another reason Why I don't Want to see it now, because I Want to see the full thing right at the end." "This is it - 9 months condensed into 45 seconds." "All movement of the human body is complicated and difficult to analyse." "But to understand motion, analysis is what you need." "That's what these little markers are all about." "They can be tracked on a computer to reveal the underlying motion of my skeleton." "It's the only way you can follow something as seemingly simple as the movement of a limb - dozens of joints and bones moving in harmony." "Even a clapping stick man is characteristically human." "The most ambitious use we made of motion capture was to analyse how babies crawl." "The top speed of a crawling baby is about 2 km an hour." "The average baby crawls perhaps 2OO metres a day." "Looking carefully, the motion capture can identify seven types of crawling." "To film motion capture, we assembled ten babies and their mums... 2O crew, some of whom were specially trained in sticking infra-red sensitive reflectors on babies' bottoms... a nervous director... eight infra-red cameras and a team of French experts who knew how to use them." "What is the motion-capture Wire for?" "Initially, for medical study and scientific research." "now, more for computer graphics, special effects, video games." "If you need the movement in 3D of a character, you use motion capture." "OK, are We nearly ready?" "Shall I run on this, Bertrand?" "OK." "The only hitch was persuading the stars of the show to perform." "Come on." "Come on." "Good girl." "Come on, Molly." "Come on." "We use motion analysis to reveal the underlying movement of the skeleton." "What's good about motion analysis is it can tell you things about crawling you'd never have realised." "Brilliant!" "The problem is Working With babies Who don't know motion reflectors are not to be pulled off, knocked off, etc." "So it Was really getting a good take" "Where the baby crawled the entire length, Which is a good 4 or 5 metres," "With enough motion detectors on so the crew could make it Work and bring the skeleton to life." "What We get back from the motion capture is a rod puppet Which moves the same Way as the baby moves, and they make that using the dots off the original baby footage." "then We attach to the dots our model over the top of their rod puppet, and that's how We can make it move in exactly the same Way as the baby." "The skeleton is a combination of one We bought from a computer model company in America and some Work done by a modeller here, particularly on the skull, to change the proportions to match a real baby." "What is missing is a lot of the cartilage and things like that" "Which We thought Would make it a bit too scary." "I think it's a very difficult thing to do Well because there are problems With capturing reality in this Way and applying it With computers." "You do get a different sort of animation to the animation you'd get just copying something moving." "You get gravity and a different form of animation, Which is realistic." "The end result is an amazingly accurate crawling skeleton, moving exactly like the real babies." " OK, perfect." " You are a real star!" "Another way of understanding how the body works is to use a camera that detects heat." "Everything that's alive, and many things that aren't, gives off heat." "That's what you're looking at now." "Every part of your body is burning up energy and creating heat, as it goes about the business of being you." "But the hottest bit of you is up here." "Your brain is burning up more energy than anything else in your body, almost a fifth of all the calories you eat and drink." "And it uses up almost the same amount whether you're concentrating on something really difficult... or just wondering whether to put the cat out, because day and night, your brain is challenged with the most difficult task it will ever face " "keeping you alive." "The thermal camera helped us show the changes in Phillippa's body." "Hot areas of Phillippa show up as yellow or red." "Before pregnancy, her breasts were colder than the rest of her body." "In the first 3 months of pregnancy, a surge of hormones causes the blood vessels around the breasts to expand." "Extra blood flow in these hot red areas feeds the breast tissue as it gears up to provide milk." "We also used the heat sensitive camera to show the muscle action of a contraction during birth." "Bob, one of the stars of the film on babyhood, has just been born." "His challenge is to keep warm." "Bob's toes and nose suffer most." "The delivery room is 15 degrees colder than his mother's womb." "Bob's ability to control his temperature is very limited." "For the moment, he relies on blankets and cuddles." "One of the biggest and most complicated shoots was what we call the "Line of Age", shot in a forest in the English countryside." "We started at 6 am, running the thing like a military operation." "Richard Dale, the series producer, and Irna Imran, the production assistant, were among the first there." "Straightaway, there's a problem." "Some of the artists are missing." "The people Who haven't turned up are a 19-year-old, a 29-year-old, a 5O-year old, a 51 and, I think, either another 41, 49 or 52." "We're missing quite a few." " Oh, yes, I know." " They've set up this agency." "Would you like me to undress for you?" "Not yet." "Things are hotting up, not only in the caterers' truck." "What's the problem at the moment?" "I've got to tell the director about the Weather." "He Wanted a forecast." "The Met Office just told me We can expect thunderstorms this afternoon and sunshine in the early afternoon, so I have to break that news to him." "Some of my extras haven't turned up." "Most of them have, though, and they've got an unusual task ahead." "It Was supposed to be my daughter, but they didn't Want her because Was too young." "So she said, "You can go, Mum, they Want somebody over 6O"." "I've never done this sort of thing before." "I've had holidays on nudist beaches, but this is the first time I've taken me kit off for money." "I only had two days' notice and, being eight and a half months' pregnant," "Was immediately met With "Please, please do it!" So..." "We needed 1OO people, one for each year of age, from birth to 1OO." "TWo-year-olds?" "Is anyone two?" " Do you Want another rehearsal?" " I think let's go for it, shall We?" "You can see it's brightening up there." "Full steam ahead on getting the extras in, please." "Great." "now, as artists arrive, you have numbers." "Stand in front of the cardboard cut-out With your number on it, please." "Keep your glasses on, that's fine." "When the camera comes along, you can look at it a bit." "I don't Want you to feel you mustn't look at the camera." "You can look at it a bit, just not for too long." "Everyone has a set place according to their age." "There you go." "Were you introduced?" "What's lovely about this kind of gathering is that though everyone's Working hard, very quickly the barriers are broken down, and you have a collection of people, a collection of humanity,;" "everybody from a tWo-Week-old baby to a 1O2-year-old man." "There's a great sense of camaraderie and lack of tension." "OK." "Dressing gowns off, please." "Try not to look freezing cold, OK?" "Standby, then." "OK, everybody, We are rolling." "Look happy." "Smile and react to the camera." "Yes, look to camera." "You can smile a bit." "Don't look too solemn about it all." "When you look at the camera, look relaxed." "That's great." "The result?" "What we hope is a memorable sequence that captures what this series is all about:" "the human body, endlessly changing, ever surprising and seen in these programmes in a fresh and fascinating way." "And...cut it!"