Blaise Douros on LinkedIn: Tammy Ma: The secret force for limitless energy? Lasers (2024)

If you ever wanted to see some of the inside workings of the world's largest laser, our latest short doc takes you inside the fabulously complex scheduled maintenance operations required to achieve fusion in a lab.As usual, my brilliant colleagues did much of the heavy lifting; Patricia Koning came up with the idea for this piece in the first place, guided us through the multi-acre, multi-story maze of the National Ignition Facility, and found exactly the right people to tell the story.Elenita Makani O'Malley spun all the proverbial production plates and often kept me from backing into extremely expensive scientific equipment, all while holding a camera of her own. I did the interview setups, ran the A cam, and consequently pulled out lots of old low-budget filmmaking tricks like improvising a Glidecam out of a tripod. Just another day making movies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.#innovation #science #video

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Kristal Caballero, MPH consults in health #policy and #equity, and is really good at it. If any of my network is looking for help in creating or managing these kinds of programs, she's now consulting full-time.https://lnkd.in/g_n2JpuwShe's my sister-in-law so I've obviously got vested interests, but since she'll make your program more likely to succeed, it all works out. #healthcare #femaleentrepreneur

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This is a huge breakthrough for #cancer treatments. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is using our supercomputers to drastically accelerate drug development timelines, and the results are starting to get out into the world.It's a cool example of a public-private partnership, and the end result could be life-changing for a lot of people.But you don't have to take my word for it...unless you watch the #video with the sound on. Then you'll have to listen to me explain it.My most excellent colleague Elenita Makani O'Malley produced and edited this one, and I did the camera work, VO, and motion graphics.Check it out!#sciencecommunications #innovation #technology

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I don't repost every Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory article with my photos, but I was particularly happy with these ones I shot last week featuring Sam Hedges for his work building neutrino detectors. Big shiny equipment makes for great dramatic reflections and nice background separation, and when Sam jumped into this cryo vessel to clean it up before I shot it, I told him to freeze (har!) in there: it would make a fun shot!A few lights and color gels later, and this shot was the result. There's another one in the article too, showing him working on the detector lid. #photography #communications #sciencecommunications

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So, I do #voiceover now.A few months ago, I narrated a video for the Lab, and apparently, the news got out that Blaise can say words pretty good. I've gotten requests to narrate a number of Lab videos from various departments in the last few weeks, and this is the first to release publicly. Other talented colleagues worked on the production of the video: all I did was say phrases like "laser-based ultrasonics" and "fluorescence and spectroscopy techniques" without breaking the microphone.#science #innovation

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A little #animation I put together for the Lab to help celebrate #PiDay. It always makes me irrationally happy when I can riff on a fun concept--we'll see how many years I can manage to circle back and come up with a new one! No, I won't apologize for the puns, I regret nothing. #videoproduction #sciencecommunication

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I have an agreement with Lindsey Douros: I won't do holiday cards unless it's something interesting. If you're on our mailing list, you'll never get a picture of our family standing in front of nature, wearing matching outfits. Last year was a scene of our kaiju-sized children chasing us through downtown Sacramento. The year before that, three terrifying leather-clad women were threatening a nerdy dude across the train tracks. So here's this year's entry--and yes, that's a real bank vault. If you didn't get a physical copy, and this hurts your feelings, I'm sorry--we probably don't have your address. The list is getting big enough now that we might need Shutterfly to sponsor our holiday card!#photography

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After months of work with my colleagues, I'm very proud that this piece can finally see daylight. We had a lot of people working with us to help set the direction, but in particular:Lauren Casonhua wrote the script, distilling the fabulous complexity of the Lab's missions down to a few deceptively simple phrases (and handling the many revisions like a true pro).Elenita Makani O'Malley led the production side, spinning all the plates, gathering footage from innumerable sources, and making sure all the components came together in the edit. Robert Sickles trawled his archives for his existing footage and went out to do new setups with little or no warning, delivering all the things we couldn't.As for me: I shot some of the new footage, did the motion graphics and compositing work, and took point on audio, which included a scratch voiceover which my colleagues very kindly voted to turn into a final VO. We sourced footage and animations from many other sources around the Lab; it was a true team effort to showcase the team #science we do. The video finally went live today, so give it a watch to see a little of what we do at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.#technology #innovation #scienceandtechnology #filmmaking

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The same people who put "AI Futurist" in their profile and claim "if you're not on the #AI train, your job has already been replaced" are the same ones that were screaming the same things about Web3 and Crypto two years ago. How are those NFTs working out? FTX doing okay? Were they right about Web3 being tHe MoSt TrAnSfOrMaTiVe TeChNoLoGy EvEr?Maybe a little critical thinking about the current *insane* level of hype in their claims is in order. AI can do some useful things. It can't do everything. I really can't wait for everyone to get a grip again.

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