My second feature documentary will begin production in September 2011. Shooting locations will include eastern Siberia, CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland (pictured above), and the ALMA Project in Chile. It will involve the largest astronomy project in human history, Tuvan throat singers, a neuroscientist's quest to actually photograph memories being formed in the brain, and the creation of sand mandalas in remote Buddhist monasteries between Pakistan and Tibet, all told through the true story of a man running alone across Death Valley in average temperatures of 130 degrees fahrenheit.

The film will be about questions, and the diverse routes to ask them. It will be about the struggles to lift the seemingly impenetrable veils of mystery from the intangible and transcendent, whether through bodies, machines, brains, or stars.

For more information about this film, read the article CERN published in their newsletter "ALICE Matters" during production at the Large Hadron Collider in January 2012: http://alicematters.web.cern.ch/steveelkins

Video and production journals will be periodically posted below during my travels for the film, so check back for updates.

September 2011:
Production began with one of the central subjects of my next film: 83 year old Al Arnold, who in his 50s ran a non-stop 200 miles all the way across Death Valley then all the way up Mount Whitney in average temperatures of 130 degrees fahrenheit despite partial blindness.

September 2011:
I've been spending time with Gary Lynch in his neuroscience lab where he has spent decades devising a way to photograph the formation of memories in the brain, such as the image above. Gary, who is one of the subjects of my next film, is the author of "Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence" and the subject of the book "101 Theory Drive" by LA Times reporter Terry McDermott.

The VLT of Cerro Paranal, one of several shooting locations in Chile where production took place in November 2011.

Photos taken during production in Chile can be viewed here: http://www.steveelkins.net/Photography/Northern-Chile/20346533_wg322F

Production has continued in Switzerland and France throughout January 2012.
This photo was taken by Ben Eshbach in Montreux, Switzerland.

A gallery of production photos from Switzerland can be viewed here: http://www.steveelkins.net/Photography/Switzerland-and-CERNs-Large/21225228_krDqmC

An article on the experience by Ben Eshbach can be read here: http://www.beneshbach.com/cern.html

Production in Ladakh begins in June 2012.

Working with Swiss ethnologist Martin Brauen (pictured left) in September 2012.

In October 2012, I filmed Lama Losang Samten making the 3,000 year old Kalachakra sand mandala, which involved the painstakingly slow process of dropping particles of colored sand on a table for 8 or 9 hours a day, every day for an entire month. It is destroyed as soon as it's finished as a meditation on the impermanence of all things, and the importance of non-attachment, then is dissolved in the nearest river where it flows into the world as a prayer for non-violence. Timelapse footage of the entire month in just over a minute, shot for my forthcoming feature film, can be viewed here: http://vimeo.com/53768018

Lama Losang was Personal Attendant to His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama for 20 years, and played the role of the attendant to the young Dalai Lama in Martin Scorsese's film Kundun, where he also served as the religious technical advisor and sand mandala supervisor. Losang has been an incredible help to me over the last year, putting me in touch with monks in remote monasteries throughout the Himalayas whom I've been working with. He is also the only person in the world who makes the Kalachakra sand mandala by himself.

Photo by Don Farber.

Filming in Siberia took place from March - April 2014. The moment we began driving 40 kilometers across the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, the world's oldest (25 million years), deepest (three Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other would vanish without a trace), and largest lake (bigger than Belgium and containing 20% of the world's fresh water). A trail of old Christmas trees planted in the ice indicated the most sturdy sections to drive on, which led us to an ice camp in the middle of the lake where physicists are attempting to solve some of the deepest riddles of the universe by using the entire Earth as a filter to detect neutrinos coming from deep space. The convulsive water beneath the surface causes the ice to break up into cracks and ridges. If the cracks are no more than two feet wide, then the driver speeds up to launch across them (we spun out a couple times and were certain the van would flip). If they're bigger, planks of wood stowed on top of the car are used as a makeshift bridge.

Photos taken during production in Siberia can be viewed here: http://www.steveelkins.net/Photography/Siberia-Tuva-and-Moscow/46414895_JRCRFF

While staying with neutrino physicists in Siberia on the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, there was no running water. So, no toilets, no showers...the physicists don't shower at all for two months, so we didn't for the five days we were here either. We got all our water from a small hole in the ice, which usually had to be broken apart with a spear each morning after it froze again. Here, my friend Ted is about to do so.

Siberia: http://tedandmelissafurlife.blogspot.com/2015/07/blog-post.html?m=1

Moscow: http://tedandmelissafurlife.blogspot.com/2015/06/a.html?m=1

From March - April 2014, we traveled to remote villages near the borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China to film musicians, instrument builders, shamans, and traditional hunters.

Trans-Siberian Railroad: http://tedandmelissafurlife.blogspot.com/2015/07/trans-siberian.html?m=1

Tuva (part one): http://tedandmelissafurlife.blogspot.com/2015/09/part-one.html?m=1

Tuva (part two): http://tedandmelissafurlife.blogspot.com/2015/10/part-two.html?m=1

Filming in Ethiopia was completed in May 2015. It involved nail-biting climbs with monks to their remote cave monasteries, many of which have been in use since the 5th century, hidden in the mountains of Tigray.

Some unfinished anecdotes about the experience can be read here (more to come), including time spent in Istanbul on the way: http://tedandmelissafurlife.blogspot.com/2016/03/part-one.html?m=1