Titanic Live 05 - Preparatory Voyage

7 July 2005

Acclaimed movie director James Cameron continues his long term relationship with Titanic this year with a highly technical project to broadcast a television documentary from the wreck on Discovery Channel on July 24 th. Deep Ocean Expeditions, under charter to Cameron's film company Earthship Productions, conducted an expedition to the Titanic in early July to complete final adjustments to the technical equipment that will be used for the broadcast. Produced by Australian Andrew Wight, the broadcast involves transforming the lower decks of the Akademic Keldysh into a mobile television studio capable of receiving images from the field for editing before they are beamed to the geosynchronous satellite. Says Wight, "this is an incredibly complex project containing many innovative engineering solutions developed specifically for this project. The complexity is perhaps best explained by outlining the path of the signal; from the camera on the remotely operated 'bots' (remote operated vehicles operating within Titanic) via a fiber optic cable to the MIR's, then via another 20,000 feet of fibre-optic cable to a support boat on the surface where it is converted into radio frequencies and beamed to Keldysh. Once aboard Keldysh the signal is edited with the directors selecting images from the several cameras on the MIR's and the 'bots' before the final selection is beamed via a satellite 22,500 miles away to Washington. Says Wight "all this is going on in the context of a dive operating depth where pressures are in the vicinity of 6 tons per square inch. The amazing thing is that the timing of the whole process, from the 'bot' operating inside the Titanic to the picture on your TV set at home takes less than half a second".

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