Location: Dresden, Germany

What I learnt from the shoot: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 

The future is here, along with self sizing jackets and time travelling Deloreans (both works in progress…), the hoverboard IS REAL. Really.

I couldn’t quite believe it when I first saw this clip, and, generally speaking, I’m happy to take most things at face value. I instantly had to know how this was possible, and more importantly – why I didn’t own one… yesterday.

The truth, while no less impressive, is hidden behind a negligibly small deception. But more on that later. One of the biggest challenges with this shoot was negotiating with a corporate giant, Lexus, to gain access to film with this incredible creation. Fortunately, they were a dream to work with, as I believe any large company who stands to gain from the publicity would be, once you get over a few keys points. Obviously, the primary concern of any large company engaging in publicity like this is damage to reputation, whether known or otherwise. Having also worked on programmes like Rogue Traders and Watchdog, knowing you will cause damage to a company’s reputation is only balanced by believing (and proving) you are justified in doing so. So the first thing to reassure a company of is that, you are who say you are, the programme is honest in it’s intentions, and that you won’t intentionally misrepresent them. This is usually achieved by sending over previous episodes with similar collaborations. The second hurdle is that you won’t unintentionally misrepresent them, this is much harder to achieve because it is based on trust, them relying on you to not accidentally make them look stupid. Fortunately the Outrageous Acts of Science team built up a great rapport when setting this up, and I simply took over the relationship we’d built with them, which I think worked out beneficially for both of us in the end.

But enough of the politics. Check out this clip of the finished item on Discovery Science for the … science… and I’ll give you all the behind the scenes goodness when you’re done.

All filled in? The technology is fairly incredible. As you’ll have gathered from the clip, the only deception is that they covered up the magnetic track in the original video to make it look like it’s hovering on nothing, science can’t quite make it hover on nothing just yet.

I took a look behind the scenes at a demonstration they’d setup for us in the lab…

Once we’d filmed the interview with the good doctor who’d helped create this, we went to the “Super Trans Facility”, which was every bit as cool as it sounds. Upon arrival we met pro skater Ross, and the team at the facility casually informed us that they’d also built a two person vehicle that rides on these superconducting magnets, and would we like a go? I obviously declined and got on with the shoot… oh no, wait, the opposite of that:

Mind blown, again, we proceeded to film the interview and get some shots of Ross riding the board. Which, it turns out, is incredibly difficult. The magnetic flux lines curve around, and the board rests on the apex of the curve, meaning it’s like balancing on a knife edge, a slight movement either way sends you flying off.

I had some interesting camera concerns also, with powerful superconducting magnets, I had wondered whether putting a GoPro camera too close could wipe it’s memory, or worse, destroy it’s circuitry. Good news for all magnetically inclined action cam users, the GoPro is unaffected by either the superconducting, or permanent magnet being too close to it, which got us some brilliant shots and was worth the risk. Fortunately I had bought my own GoPro2 along so didn’t mind letting it take the risk. It is very useful to have a “disposable” camera to hand when shooting action stuff, to get those shots which may, just may, destroy the camera as well.

With the shoot complete there was only one thing left to do, become a hoverboard rider myself. Only about 20 people in the world had had a chance to ride this, and I was now one of the privileged few. Well. I say ride…

Filming the hoverboard was an incredible experience, and a challenging one as it was important to capture the magic of this thing floating on apparently nothing. I think the shot that does that for me is the one of Ross watching the board fly past – it really brings home the Arthur C Clarke quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.