June 14, 2006. Irvine, California. AP Television

1. Wide shot of runway and hangar of former Marine air base

2. Pan of aircraft hangar

3. Marine squadron logo on hangar door

4. Mid shot of photographers entering hangar

5. Wide shot inside hangar

6. Mid shot of photographers standing next to screen where giant image is captured

7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Clayton Spada, Photographer

"The sheer scale of what we were doing really did not strike us until we actually hung this thing up, and then we then we fell silent because up until that point we were largely thinking of this like a small camera, just on a bigger scale"

8. Hole on hangar wall (functions as camera aperture)

9. Exterior hanger looking at hole (aperture opening)

10. Wide shot pan of airport view (target view for camera photo)

11. Airport control tower

July 18, 2006. Irvine, California. AP Television.

12. "Photography in progress" sign posted on hangar

13. View of finished photo negative

14. Pan of photo negative image

15. Close shot of photo negative image (control tower)

16. Photographers looking at photo print from negative

17. Close up of printed image

18. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jerry Burchfield, photographer

"The final result of the great picture was what we expected and beyond what we expected. There were aspects of it that we couldn't predict, such as the degree of textural effect that came out from the hand coating of the emulsion, some aberrations due to trying to process something this big. But we knew from the beginning there was going to be a hand feel to it."

19. Various of photo image (control tower).

20. Wide shot of giant photo negative.

LEAD-IN:

In an old abandoned US marine base in California, six photographers have turned an aircraft hanger that used to house fighter planes into a giant camera.

It's all part of an attempt to get into the record books.

The former El Toro Marine Air Corps Station in Irvine was once a busy launch pad for state of the art fighter jets.

Now the runway is cracked and covered with weeds.

Defence budget cuts closed the base in 1999, after more than a half-century of use.

This decommissioned Marine Corps hangar, which was once home to those roaring fighter jets, is now the world's largest camera, a camera that's poised to take the world's largest picture.

The ambitious project is masterminded by six photographers who want to capture the Marine base before it's gone and to document the transition of a nearly 5,000-acre chunk of land that's an important part of the region's history.

The massive air hangar becomes a giant camera obscura, which means, "dark room" and it is the centuries-old principle that preceded all modern cameras.

The photographers hung a 33-by-111 foot piece of white fabric covered in 20 gallons of light-sensitive emulsion that will serve as the photographic "negative."

The darkness of the hanger is broken only by a tiny beam of light from a pea-sized hole in the metal door which illuminates the fabric "negative."

The photographers will record a panoramic image of what's on the other side of the door of the hangar-turned-camera.

The view is a dilapidated air traffic control tower, an overgrown runway and palm trees clustered amidst rolling hills.

After weeks of exposure testing, the giant negative is finally taken using a 35 minute exposure time.

The negative, which is the size of one-third of a football field (US) and about three stories tall, is developed using 600 gallons of developer and 1200 gallons of fixer, with fire hoses used to wash off the chemicals from the surface.

A relatively small, ten foot print was made from the huge negative, that reveals the air base and control tower with an abstract texture as a result of hand painting.

The great picture is all part of the Legacy Project which has been documenting the Marine bases transition since 2002 with more than 80,000 photographs.

But last year they decided to make history as well as record it.

The Guinness Book of World Records has created two new categories for the project: the world's largest camera, and the world's largest photograph.

The photographers joke that they have made the world's largest disposable camera.

But when it's all over, the hangar will be torn down.

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