Thursday, September 8, 2011

Saturn as you've never seen it before


This amazing video was produced by Stephen van Vuuren, who, like me, is a former South African, now resident in the USA. It's a preliminary effort for an IMAX movie he's preparing about space flight, which he describes as follows:

Outside In is a non-profit giant-screen art film that takes audiences on a journey of the mind, heart and spirit from the big bang to the near future via the Cassini-Huygens Mission at Saturn. Currently in production after years of development, Outside In aims for global release late next year.

Composed entirely of still photographs using innovative visual techniques developed by the filmmaker, Outside In stretches the boundaries of the motion picture form. The film will feature powerful music by Ferry Corsten, William Orbit [and] Samuel Barber and melds non-narrative visual poetry & science documentary into a rich experience for audiences.


There's more at the link.

At the Vimeo hosting page for the video, Mr. van Vuuren writes:

This is [a] fly-through of this photograph - photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/​catalog/​PIA11141 - only a little brightness and contrast has been made to balance the moons with Saturn's body. Do note that several thousand layers of many Cassini photographs were animated to make the fly-through work without any 3D CGI. The saturation is off due to lack of Flash Player ICM support.

This is still a work-in-progress and it's an art film, not a science film, but as new image data comes down I will tweak this shot for improved accuracy.


Here's the video.







That's some pretty amazing editing! If this short clip is this good, I look forward to seeing the full film next year.

Peter

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