NOW IN 4K! Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation

In March 2011, the first footage (vimeo.com/11386048) from my non-profit IMAX film In Saturn's Rings went viral, resulting in 3.8 million hits and 1.3 million plays & media coverage in over 250 countries.

MUSIC: First rough draft of our Kickstarter funded live orchestral version of Adagio for Strings performed by the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra: Conducted by Dmitry Sitkovetsky. Only 2 of the 17 mics used here - we are still editing and mixing this recording but wanted to give backers a tease.

Here is an improved, extended version of that footage with unlit side of rings, better color and other small tweaks added. I'm creating the film on home-built computers running Adobe Photoshop & After Effects.

Created from over 30,000 real photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Master is 5.6k resolution (5600 x 4200 pixels) with all work done in 32-bit floating point color space to preserve
photographs from artifacts.

No 3D models, CGI or texture maps used!

Created entirely from real photographs using photoanimation and multiplane photoanimation. No computer-generated images, painting, cloning, tweening, morphing, texture maps, camera projection or 3D models used. Even the "stargate" titles are created using photos - an 8000 photo mosaic of all-sky zoomed really fast to give blurred appearance.

"In Saturn's Rings", a giant screen space film for IMAX®, giant screen and fulldome theaters distributed by BIG & Digital, coming summer 2014. This DIY, not-for-profit all-volunteer film is from Greensboro, NC, USA filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren with tons of help from volunteer image processors around the world.

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/
  / insaturnsringsmovie  
  / insaturnsrings  

The film is 100% created using only flat 2D photographs (often hundreds or thousands per frame) stitched together for massive hundred megapixel+ resolutions that are scaled and zoomed using techniques developed by the filmmaker, based on Ken Burns and 2.5D photo animation processes.

A computer is actually not even required to do this - it could all be done exactly using photoanimation techniques from 100 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoani....

For booking/leasing info: http://www.biganddigital.com/

Adagio for Strings, Composed by Samuel Barber , Published by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP). Recording Copyright SV2 Studios, LLC and In Saturn's Rings, LLC.

IMAX® is a registered trademark of IMAX® Inc.