The Powers of Ten films are two short American documentary films written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. Both works depict the relative scale of the Universe according to an order of magnitude based on a factor of ten, first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed.
To Fly! is a 1976 American short docudrama film directed by Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman of MacGillivray Freeman Films, who wrote the story with Francis Thompson, Robert M. Young, and Arthur Zegart. It premiered at the giant-screen IMAX theater of the National Air and Space Museum, which opened to celebrate the United States Bicentennial. The film chronicles the history of aviation in the US, with a narration written by Thomas McGrath. Thematically, it explores the search for national identity through the country's westward expansion as well as humanity's relationship with aviation.
IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio and steep stadium seating, with the 1.43:1 ratio format being available only in few selected locations.
The New Mexico Museum of Space History is a museum and planetarium complex in Alamogordo, New Mexico, United States, dedicated to artifacts and displays related to space flight and the Space Age. It includes the International Space Hall of Fame. The Museum of Space History highlights the role that New Mexico has had in the U. S. space program, and is one of eight museums administered by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. The museum has been accredited by American Alliance of Museums since 1993. The museum is also a Smithsonian Affiliate.
Peter Lloyd (1944–2009) was a freelance illustrator specializing in advertising and digital artwork. Lloyd was born in England in 1944, but moved to the United States in 1959, where he was the youngest student to graduate from the Art Center College of Design with a master's degree.
The Fleet Science Center is a science museum and planetarium in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. Established in 1973, it was the first science museum to combine interactive science exhibits with a planetarium and an IMAX Dome (OMNIMAX) theater, setting the standard that most major science museums follow today. It is located at the east end of the El Prado Drive walkway, next to the Bea Evenson Fountain and plaza in central Balboa Park.
Cornelis "Kees" Boeke was a Dutch reformist educator, Quaker missionary and pacifist. He is best known for his popular essay/book Cosmic View (1957) which presents a seminal view of the universe, from the galactic to the microscopic scale, and which inspired several films.
Alexandr Hackenschmied, born Alexander Siegfried George Hackenschmied, known later as Alexander Hammid, was a Czech-American photographer, film director, cinematographer and film editor. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became involved in American avant-garde cinema. He is best known for three films: Crisis (1939), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and To Be Alive! (1964). He made Meshes of the Afternoon with Maya Deren, to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947. His second marriage was to the photographer Hella Heyman, who had also collaborated with Hammid and Deren on several films.
Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps is a 1957 book by Dutch educator Kees Boeke that combines writing and graphics to explore many levels of size and structure, from the astronomically vast to the atomically tiny. The book begins with a photograph of a Dutch girl sitting outside a school and holding a cat. The text backs up from the original photo, with graphics that include more and more of the vast reaches of space in which the girl is located. It then narrows in on the original picture, with graphics that show ever smaller areas until the nucleus of a sodium atom is reached. Boeke writes commentary on each graphic, along with introductory and concluding notes.
Voyage to the Outer Planets was an early multimedia experiment, first presented in 1973, combining Omnimax film, 70 mm film and planetarium special effects. The special effects and stills on standard and zoom equipped slide projectors were provided by the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater, and their Spitz Space Transit Simulator (STS). The large format footage was provided by Graphic Films. The presentation was mostly multimedia, with short clips of the planets and spacecraft.
Christopher Riley is a British writer, broadcaster and film maker specialising in the history of science. He has a PhD from Imperial College, University of London where he pioneered the use of digital elevation models in the study of mountain range geomorphology and evolution. He makes frequent appearances on British television and radio, broadcasting mainly on space flight, astronomy and planetary science and was visiting professor of science and media at the University of Lincoln between 2011 and 2021.
MacGillivray Freeman Films is an American film studio based in Laguna Beach, California and founded in the mid-1960s by Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman. It produces documentaries, feature films, and IMAX films.
Cosmic Zoom is a 1968 short film directed by Robert Verrall and produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It depicts the relative size of everything in the universe in an 8-minute sequence using animation and animation camera shots. All drawings by Eva Szasz.
Martin Otto Harwit is a Czech-American astronomer and author known for his scientific work on infrared astronomy as a professor at Cornell University. He was later director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. from 1987 to 1995.
Blue Planet is a 1990 IMAX film directed by Ben Burtt, and produced by the IMAX Space Technology corporation for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, as well as Lockheed Corporation. Filmed with the cooperation of the NASA, it was written, edited, and narrated by Toni Myers.
Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta is an IMAX dramatised documentary film charting the first real-life journey made by the Islamic scholar Ibn Battuta from his native Morocco to Mecca for the Hajj, in 1325.
Taran Davies is a film producer and director best known for his documentary film Afghan Stories (2002), and the IMAX feature documentary Journey to Mecca (2009).
Daniel Ferguson is a filmmaker whose credits include Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France, Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta and Last of the Elephant Men.
Erik Courtney is an American filmmaker and visual FX artist for TV shows including Star Trek: Picard and films including The Tourist. He holds an IMAX patent.
Cosmic Eye is a short 2012/2018 film and iOS app, developed by astrophysicist Danail Obreschkow. It shows the largest and smallest well known scales of the universe by gradually zooming out from and then back into the face of a woman called "Louise". According to the creator, the film and app were inspired by the essay Cosmic View (1957) and the short films Cosmic Zoom (1968) and Powers of Ten (1977), but use state-of-the-art technology and new scientific imaging and computer simulations. Cosmic Eye, although developed in 2012 for local teaching and outreach purposes, in April 2016 it suddenly attracted 40 million views in just ten days on the Facebook group page of "The Science Scoop". The video has since been viewed more than 200 million times on Facebook and was featured in major media, such as BBC World News.
