| Cosmic Zoom | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Robert Verrall |
| Produced by | Joe Koenig Robert Verrall |
| Cinematography | Tony Ianzelo James Wilson Wayne Trickett Raymond Dumas |
| Edited by | Karl Duplessis (sound) |
| Music by | Pierre F. Brault |
| Distributed by | National Film Board of Canada |
Release date |
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Running time | 8 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Cosmic Zoom is a 1968 short film directed byRobert Verrall and produced by theNational Film Board of Canada.[1] It depicts the relative size of everything in the universe in an 8-minute sequence usinganimation andanimation camera shots. All drawings by Eva Szasz.[2][3]
The film starts with an aerial image of a boy rowing with his dog in a boat on theOttawa River. The movement then freezes and the view slowly zooms out, revealing more of the landscape all the time. The continuous zoom-out takes the viewer on a journey fromEarth, past theMoon, theplanets of theSolar System, theMilky Way and out into the far reaches of the then knownuniverse. The process is then reversed, and the view zooms back through space to Earth, returning to the boy on the boat. It then zooms in to the back of the boy's hand, where amosquito is resting. It zooms into the insect'sproboscis and on into the microscopic world, concluding at the level of anatomic nucleus. It then zooms back out to the original view of the boy on the boat.
The film was based on the 1957 essay "Cosmic View" byKees Boeke. The 1968 short filmPowers of Ten (updated in 1977) used the same idea and techniques, as did the 1996IMAX filmCosmic Voyage.[4]
Cosmic Zoom was one of seven NFB animated shorts acquired by theAmerican Broadcasting Company, marking the first time NFB films had been sold to a major American television network. It aired on ABC in the fall of 1971 as part of the children's television showCuriosity Shop, executive produced byChuck Jones.[5] In theUK it was shown at least twice as a segment of the children's TV magazine programmeBlue Peter.[citation needed]
| Included | Earth →Solar System →Local Interstellar Cloud →Local Bubble →Gould Belt →Orion Arm →Milky Way →Milky Way subgroup →Local Group→Local Sheet→Virgo Supercluster→Laniakea Supercluster →Local Hole →Observable universe →Universe Each arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of". |
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| Related | |
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