In March 2011, the first footage (vimeo.com/11386048) from Outside In went viral, resulting in 3.8 million hits and 1.3 million plays & media coverage in over 250 countries. Here is an improved, extended version of that footage with unlit side of rings, better color and other small tweaks added.

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!

Much thanks to everyone who has supported and contributed to this. This is the beginning, just a taste of incredible things to come.

This is 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.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.

Kubrick on the set of "2001"

Today would have been Stanley Kubrick’s 83rd birthday. There is a reason that launching a fundraiser today for “Outside In“  is very appropriate.

In 1985, I was at a library in Knoxville, TN watching movies on VHS, trying to catch up on the many films I had missed as a kid. I put in a tape of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and watched it on the tiny 13″ TV.

I was simply blown away. I had no idea movies could be like this — so rich, complex, mysterious and elegant about things that excited me – science, space, exploration, the unknown.

Later, as I studied film and became aware of the craft, “2001” became even more special. The amazing editing, sound design, cinematography, use of music (Kubrick was a pioneer in using existing music as score) was a huge influence on not only me, but generations of filmmakers.

“2001” probably inspired more filmmakers that any other film and is a landmark in cinematic history. Of course, on release it struggled with the critics. But today, it’s one of the most influential films ever made.

The entire concept and execution of “Outside In” is based on what I learned watching and dissecting “2001“. Most importatly, if you want to truly engage an audience on both a primal and intellectual level:  show, don’t say. Cinema is about visuals, sound and music. Not talking or reading. “2001” demonstrates the power of this. Hopefully, “Outside In” can live up to this standard.

That’s why, from the beginning, Outside In is “in memory of Stanley Kubrick”. May he rest in peace but live on the screen forever.

Then, Time Warner News 14 did a story on Tri*Star that featured Outside In and ran the story statewide over the weekend.

Finally, this morning, the popular io9.com website did a nice mention on the frontpage which is generating quite a bit of traffic today and some very nice comments on the first footage clip on Vimeo.

Mike at the Eno River

First up, Mike Malaska has been the #1 fan and supporter of the project since he discovered the project on the awesome Unmanned SpaceFlight forum. (UMSF). UMSF is an incredible place where you can find the most talented space image processors on the planet. Several (to be profiled later in this series) have donated their work to the film and the spectucular animations in the film would be impossible without their thousands of hours of work.

Since Mike first got involved in supporting Outside In, he’s rocketed up to the stratosphere of passionate amateurs – he’s now directly involved in the hard science of Titan. He’s one of the smartest and nicest guys I’ve ever met and now officially one of the Executive Producers on Outside In. Be sure to check out his Flickr page, and if you are in North Carolina, he’s recently become an official NASA Solar System Ambassador, so look for upcoming presentations from him.

His official BIO:

“Mike Malaska is a PhD organic chemist leading drug discovery projects at SCYNEXIS, Inc. in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  He has worked on therapeutics for diseases that include cancer, glaucoma, and Alzheimer’s Disease.

He is also a volunteer researcher in planetary geology studying the Earth-like processes of Saturn’s giant moon Titan in collaboration with researchers on the Cassini RADAR team.  His current research focuses on characterizing the Sikun Labyrinth canyonland region and hydrocarbon rivers and channels located near Titan’s South Pole. He is also a volunteer artist for the AVIATR Titan Airplane mission proposal.  His scientific and artistic works have been presented at several planetary science conferences.

Mike is fascinated by the differences and similarities between the planets and moons of our Solar System and how they relate to planet Earth.  One of his hobbies is processing data from current and past spacecraft missions, including raw images taken only hours ago from orbit around another planet. He is a frequent contributor to unmannedspaceflight.com and has a flickr page dedicated to new planetary images he has processed from raw data:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/

As a self-described enthusiastic science nerd, Mike is a recently-appointed participant in the NASA Solar System Ambassador program for educational outreach to schools, museums, and civic groups.

In his “spare time” Mike also enjoys fossil collecting, gardening, and blackwater kayaking.”

This is 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. To watch in HD, click on HD in window below or click here.

And if this excites you even half as much as it does me, I need to raise $2500 in the next couple of weeks to showcase this clip at the international IMAX conference at the end of September (GSCA Expo 2010). I heard today the my last grant application was denied, so it’s up to you to help Outside In get made.

I’ve set up a special fundraiser at IndieGogo that is tied in with Fractured Atlas for tax-deductible status. If you can’t donate, please spread the word far and wide. Click here to claim your special perks!

New site coming next!

And, BTW, new look and logo.

context is everything

Yep, I’m cheating. Cramming the last three reasons into one. But I have my reasons. As you’ve likely figured out, the “11 reasons not to make an IMAX art film in your basement” are basically just the list of challenges. In fact, they are almost just the voice of naysayers. People can always give reasons not to do something and make predictions about what is possible or impossible.

Of course, the big reason that ran through my mind in 2006/7 when I considered making the film was the  obvious technical issue – “Computers are too slow, to limited to handle something”. But I quickly remembered the basic truth about technology. What’s impossible today is not going to be impossible tomorrow. So I close out my list with three famous reasons that making an IMAX film in a basement, on home built computers should have never happened according to three of the founders of the modern computer age.

My personal fave is #11 – pure genius.

#9.
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

#10
Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.
Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, 1995

#11
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

#8: “IMAX is not Art”

This is actually the reason I kept raising after the “It’s impossible” line. IMAX films cost a lot of money, so it’s not the place to make a film just for the “art” of it. But what exactly is an “art film”? Well, art is hard (perhaps impossible) to define in such away that anyone would agree.

And my own personal belief is that anyone who makes just about any film is coming from a creative place. Let’s face it the truth – most films lose money. In fact most films never even get far enough to have a chance to make money but are expensive lost causes.

When people say “art films” or “indie films” or any other term – what they frequently are really talking about is “personal”. “Art film” is really a bit pretentious. But it’s the term that gets tossed around with films that take a unique personal perspective.

Many films made for the giant-screen/IMAX venues are documentary style projects that often have more of committee or team based approach due to the cost of the films and how they are funded. When people fund a project, they often want a say in the result. But there are giant-screen/IMAX films with a strong singular vision behind them. And they are always the best ones.

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.
Stanley Kubrick

#7: “Too Much Data”

If you recall from reason #5, “a 5.6k IMAX image at 32-bit color will contain 752,640,000 bits of data or nearly 1 Gb (gigabyte) for each frame.” In non-technobabble that means the finished film will require 65 terabytes of data – which is 65,000 Gigabytes of data. That does not count the many terabytes of data for all the source material in the film. 100 terabytes in all.

In 2006, the 750 gigabyte hard drive was just released, for over $500. To store 100 terabytes would have taken 133 hard drives costing $67,000 dollars. So that was near deal breaker when “Outside In” was first conceived.

Today, we have 2 terabyte hard drives for $135. That’s 50 drives costing $6,750.  So that’s getting near indie low/no budget territory right? Indeed it is, especially since you can buy storage as you go along. But there is more to just storing files, you have to make them first with gobs of data.

After a few initial tests that went very well, I started tying to do animation on “Outside In”. That 1 GB of data per frame? Well, your computer has to process that data. And film is 24 frames per second – 24 gigabytes of data per second. Things like this started to happen:

The first time you see this I thought – “okay, just another error message, no problem. Just find the fix or work around”. Several months later, after talking to the company, many expert users and lots of research I realized with a sickening feeling in my stomach that it’s not just another error message.

Turns out it’s a fundamental problem with computing.  In 2006/7, pretty  much every operating system and programs were “32-bit”. Which means basically the same computing technology based that had existing for well over a decade or two. Yes, some hardware like the processor was “64-bit” but it was basically sitting there doing very little 64-bit as all the code it ran was 32-bit.

Why is that such a problem? Well 32-bit code basically can only deal easily with about 2 gigabytes of data – and tweaks had allowed to deal with 3 or 4 GB of data but just barely. So that 1 GB of data per frame of IMAX data (that often had many gigabytes of data placed inside the frame) was simply too much. Code crashed, operating system crash – and film crashed.

But I was determined to press ahead. A few months later, Microsoft finally released a 64-bit version of Windows XP.

I installed it on a dedicated machine as it was very picky about what hardware and software I could run. I got Adobe Photoshop and Adobe AfterEffects running and despite that fact the both were still 32-bit code, running them on 64-bit XP made things better. I could do a lesser resolution that my original plan (4k instead of 5.6k) and less colors (16-bit not 32-bit) but it was good enough to create some serious test shots. My first few minutes of footage were output to IMAX film and screened in an IMAX theater. Despite the compromises, it looked much better than I could have hoped.

But, as 2008 drug on into 2009, I was faced with a fundamental crisis. The film, as scripted and storyboarded, required much more data than I could animate with the workarounds around the 32-bit memory limitations. I could either make major changes to the film – and make a much simpler, less dynamic, less visually interesting and rich film. Or I could try to raise a lot more money and move to Hollywood level animation system – and from what I could find out, none of them were true 64-bit either and had similar issues.

Neither of these seemed like good ideas. I took a hard look at the future and felt that I was only 12-18 months away from a real revolution in desktop computing – the move to true 64-bit computing. But I did not know for sure if that would save my vision for the film.