''Cosmic Zoom'' is a 1968 short film directed by Robert Verrall and produced by the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

. It depicts the relative size of everything in the universe in an 8-minute sequence using animation and

animation camera An animation camera, a type of rostrum camera, is a movie camera specially adapted for frame-by-frame shooting of animation. It consists of a camera body with lens and film magazines, and is most often placed on a stand that allows the camera t ...

shots.

Synopsis

The film starts with an aerial image of a boy rowing with his dog in a boat on the Ottawa 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 from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

, past the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, the planets of the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

, the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

and out into the far reaches of the then known

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...

. 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 a

mosquito Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning " gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "li ...

is resting. It zooms into the insect's

proboscis A proboscis () is an elongated appendage from the head of an animal, either a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In invertebrates, the term usually refers to tubular mouthparts used for feeding and sucking. In vertebrates, a proboscis is an elong ...

and on into the microscopic world, concluding at the level of an

atomic nucleus The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. After the discovery of the neutron ...

. It then zooms back out to the original view of the boy on the boat.

Inspiration and follow ups

The film was based on the 1957 essay " Cosmic View" by Kees Boeke. The 1968 short film '' Powers of Ten'' (updated in 1977) used the same idea and techniques, as did the 1996 IMAX film '' Cosmic Voyage''.

Release

''Cosmic Zoom'' was one of seven NFB animated shorts acquired by the

American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...

, 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 show '' Curiosity Shop'', executive produced by Chuck Jones. In the UK it was shown at least twice as a segment of the children's TV magazine programme Blue Peter.

Awards

* Ibero-American Documentary Film. Festival,

Bilbao ) , motto = , image_map = , mapsize = 275 px , map_caption = Interactive map outlining Bilbao , pushpin_map = Spain Basque Country#Spain#Europe , pushpin_map_caption ...

: Gold Medal, 1969 * Trieste Science+Fiction Festival,

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into prov ...

: Golden Seal of the City of Trieste, 1969 * International Educational Film Festival,

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

: Certificate of Merit, Scientific Films, 1969 * International Exhibition of Scientific Film,

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

: Diploma of Honor, 1970 * International Festival of Short Films,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

: Award for Exceptional Merit, 1970 * UNIATEC International Technical Film Competition,

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

: Award of Excellence 1972

References

External links