2015 | Belgium | Animation,Documentary,Experimental,Data Visualization,Archival,Short

I'll Be Late For Dinner

  • 12 mins
  • Director | Elias Heuninck
  • Writer | Elias Heuninck
  • Producer | Elias Heuninck

STATUS: Released

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I’ll Be Late For Dinner is a video made of images that were recorded by the Cassini probe in orbit around Saturn. Besides pictures of the planet you’re familiar with, numerous calibration exposures and images used for navigation can be found in the mission archive. Your regular computer-generated cosmic movie features scenes where planets move slowly and smoothly, where the soundscape signals imminent danger. Using pictures from a spacecraft in orbit also creates cinematic results, but in a more surprising way. Scientists shot some of the photographs as sequences. They didn’t, however, intend to view most of them in motion. Animating these pictures result in a video that visually connects to the experiments of the flicker film tradition. Additionally, high-energy particles activated the camera sensor, leaving short visual traces in the image, resembling scratches on film. Faint stars in long exposures look like dust. When the probe turned, stars trailed their light behind them, just as hair can be trapped in a projector. All likeness to analog film aside, the images have a digital nature. As there is no horizon in space, the frame doesn’t need to be horizontal and so NASA developed their cameras with a square image sensor. As restless and foreign as the images are (twenty-five epic pictures per second), the sound is calm and private. This contrast makes the distance between the cinema and the camera apparent. 

Space Probe Orbit Planet Saturn Stars Film Flicker Flicker-film Restless Celluloid Digital Analog Dust Scratches Traces Distance Far Close Archive