In Saturn's Rings

STEPHEN VAN VUUREN

Stephen van Vuuren is an award-winning filmmaker, musician, photographer and ubergeek. He grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa and Knoxville, Tennessee. His father purchased a manual 35mm camera for him when he was 12 and his love of image-making began.

He has directed, produced and/or shot over twenty feature and short narrative, documentary, experimental and animation films that have screened at numerous festivals and in cyberspace. Stephen founded SV2 Post in 2000, which focuses on indie post-production, including digital cinema mastering.

He first read about Saturn and Titan in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos as a child. In 2004, Cassini arrived at Saturn barely noticed by the world. Both exulted by the stunning images and disappointed by the lack of interest, he committed to finding a way to make a film that showcased the incredible beauty of Saturn and our entire universe, while exploring the reasons why most people know so little about it.

He lives in Greensboro, NC with his musician/artist partner Marie and three cats, Obi, Kylo & Gypsy.

LEVAR BURTON

Levar Burton is a cherished actor, highly acclaimed children’s educator and innovative storyteller.

He is the recipient of the L.A. Times Book Prizes Innovator’s Award, the Chicago Tribune Young Adult Literary Award, thirteen Emmys, a Grammy and five NAACP Awards.

Keynote speaker at leading education and technology events, LeVar has been featured at NASA, ISTE, The National Education Association, FAST COMPANY’s Innovation Series and many more.

In addition to his Star Trek legacy and popular podcast “Levar Burton Reads", he was executive producer of the beloved PBS children’s series “Reading Rainbow”, earning over 200 awards including multiple Emmys and a Peabody.

He also partnered to create SKYBRARY, a digital reading service filled with over 500 children’s fiction and non-fiction books, more than 150 newly produced video field trips and new content added every week. With millions of fans throughout the world, Burton continues his mission to inspire, entertain and educate.

VOLUNTEERS

"In creating a film that uses 7,500,000 photographs, every photograph is not equal. To create the stunning animated footage of flying through space, the most important ingredient is lots of very high-resolution images processed from space image sources.

Until early 2007, I was really stuck on how to get enough high-resolution images to create footage even at HiDef resolutions, much less resolutions for the giant screen. Then I found the Unmanned Spaceflight Forum.

Unmanned Spaceflight was the first big step that made a film possible that could play in IMAX® and Giant Screen theaters. Here, I found dedicated and talented amateurs that process space images. It opened the door to processing space images but more importantly, to have these passionate volunteers who donated their hard work and beautiful photographs to the film.

While NASA, JPL, CiClops, ESA, Space Telescope Institute and other agencies work to generate high- resolution images, huge amounts of data is never processed into usable images. Without the efforts of Unmanned Spaceflight – now sponsored by The Planetary Society – and the many other image processors around the world that have contributed to the film, there would be no In Saturn’s Rings."

Stephen van Vuuren - Filmmaker

ADVISORS

Lead Science Advisor - Professor Steve Danford, Ph.D. - UNC-G Astronomy
Science Advisors
Andrew Chaikin
Tom Drewes
Tom English - GTCC Astronomy
Joseph Holmes - Guilford College Astronomy
Professor Stefan Jeglinski
Aimilia Smyrli

IMAGE PROCESSORS

Exploitcorporations
Library of Congress
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
WikiMedia Commons
Elisabetta Bonora
Ricardo Borba
Noel Carboni
Davide De Martin
Seán Doran
Miloslav Druckmüller
Marcia Fiamengo
Robert Gendler
Michael Hunnekuhl
Richard Johnson
Björn Jónsson
Norman Kuring
Emily Lakdawalla - The Planetary Society
Colin Legg
Alan Light
Jason Major
Mattias Malmer
Axel Mellinger
Rolf Wahl Olsen
Deidre Sorensen - Deidre Sorensen Photography
Ted Stryk
Michael Theusner
Gordan Ugarkovic

Image Downloaders
Maureen Ahearn
Mark Averett
David Blood
David Bood
Iris Carter
Jane Gwynn Ward
Meggie Hanchette
Zain Husain
Larry Kirwan
Tessa Kok
Paul Merritt
Elizabeth Mitchell
Jenny Montasir
Julianne Morgan
Szabolcs Nagy
Brice Schoolfield
Pradeep Shama
Pradeep Sharma
Thomas Simonis
Sam Smith
Aimilia Smyrli
Raul Tellez Rios
Burke Thompson
Kelli Wondra
Matthew Zarzeka

Image Processors
Jenny Batista
Ioannis Batsios
Jacek Bobowik
Robert Broussard
Professor Steve Danford, Ph.D. - UNC-G Astronomy
Seán Doran
Richard Green
Jason Harwell
Claire Hodge
Björn Jónsson
Adam Kiil
Val Klavans
Colin Legg
Michael J. Malaska
Mattias Malmer
Timothy Matson
Kevin McAbee
Ian Regan
Judy Schmidt
Tim Shamblin
Bryan Simpson
Deidre Sorensen - Deidre Sorensen Photography
Alexis Tranchandon
Amy Vineyard

Image Processor and Programmers
Joshua P. Elliott
Professor Stefan Jeglinski
Zack Lovatt
Shea Pendleton
Anish Ramaswamy
Phil Spitler

SOCIAL MEDIA

Lead Social Media – Val Klavans
Social Media
Arend Anton
Jamie Lawson
Aimilia Smyrli
Kyle Ladd – Intern

RENDERING

Robbie Coblentz
Allen Ellis
Jonathan Faw
Teddy Gage
Richard Green
Martin Kadlec
Robert Kjettrup
Alexis Lasseigne
Tom Ljungberg
Mike Nelson
Lewis Osorio
Tavis Packet
Tavis Paquette
Ron Pierce
Konstantinos Skarlatos - Pelagus Creative Web
Scott Suehle
Luiz Eric Tosetti

TRANSLATOR

Elena Barakhova
Hemerson Brandão
Rodrigo Brito
Claudia Caporusso
Nicolò Conte
Tessa Kok
Isaac Magajor
Paolo Ernesto Marelli
Isaac MJ
Peg Parham
Tobias Reich
Aimilia Smyrli
Joan Valls Moreno

BEHIND THE SCENES

Actor - Jeremy Kuhn, Timothy Matson

Art Director - Marie Stone-van Vuuren

Audio - Jonathan Ward, Ben West

Director - Philip Powell

Director of Photography - Justin Kuhn

Editor - Justin Kuhn

Electric - Ben West

Gaffer - Jason Pierce

Grip - Jason Pierce, Ben West, Simms Wright

Producer - Philip Powell, Leading Edge Video
Producer - Jonathan Ward

Still Photography - Alex Martin, Jonathan Ward

Video - Alex Martin

Video Village - Simms Wright

Writer - Philip Powell