02- INNER CARBON01 - MAMMOTH TECHNOLOGY00- PRIMORDIUM
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Interviews
Making Phainoterra
documentary
Film
13 min
Director - Wendi Yan
CGI set and animation - Wendi Yan
Ijen and MIT footage - Iaroslav Iakubivskyi
Music composition - Jessica Shand
Editor - Wendi Yan
Working closely with Dr. Iakubivskyi, who filmed himself during research expeditions to the Ijen volcanic lake in Indonesia and Hawaii, as well as within the labs at MIT, the film follows his dual role as both a fictional scientist in the world of Phainoterra and his real-world role as a researcher at MIT. An interview with Dr. Sara Seager provides the narrative backbone to the film, weaving together both the science and the thinking behind the fiction. The film's editing flows between journalistic interview and sci-fi narrative.
Based on scientific documentation of Phainoterra devised by Drs. Seager and Iakubivskyi, the filmmaker created the planet's 3D environments inside Unreal Engine, including its planetary overview, cloud layer, and terrain surface. Running virtual cameras through Phainoterra inside the game engine, the film brings the planet to life to image science and imagine the future at once.
Dr. Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Physics, and Aerospace Engineering at MIT
Dr. Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department Of Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences, MIT
Proxima Kosmos Team
Director and Editor - Claire Webb
Producer - Adrianne Toomey
Managing Editor - Ulysses Yarber
About Proxima Kosmos
Developed under the leadership of Dr. Claire Isabel Webb, Proxima Kósmos is an interdisciplinary collaboration uniting leading planetary scientists, astrobiologists, designers, and science-fiction writers to construct a simulated exosolar system—each of its nine planets shaped by scientific modeling and radical imagination. The project challenges assumptions about habitability, evolution, and intelligence beyond Earth.