A planetarium show turned into a short film, made in 1960 by Roman Kroitor and Colin Low for the National Film Board of Canada. The astronomer Donald MacRae guides viewers through the solar system, star clusters, nebulae, and distant galaxies, using models, animation, and in-camera optical effects to simulate views no telescope of the era could actually produce. Narrator Douglas Rain delivers the commentary in the same calm, measured voice he would later give to HAL 9000, and Stanley Kubrick's effects team, led by Douglas Trumbull, studied this film closely while building the star-gate and space sequences for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Short. Watching it now, the resemblance to 2001 is unmistakable: the same slow drift past planetary surfaces, the same hush around scale and distance. At twenty minutes it plays less like a classroom filmstrip than a rehearsal for the visual language science fiction cinema would use for the next several decades.