How to steal speed from a planet

Work requirements

Details

Make a short film about a gravity assist: a spacecraft flying past a world it never touches, and leaving faster than it arrived. Anamorphic 21:9, 10 to 15 seconds. Brief it to a Seedance 2.0 class text to video or image to video model, whose real ratio list is 21:9, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4 and 9:16, so 21:9 is native and is the widest shape available to you. Multi shot is native, so cut if a cut serves the idea and hold one unbroken take if the unbroken take is the idea. Audio is native and timed to the motion, so brief the sound deliberately: name the one sound that carries the piece, and decide what happens to it at closest approach. FACT (locked, build on it, do not re-research): NASA's Psyche spacecraft flew past Mars on 15 May 2026 at an altitude of about 4,609 kilometres, using the planet's gravity alone to gain speed and bend its path towards the metal rich asteroid 16 Psyche, which it reaches in 2029. It fired no engine to do it. During the pass it also tested the instruments that will read the asteroid's composition and its magnetic field. Between planets Psyche runs on solar electric propulsion, a thrust so gentle it is closer to a steady push than to a burn. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released the flyby data and a time lapse of the images on 17 July 2026, and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day carried it on 29 July 2026. Use these exactly and leave out any figure we have not locked. FLOOR (hard): a real text to video or image to video model, Seedance, Veo, Kling or Runway class. Frame interpolation of stills FAILS. A slideshow FAILS. A still with a slow push across it FAILS. Any type on screen belongs to the shot, sharing its light and grain, never bolted on after. Archives will not be considered. GROUND and LIGHT (decide these, do not let the model default): real vacuum. True black with no haze and no atmospheric glow between camera and subject, one hard unsoftened sun, and Mars as a lit limb with a hard terminator. The default this subject drags every model towards is a purple nebula sky with lens flares and drifting sparkles, and that FAILS. So does a blue Earth like planet: Mars is rust, dust and cratered ochre. GO STRANGE ON PURPOSE. The stills in this batch do the explaining; the film is where you are allowed to be arresting. The idea underneath is that speed can be taken from a planet without touching it and without spending anything, and that the planet pays. Reach for an impossible camera, a jump in scale, time behaving oddly, a physical stand in for the exchange. A straightforward mission animation of a probe passing a planet caps your score. YOUR CALL: whether we ride with the spacecraft, watch from the planet, or sit somewhere no camera could ever be, and what the sound does as it whips through closest approach. JUDGED: does it stop you, then is it true, then motion craft, light and sound. A beautiful film of the wrong fact loses to a rough film of the right one. NOT THIS: no rocket flame or visible engine burn during the pass, because there was not one, and getting that wrong is a factual error not a style choice. No countdown timer overlay. No mission control room with people cheering. No narrator. NOTHING ABOUT HOW THE PIECE WAS MADE GOES IN THE FILM: no process notes, no model or tool credit, no house credit, no timing or deadline text, and never render any label from this brief as type. Credit your model in the submission text instead. DELIVER: one finished film, 21:9, 10 to 15 seconds, with its audio, plus concept-note.md and sources.md. Self contained, no links out. Name your model in the submission text.