short scale

A short film in which friends build the first true-to-scale model of the solar system, with full planetary orbits, on a Nevada dry lakebed. It conveys the real distances and sizes involved.

The Eames Office's 1977 film Powers of Ten starts at a picnic in Chicago and zooms out by a factor of ten every ten seconds to the edge of the universe. It then zooms inward to a proton in a carbon atom.

An 8-minute National Geographic short film about David Bamberger, who bought 5,500 overgrazed acres in the Texas Hill Country and restored the land and its aquifers over about 50 years.

A short Atlantic documentary on Cleveland's 1986 Balloonfest, when 1.5 million balloons were released at once and the attempt went badly wrong.

A short IBM behind-the-scenes documentary on how researchers moved individual atoms to make the world's smallest movie. It introduces the scientists and their work on atomic memory and data storage.

A short tour of a UK materials recycling facility showing how mixed recyclables are mechanically and optically sorted. Aluminum, ferrous metal, glass, paper, and trash come out as separate streams.

A short film from Agenda Gotsch introducing syntropic agriculture and Ernst Gotsch's agroforestry methods, made for COP21. It shows degraded land regenerated into productive forest farms.

The first part of Dmitry Vasyukov's four-part Russian documentary series about trappers and villagers living in the Siberian taiga. This episode follows spring life along the Yenisei, with hunting, fishing and subsistence in harsh surroundings.

A 52-minute short version of the documentary The End of Suburbia, about peak oil and the end of cheap energy. It argues that American suburbs depend on cheap oil and may become the slums of the future.

Seeker's Focal Point short documentary on ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which make the most advanced chips. It shows how plasma-generated 13.5 nm light is used to push Moore's Law forward.

Footage from the Chasing Ice project of the largest glacier calving event ever filmed, at Greenland's Ilulissat Glacier in 2008. A 75-minute event is condensed to a few minutes of cameras watching ice collapse.

An episode of Fall of Civilizations on the Late Bronze Age Collapse around 1100 BC, when many Eastern Mediterranean societies were destroyed in a short span. It explores the Sea Peoples and the lessons for modern globalised societies.

A Bloomberg mini-documentary on how Vienna keeps housing affordable through large-scale public and social housing. It presents the city as a model strategy for others.

Strange Parts tours JLCPCB's large PCB factory in Huizhou, China, walking through the printed circuit board manufacturing process step by step. It shows the machinery, quality checks and scale behind cheap prototype boards.

Summoning Salt traces the speedrunning history of Mario Kart 64's Choco Mountain track and its famous shortcut, through the successive record holders and discoveries. It carries an epilepsy warning for flickering lights.

Tim Hunkin's 1987 TV series episode on how vacuum cleaners and related household machines work, remastered and upscaled in 2021. It is part of the six-episode 'Secret Life of Machines' series with hands-on demonstrations of everyday technology.

A short film by Max Joseph about his anxiety in bookstores and how to read more books amid constant streaming, social media and news. He looks for ways to rebalance his content diet in favor of reading.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the village of Garavadi in Maharashtra, India, which took part in the Paani Foundation's Water Cup competition. It shows the water harvesting structures the villagers built in 45 days and how they restored groundwater and the local economy.

Neil Halloran's animated, data-driven documentary visualizes the human cost of World War II and compares it with other wars and the trend toward fewer war deaths in recent decades.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tours a Kodak factory to show how photographic film is manufactured. This is part one of a three-part series covering the large-scale coating and production process.

An SBS Dateline short documentary on Danish forest kindergartens, where children play freely outdoors, climb trees and use knives with little adult intervention.

A 2001 VPRO Noorderlicht documentary episode, filmed in Austin in 2000, visiting Edsger Dijkstra and his views on thinking as a discipline. It is in Dutch with English subtitles.

A CBS News (60 Minutes) profile of free solo climber Alex Honnold, who scales sheer rock faces without ropes. Lara Logan reports on his climbing and his apparent lack of fear, including his Half Dome ascent.

People Make Games interviewed 16 current and former Valve employees to examine how the company's no-bosses, no-titles structure works in practice, and where it falls short.

A nine-minute excerpt from the 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent in which Noam Chomsky summarizes how corporate media shapes public discourse.

A short vintage film clip of Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on using computers to spark children's imagination and learning.

A short film of Alex Honnold free soloing El Sendero Luminoso, a 2,500-foot route in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, in a little over three hours with no rope. It was made by The North Face with climbing footage and music.

A short BBC clip in which David Attenborough shows a lyrebird imitating sounds, including camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws. It comes from the BBC natural history series Life on Earth.

A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.

A short film following Moroccan artisans from Fez as they build a traditional 15th-century-style Moroccan court inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It shows zellij tilework and other traditional techniques.

A roughly 3.5-hour Gamers Nexus investigation into rising PC component prices, driven largely by AI data-center demand for memory and other hardware. It draws on interviews with industry figures to argue that personal computing and ownership are being eroded.

A short documentary about Eric Maundu's Arduino-controlled aquaponics setup in West Oakland, where contaminated soil rules out ordinary farming. Fish and circulating water grow plants without soil.

The first of three short films by Mike Nayna about Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying's experience at Evergreen State College, focusing on the Equity Council and the controversy around it.

A VPRO documentary following ecologist and cameraman John D. Liu. He documents the regreening of China's Loess Plateau and other efforts to restore deserts and biodiversity around the world.

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ILFORD factory in Mobberley, England, showing how black and white film, paper and chemicals are made. It walks through emulsion making, coating, finishing, QC and distribution.

Home video from 1993 showing Future Crew members at Mika Tuomi's home finishing the PC demo Second Reality shortly before release.

A 1957 Walt Disney film in which he explains and demonstrates the multiplane camera, the animation tool that gave 2D films depth. It is a short behind-the-scenes piece from Disney's archives.

Tom Scott visits Onkalo in Finland, the planned deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste intended to be sealed for 100,000 years.

VICE's Oobah Butler spends eight months using fake reviews to push a nonexistent restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich, to number one on TripAdvisor in London. The short documentary shows how easily review systems can be gamed.

A short documentary about the 1980 Lake Peigneur accident in Louisiana, where an oil rig drilled into a salt mine beneath the lake. The lake drained into the mine, creating a whirlpool that swallowed barges.