The universe is a series of circles, ellipses. Planets orbit stars, satellites - planets.

We orbit around other people and ideas. Other people and animals orbit us. We share orbits of similar interests and situation with others, who are also in orbit with us.

Just like our moon will occasionally block our access to our star, other orbiting objects might block our access to the things that we orbit. These eclipses often leads to moments of transcendence, signals for change.

This short film essay about orbits is born in the total eclipse of 1979 that I witnessed with my teenage orbit of friends, and that we attempted to document on super 8 film. It takes me to today, where I work at the Kentucky Science Center, and create stop motion animation on the museum floor with children as my animation crew. We use the objects in the museum to make our animations. Chairs can orbit around tables, rocks can orbit around other rocks. We can orbit around each other in our frame by frame creations.

This film will be created out of such animation, and the voices of people talking about the orbits in their life. It will include my teenage friends talking about that eclipse experience they had in 1979, and how our orbits have changed in the years since, as we have scattered around the country and lived very different lives.

It will include the thoughts of my young animation collaborators, about the things that they orbit and what orbits them. Their parents and other adults at will talk about the orbits they have made in their lives.

Of course, it will also include some of the science about orbits, about curves in space time, about gravity and the bends in the universe that keep objects in circles.

This short film will use animation and the voices of people to evoke the wonders of the cosmos, and how the big and small are related on the continuum of things, and how a moment of transcendence, like an eclipse, can stop us for a moment to contemplate these wonders.