There are certain events that etch so deeply in the memory that years later we can remember every detail of our surroundings and thoughts as we heard the news. 9/11 is like that for me, as was the deaths of John Lennon and Elvis Presley. High on my list of memorable events, however is one that is not about death. It is the positive and inspirational moment of those first steps on the moon.
Other people saw it on television. Our school, being in a provincial town, had no TV and the radio broadcast was piped through the school PA system. No doubt by a secretary holding the mike up to a transistor radio. It sounded like it - screechy and indistinct, but in the middle of that chaos of squawky noise one of the greatest moments in the history of humankind was discernible. A man was stepping onto another world for the first time.
In The Shadow Of The Moon is a newly released movie that brings that experience to life again by piecing together previously unseen footage from the NASA archives and digitally enhancing the original. Previously seen film from the control room, for example, was silent. The makers of In The Shadow Of The Moon spliced together audio tapes from the control room and using the same techniques musicians use to lip sync music, they put the voice back into the moving lips as the drama unfolds.
Likewise the footage shot by the astronauts in orbit and on the moon is brought to life by the addition of an audio track. In this case it is the astronauts themselves describing what was going on from their perspective as human beings looking back to events they can never forget.
Michael Collins the astronaut who stayed in the lunar orbiter while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface of the moon, and for a while became the most isolated human being in history, has revealing insights and remarkable observations that turn something that could easily be the dry ramblings of a pilot into the exciting human story that this great adventure was. After all the millions of dollars spent, and the incredible machinery put to work (Apollo Five is still the most powerful rocket ever made), it is in the end a story of the courage and adventurous spirit of some visionary people that made the lunar landing possible.
It seems incredible some of the risks that were taken. It should not be forgotten that the effort to get to the moon was at the cost of precious human lives. The movie reveals in the astronauts own words their own fears surrounding certain exposed wiring in the pure oxygen atmosphere of the space capsule. These fears were proved real when the 3 astronauts of Apollo One were burned to death on the launchpad. It appears they were fearful of the wiring, but more fearful of complaining due to the risk of losing their place as astronauts on the project.
The production notes for the movie demonstrate the extraordinary steps the producers took to recreate these awesome events and the sensitivity they exercised as the project developed:
"Producer Duncan Copp and co-producer Chris Riley spent many weeks in the NASA film library examining cans of film - some of which had not been opened for over 30 years. This search uncovered many gems, including astonishing space shots which have been re-mastered from the original film rolls to reveal the Apollo program with a visual clarity and impact it has never had before. The mute 16mm rolls shot in Mission Control have been laboriously lip-synced with the 16-track audio recordings of the mission controllers' voice loop to re-unite the pictures and sound of many historic moments for the first time, lending a striking immediacy to many dramatic scenes.
"The film has some stunning shots in space of the spacecraft separating and docking. This was engineering footage shot so that the engineers could investigate the cause of any problems – in effect a sort of visual "black box recorder". There were cameras built into the various stages of the Saturn V rocket which would automatically shoot key moments, usually at high frame rates on 16mm film. The cameras would then eject (you can see this happening on one particularly spectacular shot of the final stage firing) and re-enter the atmosphere, where they would be caught in mid-air by high-flying aircraft equipped with nets! It's an amazing story we plan to tell in one of the DVD featurettes. One of things we wanted to do was really allow the audience to luxuriate in this amazing footage – and so some shots we play in their entirety."
"Perhaps the most astonishing thing to me about this project is that this film had not already been made," said director David Sington. He then went on to describe the surviving astronauts who were able to participate in the film. "The best thing about it has been meeting and talking to ten of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met."
This movie has enough blasting rockets to please hardened technophiles, enough tales of courage to please the adventurous, and enough heart and soul to please the rest of us.
Ron Howard Presents In The Shadow Of The Moon
Blasting off September 2007
Website / Preview of In The Shadow Of The Moon
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