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NASA Space

New 'Apollo 11' Documentary Makers Discovered Never-Seen-Before Mission Footage (collectspace.com) 65

This year's Sundance Film Festival opened with a new 93-minute documentary crafted entirely from archival footage of NASA's Apollo 11 mission, reports collectSpace -- including some never seen before: In the course of sourcing all of the known imagery, the National Archives (NARA) staff members made a discovery that changed the course of the project -- an unprocessed collection of 65mm footage, never before seen by the public. Unbeknownst to even the NARA archivists, the reels contained wide format scenes of the Saturn V launch, the inside of the Launch Control Center and post-mission activities aboard the USS Hornet aircraft carrier... The resulting transfer -- from which the documentary was cut -- is the highest resolution, highest quality digital collection of Apollo 11 footage in existence. "We knew that the clock was ticking, this material had been sitting around for 50 years," said director Todd Douglas Miller, commenting on the motivation behind the film scanning effort.

The other unexpected find was a massive cache of audio recordings -- more than 11,000 hours -- comprising the individual tracks from 60 members of the Mission Control team. "Apollo 11" film team members wrote code to restore the audio and make it searchable and then began the multi-year process of listening to and documenting the recordings. The effort yielded new insights into key events of the moon landing mission, as well as surprising moments of humor and camaraderie. "Much of the footage in 'Apollo 11' is, by virtue of both access and proper preservation, utterly breathtaking," wrote The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg in his review of the film. "The sense of scale, especially in the opening minutes, sets the tone as [the] rocket is being transported to the launch pad and resembles nothing so much as a scene from 'Star Wars' only with the weight and grandeur that come from 6.5 million pounds of machinery instead of CG."

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New 'Apollo 11' Documentary Makers Discovered Never-Seen-Before Mission Footage

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  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Sunday January 27, 2019 @03:36AM (#58028570)

    That guy was so demanding.

    • Ironically, the biggest audience for this film will be the Kubrick Hoax Crew. They will just absolutely swarm to watch this multiple times, scrutinizing every scene, sniffing for clues to The Hoax.

      Just as a joke and to rile them up a bit, the producers of the film should have included Kubrick in the credits:

      "Special Area 51 Advisor from the Afterlife Beyond the Grave: Stanley Kubrick"

      At any rate, social media will be burning with a fresh crop of "proof" that the Moon Landings were faked, based on eviden

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Yes, Kubrick yelled, "No more loser actors from shit-hole countries! They're all 4's!"

  • Wish the missing footage would have been of the supposed 9 mile high (or so I heard) crystal/glass towers on the dark side of the moon. Supposedly they are housing souls from earth. Totally bonkers, I know! But would make a good movie plot! Same with the supposed UFOs hiding in craters.
  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday January 27, 2019 @08:25AM (#58029156)

    Whoever thought it was a good idea to have the treble on the drums turned up and blasting every second should be strapped to a chair in an anechoic chamber, fitted with headphones, and forced to listen to that music continuously for 24 hours.

    That was shit music. If you're going to use drums for something like this, you use bass. On low.

    P.S. the quote at the bottom: I put up my thumb... and it blotted out the planet Earth. -- Neil Armstrong

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Treble was louder in the 60's. Global Basing has since dampened it. In 20 years we'll all sound like under-water mumbling.

  • TFA annoyed me with the use of their word "chyron". Chyron Corporation [wikipedia.org] makes on screen graphic software. I was unaware the trademark had been genericized, but the author thinks it can be used interchangeably with the word "graphic".

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