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ISS Space

Russian Actress and Director To Start Making First Movie on Space Station (nytimes.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The first dog in space. The first man and woman. Now Russia has clinched another spaceflight first before the United States: Beating Hollywood to orbit. From a report: A Russian actress, Yulia Sherepild, a director, Klim Shipenko, and their veteran Russian astronaut guide, Anton Shkaplerov, launched on a Russian rocket toward the International Space Station on Tuesday. Their mission is to shoot scenes for the first feature-length film in space. While cinematic sequences in space have long been portrayed on big screens using sound stages and advanced computer graphics, never before has a full-length movie been shot and directed in space.

Whether the film they shoot in orbit is remembered as a cinematic triumph, the mission highlights the busy efforts of governments as well as private entrepreneurs to expand access to space. Earth's orbit and beyond were once visited only by astronauts handpicked by government space agencies. But a growing number of visitors in the near future will be more like Ms. Sherepild and Mr. Shipenko, and less like the highly trained Mr. Shkaplerov and his fellow space explorers. A Soyuz rocket, the workhorse of Russia's space program, lifted off on time at 4:55 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Before the launch on Tuesday, the MS-19 crew posed for photos and waved to family and fans in Baikonur. Mr. Shipenko, the director of the film which is named "The Challenge," held up a script as he waved to cameras.
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Russian Actress and Director To Start Making First Movie on Space Station More

Russian Actress and Director To Start Making First Movie on Space Station

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  • What a collosal waste of money (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @02:43PM (#61864163) Journal
    Unless they are making a documentary, there is no point to shooting a movie in space. Absolutely anything you might want to show can be replicated in studios that exist already, and for a fraction of the price.

    • Unless they are making a documentary, there is no point to shooting a movie in space. Absolutely anything you might want to show can be replicated in studios that exist already, and for a fraction of the price.

      Hollywood blows millions of dollars on things that don't make sense to me all the time. If they're making the Russian taxpayers fund this, then it's stupid. If some private investor thinks this is worth the price, I guess it's no stupider than buying a rare painting or a yacht or flying to space in a penis-shaped rocket.

      If we're going to keep modifying the laws to make billionaires wealthier and pass law after law to give them tax shelters or just simple tax cuts to ensure they pay as little as possibl

    • Re:What a collosal waste of money (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WankerWeasel ( 875277 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @03:14PM (#61864285)
      As the article says, they're doing this as they bid to attract private companies interested in going to space. This is far from pointless. This is the type of thing that'll get the attention of Hollywood and big brands who may be interested in investing in sending their folks to space in order to shoot truly unique film. I'm sure Coke or McDonalds would love to be the first to shoot a TV commercial in space and they'll pay millions to do so. The press around it would be well worth the investment.
      • I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the USA secretly funded it - worth it to keep those Russian scientists gainfully employed in Russia vs designing missiles for the highest bidder (Iran, North Korea,etc.).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I've yet to see a completely convincing scene that takes place in zero g. It's never quite right. Hair is usually a giveaway.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Burdell ( 228580 )

        The space scenes in "Apollo 13" were filmed in 25 second takes in the "Vomit Comet", and so were filmed in a weightless environment. The shot length is somewhat limiting, although not really for most modern movies (where the average shot length is much less than that). I expect it's still a lot cheaper (even if more planning is required) than actually going to space.

    • The sheer cost would be immense, and thus any reasonable producer would not go this route. This hints strongly that it's a national prestige ploy (ie, propaganda) and thus is being financed by Russia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      The point is for Glorious Russia to make a movie on the ISS before Tom Cruise can get up there.
    • That money is going into engineers and technicians' salaries. Funding existing facilities and the R&D efforts. It's making private companies realize that there is indeed a potential demand for space tourism beyond the upper atmosphere. This demand is going to require safer space flights and over time as the novelty wears off cheaper and more comfortable. We want to advance as a species into having space based industries for manufacturing, resources, and general scientific work that will eventually get u

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      Absolutely anything you might want to show can be replicated in studios that exist already, and for a fraction of the price.

      So, you are saying that NASA could have saved billions of dollars in the 1960s?

  • As Scott Manley pointed out recently Scott Garriott, documented his stay on the ISS and produced a short Sci-Fi film "Apogee of Fear". https://youtu.be/BKOK0VzTix4 [youtu.be] Nobody said it had to be a GOOD film.

  • Well maybe you'll finally get to see someone spending time accomplishing pooping in a movie!

  • Peresild not "Sherepild".
  • This movie is about how they faked the earth takeoffs. :)

  • Massachusetts caught the "we want films" mind virus a while back.

    And when I was a slightly younger and sprightly RightwingNutjob who lived in the city, I encountered these film crews doing their thing.

    One instance involved closing off the area around the Harvard Square subway entrance and directing an old man with a cane to walk around the long way around so he wouldn't get into some pretentious prick's precious shot.

    Another instance involved closing down the Massachusetts Avenue bridge at rush hour on a we

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Government, and government meetings, at least are necessary. Or so I'm told.

        Filmmaking and movie watching are pure leisure activity.

        I enjoy a good film once in a while. But I notice that most of the ones I enjoy most were made back in the day when the studios had their own sound stages and back lots so they could do all their shit without having to lug all their crap somewhere and inconvenience the little people.

  • Somehow the paywalled article promoted by Slashdot doesn't even mention that Tom Cruise is expected to also be shooting a movie this month on the ISS as well. It was announced over a year ago, so Russia had ample time to beat Cruise to it. Guess they're still unhappy he shot down all those Migs.

    https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]

    • Somehow the paywalled article promoted by Slashdot doesn't even mention that Tom Cruise is expected to also be shooting a movie this month on the ISS as well. It was announced over a year ago, so Russia had ample time to beat Cruise to it. Guess they're still unhappy he shot down all those Migs.

      https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]

      Funny, I and millions of others have no problem reading the article. The problem must be on your end.

  • Will there be sex scene in space, and how they would do it?

  • Apparently the title should be idiomatically translated as "House Call". The standard meaning of the word may be "challenge", but it can also refer to asking a doctor to make a home visit. The premise is a cosmonaut develops a health problem that precludes riding down in a Soyuz, so a surgeon has to be sent up first.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      Consider what happened to the Space Shuttle Challenger, that's a bad name for a movie to be made in space.

  • What about Return from Orbit? (Score:3)

    by Nemo_the_Null ( 6951528 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @06:06PM (#61864859)
    The NYT keeps changing what "first" this is throughout the article and poses it as a race against Hollywood. First on the ISS. First on space station. First in orbit. Only the first of these is true. The Soviets released the film Return from Orbit in 1984, which featured scenes filmed onboard the Salyut 7 space station and a Soyuz vessel. So unless you want to start adding more caveats, the Russians in fact won this race several decades ago.
  • The new 007 movie can have 007 go space-mad, and we will forget about "MoonRaker".
  • One Russian will dress in a fat suit and wear a blond combover hair piece and another will see if a golden shower will travel in a straight line in zero g. Just one of many submitted scripts.
  • ... I watched a Russian film? Hmm ... never. Don't see a compelling reason to see this one either, unless it involves Dolphin style zero-G sex as described by others above. That might be interesting. :-)

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