How we brought Apol­lo 11 from NASA’s archive to the big screen

The doc­u­men­tary Apol­lo 11 shows the moon land­ing mis­sion as you’ve nev­er seen it. Incor­po­rat­ing a recent­ly redis­cov­ered col­lec­tion of 65mm film from NASA’s archive, Todd Dou­glas Miller’s film is a visu­al feast for large for­mat and NASA afi­ciona­dos alike. Whether it’s a tow­er­ing shot of the Saturn‑V rock­et, the stag­ger­ing amount of detail in a shot of the crawler car­ry­ing it to the launch pad, or Buzz Aldrin’s strong stare into the cam­era, the film is fre­quent­ly jaw-drop­ping. And like the events it depicts, Apol­lo 11 has pushed tech­ni­cal bound­aries via the use of a cus­tom-built 8K film scanner.

“One of the most frus­trat­ing things we had to do was to find out the prove­nance of this footage,” Miller tells LWLies. Some of it pre­vi­ous­ly found its way into the 1971 doc­u­men­tary Moon­walk One, albeit copied onto 35mm and cropped to save costs. As the film’s archive pro­duc­er Stephen Slater explains, ​“Now we’re see­ing them how they should have been seen, and now you’re see­ing all the oth­er stuff that was nev­er even used.”

The ins-and-outs of who shot what and for what pur­pose are still being fig­ured out. ​“All we knew was that there were some reels marked with ​‘Apol­lo 11,’” recalls Miller, ​“and if you were even more lucky there was a shot list.” This ongo­ing work is tan­gen­tial­ly linked to anoth­er project, Al Reinhart’s 1989 doc­u­men­tary For All Mankind, which helped to cat­a­logue NASA’s col­lec­tion of 16mm footage from the var­i­ous Gem­i­ni and Apol­lo mis­sions and bring it to the big screen. ​“It pains me that Al didn’t get to see this film,” says Miller, ​“because he always said he just loved watch­ing footage of man walk­ing on the moon.”

The 16mm footage record­ed by Buzz Aldrin, Neil Arm­strong and Michael Collins, and oth­er moments cap­tured by engi­neers on the ground, makes up a large por­tion of Apol­lo 11, which unfolds through pure­ly archival means, fore­go­ing the use of present-day talk­ing heads. Slater was instru­men­tal in real­is­ing this, with the film giv­ing him license to expand on his long-run­ning work sync­ing up NASA’s silent 16mm archive with air-to-ground flight loop audio. Thanks to Slater, we get to see and hear the engi­neers utter­ing com­mands, forg­ing a con­nec­tion between those in mis­sion con­trol and the moon-bound astronauts.

While Arm­strong, Aldrin and Collins are suit­ing up for the mis­sion, a young woman is seen stand­ing at a con­trol pan­el that prints out their heart rates in real time, mark­ing spe­cif­ic moments with a mark­er pen. This shot might have been deemed triv­ial next to the sight of three nation­al heroes prepar­ing for their his­toric mis­sion, but the film’s astute bal­ance of sound and image real­ly under­scores the sig­nif­i­cance of her involvement.

Eric Milano’s sound design work on the film also empha­sis­es the impor­tance of the audio. As Miller explains, ​“We spent a long time try­ing to get the sound of the Com­mand Mod­ule right, like the hum and the inte­ri­or noise, because it var­ied on the onboard record­ings depend­ing on where they had the recorder.” If you’re watch­ing footage in the Com­mand Mod­ule lis­ten­ing the voic­es of CAP­COM main­stays Char­lie Duke or Bruce McCan­d­less, their voic­es rever­ber­ate as if you were sat along­side the astronauts.

“If you’re on the beach as peo­ple are watch­ing the launch, the shot will pan around, and you’ll hear a radio broad­cast,” adds Slater, ​“and it’ll sound like it’s com­ing out of that spe­cif­ic radio. I love that.” Beyond the voic­es of those involved in the mis­sion, the film’s sound design com­pris­es a sym­pho­ny of beeps, whirrs and sta­t­ic nois­es, as var­i­ous pieces of elec­tri­cal machin­ery from mul­ti­ple trans­mis­sions trans­port the view­er back to July 1969.

The authen­tic­i­ty of the sound design became just as piv­otal to the project as the cel­lu­loid footage. Miller remem­bers feel­ing ​“real­ly excit­ed, like, ​‘we nailed it!’” at a test screen­ing with Armstrong’s sons and Collins present, only to be informed that they’d missed out the sig­na­ture pop­corn-like noise the Saturn‑V rock­et made as it left the atmos­phere. ​“We put our tail between our legs and went back to New York,” he jokes.

With those involved in the mis­sion grow­ing old­er, and sev­er­al of them hav­ing passed away, the notion of Apol­lo 11’s footage as a time cap­sule grows increas­ing­ly impor­tant. ​“It was real­ly about tak­ing notes from peo­ple who were there and going back” says Miller, under­scor­ing the impact of first-hand knowl­edge upon the assem­bly of the film.

Through the sound archive and sound design, the footage gains addi­tion­al lay­ers that make for an incred­i­bly tex­tured view­ing expe­ri­ence. Apol­lo 11 is more than just a col­lec­tion of astound­ing clips, it’s an exer­cise in acti­vat­ing the archive, mak­ing you feel clos­er to those events through the peo­ple who played a cru­cial part in it. The film expands our under­stand­ing of the mis­sion. It is cin­e­ma as edu­ca­tion as much as it is cin­e­mat­ic spectacle.

Apol­lo 11 is released 28 June. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.