Business screen magazine (1946)

films of moon shots . . . continued Writer/ Producer Don Wiseman had listened to or read every word of the six-day-long Mission Control voice track, or real time dialogue that had seemed to emanate from the very walls and ceiling of the MSC press room. In addition, he stayed up or got up for the wee hours" burns when the precise firing of a rocket engine a quarter of a million miles away was crucial not only to the mission but to the lives of three men as well. Wiseman, who had a free hand from the beginning, first felt the mood of his picture late one night when he wandered into the nearly deserted press room. Since he worked with and knew all three astronauts intimately, he instantly recognized Borman's voice from the moon coming to him out of the walls. As Borman chatted, almost idly, with Jerry Carr in Mission Control, astronauts Lovell and Anders slept as their spacecraft circled the moon. "What's the weather like down there," Borman asked in a casual tone that Wiseman thought also had more than a hint of loneliness in it. Carr said it was a pretty night and that the moon was out. "A nice time for Christmas," Borman said, "Nice weather for Christmas." "It struck me then and there," Wiseman recalled later, "that it was basically a mood picture. Here were three men. three ordinary family men sounding casual and maybe even corny and feeling lonely at times right in the middle of a truly epic journey of modern man. And there is nothing wrong with that kind of corn anyway. And here they were, at a time we needed it most, giving us a mission that captured the human spirit and reminded man of what he is, or, maybe, what he should be, or can be." Later Wiseman decided the mood and the picture would be strong enough to build up to a close with Borman's prayer from space, "And show us what each one of us can do to set forth the coming of the day of universal peace. Amen.'' And Wiseman thought it would be a natural "to come up over that with a fugue, a very precise form of music. It had been a very precise mission, and what is more precise than Bach, the Hemingway of composers? It's precise but it's almost a spiritual thing." Much of what Atwell set out to do next was typical of A-V"s normal support of MSC's requests for training films, engineering film reports, films for television and other specialized films. A few individuals in NASA's top management, fortunately, are very audiovisual conscious and use film extensively both externally and internally. Dr. George Mueller, the Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight, for instance, once told a group of U.S. Senators. "As you can see, it probably is more effective to use a film to describe the status of our program than anything 1 could possibly say in terms of words." Individual astronauts also often request special film clips from A-V as an aid in scheduled speech appearances. Producing any type of film for such enlightened management is usually a highly desired challenge for film makers, but production of a major mission film, such as that of Apollo 8, involves some unique problems. For one thing, during the entire six-day lunar journey, virtually every word spoken from space, from world-wide tracking stations and from Houston's Mission Control is recorded on 30 separate sound tracks on a single strip of 70 mm magnetic film. The tracks had stayed open day and night for the entire lunar journey — 146 hours, 46 minutes. A part of A-V's support service to the Manned Spacecraft Center Is the responsibility of running audiovisual facilities at press conferences. Here the press records the post-flight conference of the Apollo 7 astronauts (I. to r.): Capt. Walter Schirra, Jr.,; Major Don Eisele; and Walter Cunningham. Commander of the Apollo 7 flight, Navy Cap Walter Schirra, Jr., and A-V's Don Wiseman revie some of the film narration Schirra is doing fc the Manned Spacecraft Center. Before Atwell could work with them, how ever, desired script segments had to be laboi iously located and transferred to 16 mm mat netic film — hence the 54 short takes he ha to juggle. In addition, documentary motion pictur sections of over a dozen separate organize tions normally provide key and useable sej ments. Pre-launch. launch and tracking fooi age — roughly 4,400 feet, in this case — cam from Technicolor Inc. at the Kennedy Spac Center, at Merritt Island, Florida. On-boarc remote cameras attached by the Marsha Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabara record the spectacular view high in the hej vens as the massive booster rocket separate from the rest of the rocket train. Meanwhik activity inside the spacecraft (called IVA, fc intravehicular activity), comes from the sam astronaut-manned camera that will later b taken out on the moon's surface. Simultaneou and continuous coverage of the key action and reactions from the floor of Houston Mission Operations Control Room is pre vided by roving veteran A-V cameramer Bob Bird, Charles Turner and Jerry Bra; all of whom are allowed on the floor to wor on a strict non-interference basis. Workin with battery operated, self-blimped (soun proofed) 16 mm Eclair cameras, they hav to shoot without giving a word or gesture c direction of advice. In addition, they mus register good color qualities in poor ligt that is usually turned down to about 15 foe candles to permit better visibility of operatin personnel of their key instrument panels an lights. The experienced three-shift trio is a oblivious to the NASA remote camera whic services the TV network pool as are the bus flight directors themselves. Animation c rocket train separations and the spacecral drifting against a starry background normall comes from A-V's own 1 1-man animatio department, but, in this case, footage come from the manufacturer of the command afl' service module. North American Rockwell c Downey, California. And, finally, the ApoU 8 recovery footage comes from the seagoin cameramen of the Manned Spacecraft Cente who spent Christmas aboard the U.S.S. York town. 20 BUSINESS SCREEh