Business screen magazine (1946)

Llso normally available to Atwell and jtrr A-V editors are engineering coverage — jsfelly of space hardware assembly and ;hfk-out — shot by such other major NASA ;(yractors as Grumman, McDonnell-Doug asBendix, IBM, General Electric and Phil »"ord. fhe first reels of footage Atwell looked at, c\er, were the heart and core of his pic — the 900 feet (before he trimmed it II to 600 feet) of shots taken from lunar t by the astronauts themselves. The cam ihev used was not called a motion picture Kia (which, at times, it was) but a "data iiisition sequence camera," a remarkable ii.'ision instrument manufactured especially 0 Project Apollo by the J. A. Maurer ComK V of Long Island City, New York. The 2. 1 nnd camera was smaller — at 8"xir'x.9" -han the old Gazette camera and could udle one pound magazines containing 130 e of thin base Ektachrome. At one frame )i second it could operate for 87 minutes )i.ire a magazine change or at movie camera ifed. 24-frames-per-second, it could run for 1, minutes. It could also function at 6 and I : frames per second. None of the Apollo 8 ttage, however, had been shot in "real iie" at 24-frames-per-second; but by printr' each exposed frame four times— a procM known as "stretching" — most of the 'irky" quality of movie projecting could be tjothed out. n Rich Atwell's hand cranked viewer, he ■M experience an especially clear illusion ) floating serenely above the moon's alien iiface. For rapt and silent minutes he «tched — temporarily not as a professional )1 as a tourist — the eerie traverse of large A small craters, sinuous rills, empty lunar 'leys and on the moon's back side, unined mountain peaks higher than Everest. iBtrange feeling 'It was a strange feeling," says Atwell, 'i be among the first to see this footage — trange feeling and a good feeling." Then he put the lunar reels temporarily ide and ran through some of the reaction ies made from the floor of Mission Control. ire was the great stuff at the end when the ;s and cigars came out, and here was a It shot on Astronaut Michael Collins as tells Borman and company they are free to ve earth's gravity and go to the moon, ou are go for TLI (translunar injection). )u are go for TLI," Collins tells them, five irds to send man on his longest journey, id here were the taut closeups of console bnitors — physicians, astronauts, engineers iduring the long audio blackout when the f"ee guys were behind the moon and no one it knew whether or not their crucial lunar bit insertion burn had been successful. Suddenly, Atwell spotted a pull back take 3de by A-V's head cameraman, Bob Bird, rd had his zoom lens racked in tight on a in-to-forehead shot of tensely waiting Flight irector Milton Wendler. Suddenly, as Wener gets the good news, his lips form the 3rd "pow!" Bird gets Wendler wildly throwg up his right hand, as the pull back brings 1 the surrounding thumbs up gestures and the room erupting in cheers. For two and a half days, working until nine each night. Rich Atwell scanned, cranked, cut, spliced, matched, and discarded— filling huge drums with out takes. On Saturday, to give himself church time the next day, he edited 16 hours straight through until after midnight. After church on Sunday, along with Robbins, Wiseman, and soundman John McMurray, he mixed all day, putting in sounds from the thunderous liftoff by Wernher von Braun to the closing fugue by Johannes Sebastian Bach. Then he came in early Monday to get ready for the irrevocable 9:00 a.m. interlock screening. They used to say at the Disney Studios that no one laughed until Walt laughed, and at the Manned Spacecraft Center no one reacts until Dr. Gilruth reacts. Finally Gilruth, a normally conservative, reticent, engineer noted for understatement, turned around in his chair and in a hybrid, nasal MinnesotaVirginia accent said, "It moved me nearly to tears." One scene change There was only one scene change before the film was jetted to Washington and its round of appearances; Dr. Gilruth wanted to emphasize even further the job done by Kennedy's Launch Control Center. "It's an epic flight," Gilruth explained, "and the people at launch control belong in the film." MSC's Photographic Technology Laboratory, which A-V operates on the night shift only received the pre-print material on Go For TLI at 6:30 that evening. By 8:30 the next morning, three answer prints ready for screening were turned over to NASA. Rich Atwell's successful crash job was over, but A-V's overall and multiplex job of servicing Gilruth's Manned Spacecraft Center and preparing for and beyond the lunar Continued i>n next page Members of A-V's animation department finish artwork for animation camera. Artists often work from rocket models, some of which they build themselves. Quality control checker watches two 8mm cartridge loaded films. Jay Sharp, writer/ producer of "Year of Fulfillment" looks on as cameramen prepare to shoot models of future spacecraft which will shuttle off ferry crews and supplies to orbiting space stations. ARCH 1969 21