August 1, 2004

• I mentioned 'For All Mankind' a few entries back, and one of the things that struck me about that movie is how technology enabled the filmmaker to do things and say things that wouldn't otherwise be possible. The original footage was digitally enhanced so it wouldn't look like crap on a theater-sized screen, and, if I recall correctly, much of the audio was mastered to digital.

  What this enabled was to make it artistically worthwhile to include a lot of footage that had been ignored as irrelevant in previous documentaries about the Apollo mission. We see the astronauts going up the gantry in an elevator, experiencing both how high up and how devoid of fanfare it really was. Another example is the camera located in a jettisoned stage, which tumbles toward earth.

  Another technological development: Not long ago, NASA released a significant chunk of the Apollo images as high-resolution digital files. Previous to now, files so large wouldn't have been useful to anyone, since they'd occupy a whole hard drive, so I'm glad someone's on the ball, and sees the opportunity.

  And that's a good thing, because now, someone has used these images to create a series of full-screen panoramic images shot on the surface of the moon. The Apollo 17 one is my favorite.

  • 6:02 pm
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