Space Age 50th Anniversary

October 4th, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the lunch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union.

NASA commemorated the anniversary with NASA TV and NASA web pieces.

Any footage available was tired, old, grainy, 12 generation copied, black and white... I never really considered that an option.

I wanted to go back to 1957 to the Sputnik launch, So I created a map of the Soviet Union and highlighted Kazakhstan, and the Biakonur Cosmodrome, the launch site of Sputik.

I have the camera fly over as a Russian voice counts down to launch. After Sputnik flies by the camera, many images highlighting the event and Americas entrance into the Space Age appear.

The Russian voice is that of Astronaut Carl Walz. Carl has been on several Space Shuttle missions and spent 196 days on the International Space Station; he speaks fluent Russian.

At the time I needed to record the narration all the Russian men that were at NASA HQ were in Paris for a conference... having an astronaut record the voice over now made it even cooler.... forget the authenticity in the accent... I now have an astronaut.

The entire work was done in Adobe After Effects... I used an Avid to simple put down the music and sound effects.

Mark R. Hailey
Art Director, NASA Television

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• mrhailey
• sputnik
• russia
• soviet
• nasa
• space
• 50th
• tvspace
• hailey

[SputnikTs]

yeah!!!SPUTNIK!!

[JustinBieberGayFan]

Go Sputnik! Go! Baby! Go! Yes!!!

Soviet Union won!

[dunkiemon]

So?

[sauron7222]

i am from kazachstan Alma-ty

[routier1642]

Nicely done. It should be the 48-star US flag, though. The 50-star flag didn't come in until 1959.

[voxdeihn]

great

[revdoktorcrash]

sputnik and the bigbeat 50 years ago. beatnik both have the same beat

[ApolloAchtzehn]

Congratulation Roskosmos!!

[Kosackk]

The guy that does the russian voices sounds like a fuckin' turk or something :S