 Is that something else or what? What a movie. Wow. So we have the pleasure of having about 25 minutes here to chat with some of the key people behind the film and just to recap who we have here. To my immediate right, Todd Miller, as you already heard from David Fierro, he's the award-winning director of this film and other award-winning films. Also the founder and co-founder of Statement Pictures which is based in Brooklyn, New York, where he's down from tonight. Thomas Peterson, too, is immediate right there, is the producer and the DP which I had to ask what DP stands for, it's director of photography or cinematographer to those of us who don't know movies very well. He's a co-owner of Statement Pictures and was also involved, of course, in the Dinosaur 13 which is their previous award-winning film as well as this award-winning film. Tom was born and raised in New Orleans before he moved to New York City in 2003, so that's a cool thing. And hometown hero here at the National Archives on the far end there is Dan Rooney. He's chief of the Motion Pictures Sound and Video Branch at the Archives and he's the guy who led the National Archives effort into a digitization partnership which made the really amazing parts of this film. Actually, there are so many amazing parts of this film but one of the really amazing parts of this film possible. So thank you. I'm gonna take privilege of being the moderator to ask a couple of questions myself first and we have some microphones set up on the side and after we're done with the first couple of questions there we'll start asking for audience questions so if you have a question, get yourself to a microphone please and ask it at the microphone and then we'll pass around, okay? All right, let's start. So Todd, this is the place where all the stuff gets stored, well actually not here, right? The film's actually out in College Park, right? But the National Archives is the place. Can you tell us a little bit about how this project got started and how you wound up in the partnership with the National Archives to make this happen? Yeah, it was kind of your fault, Bill. Okay, I wasn't fishing for a compliment there at that point. But initially we had reached out to NASA, to Bill and to Bert Orrick, PR director at NASA and we had made a short film about Apollo 17 that some people have seen and we really tried to play with the narrative structure of just only using archival material. So it was really a primer, a blueprint for what Apollo 11 would be. And I think it was tail end of maybe 2016 somewhere in there and you would recommend to Dan. And I think my first initial contact with Dan was probably via email and then we jumped on the phone and I said I wanna scan, film scan because we had some new technology, the company, the post-production facility back in New York who I've had the pleasure of working with a lot over my career, was getting into the film scanning business when a lot of companies were getting out of it. So I told Dan we want everything related to Apollo 11 in your archive. And I think he probably thought I was nuts at first. Yeah, and that basically is what started it. We started with a nine day timeline and I was working with an archive producer, Steven Slater at the time who's based in the UK who was introduced to me by a wonderful colleague, Ben Feist, who's here right now. Where's Ben? There he is. Around the time that it was probably a few months into the project or contact with Dan, he alerted us to this discovery of this large format material. And right around about the same time we were alerted to 11,000 hours of mission control audio. We really didn't know what in the hell to do with it. Because it was all, it was mismatched. It was just kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. There would be a retro fire guy from day two for four hours and then on day six you might get the Capcom and it wasn't synced up. It was very poor quality and because of Ben and really Ben alone and a couple other guys, they developed some code and software to be able to sync all of that together, do all the time remapping and then clean it all up. So by the time we were able to deal with it and I'm sure we can talk about it a little bit later, but Tom just was able to go through the line, share a bit and find some really good stories. But that's really how it all really began. And when Dan had alerted us to this large format collection, that was via email May 10th of 2017. You remember the day? Yeah, it was pretty exciting. Well, Dan, okay, large format film here. It's been sitting there in the archives. People forgot about it. How does that happen? Well, I think when people ask me that question, the first thing I say is you have to understand the sheer volume of what NASA created during the Apollo era. So we're talking about tens of thousands of reels of film and the system actually worked the way it was supposed to. But these particular holdings had suffered a little bit from being under-described, didn't entirely know what was there. And there were also financial and institutional barriers to being able to work with those kind of formats over the years. It's an incredibly expensive proposition. And so it suffered, again, from not being, probably being pushed to the side over the years and not being on anyone's priority radar. But when I first started learning about the project and about the experiences of Todd and Tom with previous projects they had worked on, it really presented the opportunity to go, not only to go and sort of re-quantify and reevaluate, provide some numbers in terms of just what we have for the totality of Apollo 11 holdings, but to look specifically at those holdings. And there were a few key moments in those early conversations that Todd alluded to that sort of had me thinking along those lines. And I think I had said to them, well, you guys are interested in IMAX production, there is some 70 millimeter material, so let me do a little research, see what I can do and get back to you. And thus the email several weeks later. But that really actually was just the beginning of months and months worth of research to really understand these holdings better and figure out the logistics of how we could start building a partnership and work together to be able to discover and rediscover what those holdings were part of. Yeah, one of the amazing things of the production was that as the film was going up to New York to be scanned, Todd would bring some of it back near to Washington and we had it a couple of times. The first one of those showings where some of us could brought in who were involved in the movie, got to see that it was just eye watering to see the high risk. And then you would tell us we were wrong on certain things, so we had to go back. That's my job, I complain about things like that. Yeah, and Dan, I sympathize with the problem. I mean, we can't afford to have 70 millimeter projectors sitting around waiting on the off chance that somebody asked for things like that. So it's a real challenge with archival work to maintain the equipment and get things out there. Now, Tom, one of the things that I think people don't appreciate or would appreciate is that a lot of that footage there you see where people were talking in mission control it was close up to mission control. I saw that footage hundreds of times probably over the last 30 or 40 years and it was all silent. So tell us a little bit about how suddenly that became sound quality. Yeah, the stuff that shot MLS which is without sound. Excuse me. So it basically, almost every single frame had to be synced up and the sources of that audio came from, much of it came from this 30 track. There are also other sources, air to ground, audio, the loops, the onboard audio that they were recording and a large amount of that was done by our archive producer, Stephen Slater who's kind of made it his life mission to do that. He's basically been doing it his entire life. He's nuts. He's one of those British guys who has a hobby. He, yeah, he's got a hobby, he's one of a kind, yeah. We love him. So, as Todd mentioned, in terms of working with the 30 track, all credit to Ben Feist for basically, it was sort of a jumble when we got it and it got plopped down in front of me and I'm like, okay, where do I start with this 11,000 hours of basically, completely on catalog, mixed up audio. And not only that, but there were, I mean the quality of it, there were variations in pitch and flutter and wow, it's called and there were very short clips and they were all out of order. So basically, once Ben worked as magic, we were all kind of able to divide it up and conquer and work basically outward from key moments in the mission. And it's, everybody you see in Mission Control on a headset is talking and that got recorded. So, figuring out who was talking, figuring out, you click on a channel and somebody's talking about the booster so it's sort of, we knew the key moments in the timeline so it's sort of just developing those stories out of that and it was really, it was kind of starting from there and working outward and then sometimes, I mean it was just, it consumed most of our time for a good chunk of my life now it seems like so far, but it was, it was just sometimes it was the luck of the draw and I'd be like, I'm looking at a waveform so I can see there's some activity, I wonder what's going on there and sometimes it would just be this fantastic thing that would be happening. I mean a lot of it was really exciting mission critical stuff that we're hearing for the first time like the 1201 and 1202 alarms going off and the people in the back room who are identifying them and all that stuff that's happening but then a lot of times it was like non-mission critical stuff that was happening like the reference to Chappaquiddick which was like, oh you know all of a sudden you know we're in this bubble like thinking about nothing but this nine day timeline and you know there's a reference to what's going on in the greater, you know the greater culture at that time so it was, you know, it was, it occasionally was monotonous but it was always something thrilling happening in there. Can I say something about school that they found? So everybody knew, you know, within I think even, you know NASA had been reported before even in the transcripts on the Apollo flight journals about this 24 year old engineer sitting in the back room named Jack Garmin. So when those alarms are going off during the landing it was, it came down to a 24 year old flight controller sitting in the back room to give basically the abort or no abort command. So we all kind of knew that that was kind of steeped in, you know, Apollo 11 lore but we never heard his actual voice and then Tom walks in one day and is like I got the voice, here it is, you know and then it was little things like that that he was able to find and like the mother country song that's in there that really got played Buzz Aldrin really said hey you guys wanna listen to some music Tom walks into the office one day and just kind of says hey you might wanna just go to this channel and this thing is just really cool song that's on there and as it turns out like that song in and of itself had its own history where John Stewart who was the folk artist unfortunately had passed away but his wife was whose name is Buffy Stewart she's a folk artist in her own right plays banjo still this day wears an eyepatch and she's awesome was out in Sol Solito, California and it turns out that they had a great connection to the space community they knew the John Glenn and his family they knew the carpenters and they had been on tour with RFK in fact the night that RFK was assassinated the ambassador they were supposed to have ice cream with him in his hotel room so it was this real convoluted kind of coalescence of history that all kind of came together and I can't credit Tom enough like that just came from just basically a producer sitting there and just like being interested in it and like just listening to it and so everybody else was supposed to be working on the 30 track stuff just they all went away cause Tom was like just amazing at it yeah and as you can hear it's hard cause it was picked up on the voice I've got pretty good ears I listened to it a thousand times I still can't like make it out it's incredible that he was able to there was a month long period where I'd come home and there'd be black stuff all over the sides of my head from my headphones you know I was sweating in too you guys did a great job of that okay so the film premiered in January at Sundance this year right, wins an award commercial release in March you get the award from oh yeah Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking award that's for communication award so great critical reception what do people say to you from an audience like this after showing you what's the sort of the reaction from normal people it's been really amazing and you know the film's kind of slowly rolling out internationally so we've been out there a lot but what's astounding to me is that everybody has a connection to the story and it's fascinating people that either live through it or they'll bring their kids you know a lot of us that worked on the film we all have children and they were kind of around in the edit suite and they were you know as amazed about it you know as we were so I think that's been the biggest surprise to me is everybody how connected they were and it certainly wasn't lost on us making the film about just how large and scale and scope this entire project was it was really incredible I think for me there was one there was one that came up after screening in Sundance and she had her dad was a contractor worked in launch control and she had seen him in the footage and she had no idea that this piece of footage existed and he had passed you know years earlier so she was really really emotional and you know I mean that was probably the most personal connection but everybody's got a story so it's really amazing. Yeah for me I was 11 years old when this happened 50 years ago and it was black and white TV and I thought I was in there I mean I'm watching this thing and I'm paying attention to it. Wow what an amazing experience we can now have with the new technology with all the materials we have from the archives and amazing job on that and speaking of the archives I'm gonna toss it back to Dan back here. What do you see as the big challenge ahead? I mean now we've got this footage that we've thanks to the film it's remastered and we'll now have for posterity for all of us to use thank you and but what are the future challenges to making sort of material accessible to the public? Well one of the great things that's been going on at the here at the National Archives the last several years is the archival processing cataloging preservation work of our team and it's really just started in earnest in the last few years in particular with NASA holdings so NASA was such a big operation the holdings were spread across all the different NASA centers it's taken many years for them to sort of find their home here at the archives and I'm really proud of the staff and the work that they've done on cataloging it and making it accessible providing you know searchable databases and now digitizing a lot of the material and getting it online as well but there's still the challenge of as I said earlier just sheer volume duplication across collections tracing back the most original sources possible which was a big part of this project too and the data challenges and not just from digitized archival film holdings which is massive and it's been massive for this project so that's kind of our immediate next challenge as far as this project is concerned but if you think about the future and what NASA's doing now and the amount of video that they can capture in enormously high resolutions with all the digital cameras today 4K, 8K handheld cameras on board with the astronauts the deluge of data that that's gonna generate in the future that's the real challenge for the archival community going forward yeah my colleagues at NASA aren't gonna make your job any easier I don't think okay so Tom start to finish about two and a half years about that right for the production what do you guys yeah it was about yeah the calendar in 2016 so yeah it's going on three years so across that span of time you know what do you guys what to you was the biggest challenge of making this movie I think it was kind of what Dan was just saying I mean I can't say enough that's why it's so it's amazing to be here at National Archives where you know this they and NASA of course too but the data set was so large I mean at the end of the day we were approaching about two petabytes of data and to just manage all that was just it's enormous and let's not forget we survived two government shutdowns last year and then back in January that got shut down for a month and you might as well just you know set it back you know the year I mean it was but it was a real testament to Dan and his team's dedication to put processes in place while we were not only doing the film scanning but just everything else that needed to be done because it was just it was around the clock operation nerve wracking as you know I'll get out for you know the better half of a year not only were we dealing with priceless holdings we're also dealing with new technology and all the pitfalls that come with that so but Dan was you know took a leap of faith in a way and trusted us and the entire team and apparatus we had in place and it just goes to show that we've created something that you know is going to survive I'm just not talking about the film but we scanned just a ton of stuff all the Apollo missions for the most part all the large format stuff everything related to Apollo 11 so it'll be really interesting to see what future filmmakers you know and future historians and researchers can do with this material so good luck organizing all Dan Small job Tom any Oh yeah no I mean you know a lot of the reels that we scanned we didn't know what was on them before we scan them so a keeping track of not only not only what was out there but what we had what we were scanning what was on it the quality of it where it fit into the greater picture you know the the you know where it actually physically was at any given time you know that was just that part of it was was kind of overwhelming and that was you know this guy can make a spreadsheet like I've never seen before this project had the mother of all what would we do without XR it was also tough too we talked about it earlier but when we started working with the astronauts and their families pretty early on in the process like Bill was saying we got lucky and we got to go to the National Air and Space and test scenes and show them to the people that were there and get feedback and try to get it as accurate as possible in the beginning of the film there's a flashback sequence with each astronaut that's about 20 seconds and you know Neil Armstrong's sons Rick and Mark it was just amazing to work with on the project and you know we were getting things personal photographs and home movies from all all of them you know Michael Collins's family and Bosno and it was really tough to stay focused just on the creative and only use that 20 seconds you know I think you could make a feature film out of all that you know stuff that they gave us but we all just you know stuff to our guns in the original plan but that was hard to not include that so much the work with and I think to the you know the level of technical accuracy that we were trying to live up to and I think you know what what Todd was doing in terms of creating something that was a story that was driving forward but at the same time like I remember a like a week long period which you were very much involved in you know one of many like this where it was you know it was like does a transfer van make a beeping sound when it I was wondering if you're going to bring that up you know that was a good and it was you know it was back and forth and you know we're looking at that you know the winded winded vehicles start making that sound and then you know the passive thermal control maneuver where they're where they're rotating and what orientation of the spacecraft and all this stuff and so this is you know and like Todd and I are separated by a half wall in our office and so I've got the headphones on and he comes over and he's like I got it I got it you know they're they're they're rotating like this during passive thermal control you know it's very exciting yeah so this is OK I got to say this because this is a genius of Bill Berry at NASA so actually those two things were great this is like a typical email back you'll get from Bill and sometimes they take like very they're like a couple days I'll know it right away or it's like a deep dive research type project that I last months I think with the Astro van that was that took a while it did yeah but you found out that it was like a Japanese aid like then you tracked down the drivers and they started beeping the next model year just so you know for the reference but what was really interesting was to learn we were we were in the office and we had you know plaster looks like an insane asylum of you know pictures like a police procedural you know an industry but we had every photograph so it was a thousand twenty five photographs spread across the seven magazines of possible imagery things weren't lining up how could they take these photographs out that you know the number two number four window at this time it just didn't add up with what we perceived to be the traditional passive thermal control maneuver which NASA's fancy way of saying the barbecue maneuver it's like if the capsule was on the way to the moon it was shot like a gun yeah and they thought it was shot like this you know and it was rotating like this so and we had audio evidence that kind of contradicted that and so we contacted Bill and he you went all the way back to the MIT flight dynamics group got some original documentation that said the command module stack was actually rotated celestial north for the trans lunar journey and spun like a top like this and for the trans earth journey it was rotated this way and spun like a top and then it all made sense but that's you know took a little bit like it does yeah yeah yeah that's one of the fun things about being chief historian NASA most of the time I spend my time in meetings worrying about the budget and other things like that every once in a while I have an excuse to go do a deep dive so thanks for thanks for throwing some really weird questions my way you're welcome that was a lot of fun we had a great time um before we go to audience questions one one more round here all this week as NASA's chief historian I've been getting called and interviewed and things like that and they always ask me well what do you think with the chief the main legacy of the Apollo program was so I want to ask you guys so we'll start starting with Dan what what do you think it's the big legacy of the Apollo program I think one of the things that I've enjoyed seeing come out of this whole project is um providing this contribution to the historical record through imagery that's here at the National Archives so there's there's all these details and you know I've been to a number of these screenings where a lot of these details come out and just additional facts and like you guys are talking about doing these deep dives you start to realize all the things that the Apollo program touched and all the legacy that that it has nowadays and um that's really been fascinating to see that all just simply through the imagery and the sounds so that's been kind of my reaction to the whole thing is that? um I don't know I think maybe I would say in my experience a you know a new understanding of the spirit of of cooperation that allowed it to happen um you know it was really a just a a you know a worldwide effort between so many agencies companies and individuals um and you know I mean it was you know it was inspiring for that to sink in at various times over the course of of making the film um which you know for me it made it much more real to to actually you know hold a canister of film that was shot then you know and now you know I'm I'm the next person that's holding it after this person however long ago you know had a much much more made it much more immediate so okay time yeah I think it was legacy of Apollo um yeah I think uh the legacy of Apollo was just the the like Tom alluded to it's the it's a cooperation it's it's absolutely amazing that in such a short amount of time so much was accomplished by so many uh and uh it's you know I think that you know how lucky all of us are like you see those images of the guys getting suited up to go on this mission representing all of us to go do that something like that and know that there was hundreds of thousands of people all involved that got them in that room and then got them in that van and then got them into that you know that ship and kept them safe that entire time um it's just it's thrilling and I think you know if we're lucky enough as a human species to be here thousands of years from now or millions however long it lasts um you know uh I think people are gonna look back on this time I mean we're one two generations removed from the invention of the airplane and then we just went to another world for the first time it's truly an amazing step in evolution uh for all of us and um and Apollo you know did that that that project was the one that captured the entire collective conscious of the entire planet and and drove us forward um and uh I hope we you know get out there and do it again sometime we're hoping to do that that's true alright now it's time for question time and I see we got some people line up so I'm gonna start over in this side sir if you please uh hi thanks um two quick questions that's alright um first is uh does similar large format film of the other missions of that era including maybe Mercury or Gemini also exist yes uh there's there's actually uh quite a bit so we uh throughout the course of researching this um there NASA had actually been shooting uh that type of large format footage all the way back to the project Mercury era they relied on it fairly heavily for um high resolution image analysis particularly um shots on the launch pad um to study you know if something went wrong on the launch pad they were able to get very high resolution imagery out of that um the first 20 or 30 minutes of this film that that was actually a different format of film um and NASA and the uh their technical or contractors at Kennedy Space Center had been experimenting with that um the Todd it's called the Todd AO process it was popularized in Hollywood in the 1950s uh back to you know 1967 um and in Kennedy Space Center they had actually done some experimental photography created a widescreen documentary of their own uh for one of the first efforts of that was a film called Bridge to Space um and that started uh really uh around the time of the Apollo 8 mission so the the whole collection that was scanned for this project kind of covers the Apollo 8 through uh Apollo 13 great um I think my second question is probably for Tom uh in that scene where Charlie Duke is asking why they've gotten to the moon four minutes early um and then they say it speaks well for the booster I think it was Charlie Duke was someone censored there their end of their last comment cut off when he says nope hahahaha that you you're stirring up a real controversy hahahaha a real controversy within the filmmaking team uh now uh internationally hahahaha that's really Steven Slater yeah yeah yeah Steven Slater yeah this guy's so okay, thank you thanks hahahaha uh if you're living in Texas I think you might know what the answer was alright we'll go to this side just a minute congratulations to the whole team it was just a masterpiece this is my second time seeing it on a big screen and I had two quick questions also one for the director one for Dan uh question for the director is the music incredible background how could you tell speak to that a little bit about how you chose the music because it sounded incredible in this theater yeah like everyone like Tom and myself we've all worked together forever uh my music composer uh Matt Morton um I've known him since we were kids uh and he came to us very early on with a different approach he said look I wanna pre-score the entire film uh with only period instruments so he only wanted to use instruments that were around in 1969 and the backbone for that was this 1968 reissued Moog synthesizer um and you heard it um you know and he didn't know how to play it I mean Matt's like a composer and uh and but he um uh did the deep dive on it took him about a year to learn how to you know play it and he if he was here he'd tell you uh they only reissued Moog uh they reissued it uh uh 25 of them he got like 13 and like Keith Richards got 14 he's all proud of it hahahaha that's fantastic thank you very much a quick one for Dan um Dan have you had a lot of people other filmmakers approaching you since um since Apollo 11 came out to ask you to furnish them with um support archives other movies is it is it um increased access hahahaha they're coming at me too yes thank you very much over on this side yes ma'am hi the I was just amazed at how vibrant the colors were I too was watching on black and white television and yeah any rate so did you have to do anything to enhance the colors or did vibrant colors oh yeah there was a lot of it was it wasn't more you know we treated it with kid gloves but there was an entire restoration effort that took years to do on the film and it wasn't the large format stuff you know it all had its hurdles just because it's very unwieldy just large format in and of itself I think Dan I mentioned Moonwalk 1 which was the production that was shooting a lot of that footage ended up in our film but they actually switched from large format shortly after the launch scenes because it was just too expensive it was just too too much too time consuming to deal with so our you know hats off to our post-production house I mean it was like it was literally look like mission control around the clock and shifts 24-7 and that's one of the reasons why we had to work on the film in New York originally we were going to come here and bring the entire team here but we were limited in hours basically so but the 16 the 35 millimeter and all the stuff that people have seen before we just wanted up the quality of all that and there was kind of a diminishing return on the resolution involved so we thought if we could our tests kind of showed at 4k maybe was kind of the you know that diminishing return line so we scanned all of that stuff and that stuff needed a lot of attention because it had been either transferred over the years you know a lot it had been stepped on a lot of time so going back to the original source again hats off to Dan and the team going getting all the every time we wanted to deal with the original negative that was processed and that's you know anytime you digitize things you introduce foreign things simple things like hairs dust fibers so all that stuff has to be cleaned up so there's just a ton of stuff I mean every single frame in this film was poured over by hand and we had a team in London and a team in New York around the clock dealing with all of that wow thank you I think the I think the can I add something to that though I will say though that the first from the very first test scans we did we were surprised at the quality unbelievable I mean so it's really both of those things I think it was the film in terms of you know base and emotions scratching was extremely minimal and so yes color restoration and yes frame by frame restoration and a lot of effort went into that but it was it was kind of remarkable seeing the first images come off the scanner when we were doing the testing just how clean it was and Todd was you know as Todd mentioned you didn't always have that with the 16 and the 35 millimeter just because probably for the most simple reason that it had been used and handled so much more than these reels had over the years so it was really I think it was really both of those things yeah great what was the last ah hello so I was I was seven during Apollo 11 so it's definitely was a big part of my childhood and the legacy I see of it is that it permanently made our dreams bigger and occasionally we've lost sight of that but it's never completely gone away I think I wanted to ask is there anything that you know when you started you thought you would want to include that you weren't able to find either the film or the audio or was it more driven by the things you were able to find well first off I like your t-shirt that's really good that's good they've been some nice shirts out here actually today and you were seven I was negative seven but yeah I think it was more when you start to you know read Mike Collins's book you know the first one it's carrying the fire in 74 he talks about some scenes that you know or you hear an interview that Neil Armstrong gave 10, 15 years ago you realize that there are certain scenes or you talk to them you know and you you realize there's certain scenes that had not not Neil I don't talk to Neil Armstrong of course but you know the family members and the astronauts there's certain things that haven't been depicted in a fiction a nonfiction film so we were constantly trying to find things in the archive that reinforce stories we had heard or scenes that needed to be depicted a good example of that is the translator injection maneuver unfortunately on Apollo 11 they didn't shoot that much footage that wasn't their mission they were just supposed to get there land get home safely so unlike all the other particularly the later Apollo missions where they just they filmed a lot and they shot a lot and obviously on the later J missions they were on the lunar surface a lot longer you didn't have that with Apollo 11 so but fortunately for us on other Apollo missions they did shoot it so we could use the train's lunar injection scene for instance all the Apollo astronauts described seeing the sunrise that was happening because the engine had fired to go to the moon on the dark side of the earth and in the film you hear Neil Armstrong describe that as we're crossing the terminator right now meaning the imaginary line on the earth from the from the dark into the light and we were able to find that on another Apollo mission again through testing like show at the Buzz Aldrin at Michael Collins who were there is this what it looked like and get some feedback and try to design it to it was as accurate as what they remembered sir Hi just say thank you so much I know you people usually say congratulations but thank you to the archive as well it's just extraordinary I saw those two weeks ago in the IMAX in London and I dragged along five or six my friends and my brother and then we spent the next two years just standing like dummies on the South Bank at London drinking beer staring at the sky and which which my brother did point out to be fair isn't that different from what we usually usually do it really was something else but it really moved me and I was thinking about why and I've been thinking about this usually we go to the cinema now and we watch things and you have to remind yourself it's not real and I found myself watching this and having to remind myself this this this is real and that's how how beautiful it was and I think that's a testament to you but it got me thinking about what are the responsibilities and opportunities for the archives and filmmakers about truth and what's real in this in this kind of kind of age so if that's too heavy a question to answer the other thing I was interested in knowing is what was the hardest bit of footage to leave out but I'd be really interested in knowing what you think about that that sort of truth and what's real you think you stand on that sure yeah thanks for your comments and the question just how curious do you see it the Cineworld or the Odeon and that what my max should have that big question yeah that's Cineworld yeah that's amazing screen we we're very fortunate to develop a relationship with Al Reiner towards the end of his life Al made a fantastic documentary called For All Mankind was up for an Oscar back in the 80s and he was a screenwriter on Apollo 13 and he constantly talked to him about how polarizing his For All Mankind was there's some within the space community people either love it or hate it I'm in the camp of love and and in fact we dedicate the film to him he's one of the filmmakers we dedicate the film to at the end and he we would always talk about you know the responsibility you have you know as as filmmakers people ask all the time did you watch any other films were you influence Brian yes of course like you know 2001 is up here and all of us are down here and but we're all just links in this you know long chain of of history particularly with space films you know it's a genre in and of itself whether you're doing a documentary or a fiction film and I think it's incumbent of all filmmakers to recognize that responsibility and and it's the reason why we put you know our blood sweat and tears into this film to tell it in the best way that we could and to be as truthful as we could as well and try to involve as many people you know and in the orbit as we could and we got very lucky and we had just amazing support with Dan and with with Bill which was terrifying too because you know it's like these are you know we knew we had some big critics you know involved but I think the unique thing about our project is we're in a unique position to be a little bit of a bigger link in that we can position all the materials that we were lucky enough to have access to and prep them for you know future filmmakers and whoever's going to come down the line and I'm really excited to see what other people can do with some of these materials so we don't have to look at little postage size stamp you know size of images of astronauts getting suited up to me that was one of the most amazing things about this whole project is not only did they make a beautiful film but but you know the whole production team working with you know Dan and the nice archives I mean the legacy of this digitization project is will echo down the years it's just amazing one other comment on on the film thing the the truth thing that to me that was one of the greatest parts about this my collaboration anyway with the you know Todd and the team and is that I wasn't worried about whether they're going to take some liberty with things because they were they were determined to tell the truth and they you know and they want to know what direction did the barbecue roll time and did the truck beep in the back that all those kinds of crazy questions like that when when we deal with Hollywood you know Hollywood producers will sometimes come in and ask us can we get your help on things and we'll submit lots of comments and many of those that go well yeah you know that's really nice but it looks better this way so we're going to do this way and I didn't have to worry about that with these guys so that was wonderful I think we have time for another one maybe anybody over here I work at the National Archives so I'm absolutely thrilled at the opportunities that this creates archives not just for these records but just you know getting out the word about the great things that our agency does I have a rather trivial question though I was curious about the the kind of the line liner animation that was used throughout the film to kind of illustrate the different stages of the mission is that something that y'all came up in your cells and created yourselves or was that based on any any original NASA material that they had done to animate these various things yeah it's a little bit of both if you go back to if you look at all like even down to the flight plans on Apollo 11 or any of the Apollo missions that's what they look like they're very simplistic minimalistic just you're only given the information you need and that's what we you know tried to do with this to try to make it feel as simple as possible that you know it's something my mother could understand but also you know some physicists can understand as well and we spent a lot a lot you know a long time on that and it's also a homage to the early Apollo or the early NASA industrial films that were made and particularly the late 50s early 60s that were getting into you know Gemini and and the Apollo missions they used a lot of that and it ended up being used in Moonwalk 1 as well Theo Kamika the director on that film decided to use the older cell animation and it I was always very influenced by that that's a quick one maybe time for one more come on down you're the next contestant first I just want to echo the sentiments of our British friend I was sitting in West Virginia at a friend's house a few weeks ago and he said hey you want to see this film Apollo 11 I'm like um yeah well I just saw First Man so well okay I'll watch it and he has a 4k TV and I don't so I watched it on a 4k TV and I was literally floored I said to him who are these 1960s late 1960s folks and this is a movie isn't it I mean is this real or is this a movie I was literally that astounded so thank you so much for what you've done my question is sort of a odd question but it goes towards the space race and in your listening to the archives and such did you find that did NASA update the astronauts on the Luna 15 mission and was there dialogue about that going on and can you comment on that at all yeah yeah there was quite a bit of it it was it was really interesting you know and there was even a couple of jokes were made about it but it was you know within mission control they were you know there was quite a bit of discussion about it so yeah thank you and there was actually a diplomatic effort that happened as well Frank Borman who had visited Russia just earlier that month for Fourth of July wound up calling the head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences who actually did turn out to be an important figure in this in the space program even though the Academy of Sciences didn't really run this Russian space program and they actually exchanged data on on the orbit so that they make sure they wouldn't interfere with each other it's actually a very interesting episode and in competition but still engineer to engineer you know agreeing not to not to mess each other up speaking of speaking of the the 30 track audio I forgot to mention but Ben Feist website Apollo in real time dot org you you too can have the experience of listening to all of it grab your astronaut ice cream in your alarm clock yeah and it's going on now and right now you can right now listen to what where we are in the mission at this moment not that we don't recommend you go out and buy yourself a copy of Apollo 11 well actually I'm a good I'm a civil servant I can't recommend you do that but not that you might not want to then we're watching NASA so but all that audio there's all 30 tracks so that wasn't in the movie it's happening and right now live on Ben's website Apollo in real time dot org and you can watch the thing or you can play it back or you can listen it's a stunning it's a stunning site and you got to check it out oh buy you guys all here later I'll be waiting for you to employ Ben anyway and while I'm busy making recommendations and thank you people I'd like to particularly call out the National Archives Foundation thanks for setting up this arrangement and our friends at Boeing Corporation I love Boeing Corporation to fly a Boeing jet when I was in Air Force so thanks for your support for these kind of programs it's great for us to come and talk to you about these things but also a great chance for you to to see all these new things so any closing thoughts anybody no I just it's been an amazing experience and this has been a really great time and we thank everybody and particularly Dan you know it's the work that the National Archives and NASA does is is so unsung and I hope in some small measure that our film highlights the work that that gets done here in these walls on a day-to-day basis yeah I mean the same the question about what is the legacy of the Apollo program I think or say what is the legacy of Apollo 11 the film for me it was very much an understanding of the function and mandate of archives and and the way that this partnership works and these these flashes of like not only are we you know we're we're you know we're we're knee-deep in this historical mission you know but we're also in some small way contributing to you know the the record itself so you know taking part of that was just you know was very inspiring so it's it's amazing to watch it here it's it's been you know it's been great okay Dan when you were house you get the last work I think it's just it's been exciting to see what these partnerships can do for for National Archives partnership digitization partnerships are not necessarily new to the archives but in the film world there's a lot of different kinds of challenges there's a lot of different kinds of considerations and potential risks involved and this was evidence when you get really smart people together and the spirit of cooperation I think that we all had it was a true partnership in a lot of ways and so grateful for that and I'm looking forward to seeing what future partnerships can achieve for the film holdings here as well so thank you for joining us tonight and have a good night