APOLLO 11
by Karen Pecota

From the acclaimed director of Dinosaur 13, documentary filmmaker, Todd Douglas Miller, celebrates the fifty-year anniversary of NASA's most celebrated mission in his silver screen project APOLLO 11. The collaboration of Miller's story is totally made up of NASA's archival film footage, audio recordings and the most fascinating musical compilation relating to the era of the Apollo 11 space mission.

In order to make such a thrilling documentary fifty years later, Miller landed on a treasure trove of newly discovered 65mm archival film footage and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings of NASA's first mission to put man on the moon. It was NARA (the National Archives) staff members who made the shocking discovery of the most pristine collection--unprocessed never-seen-before large format film footage containing stunning shots of the launch, the inside of Mission Control, the recovery and post-mission activities. Wow! Miller knew exactly what to do with this gold-mine of material that has forever made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin into household names for the viewing of current and future generations.

The explanation of the newly found audio recordings is unique in that it was made by two custom recorders who captured individual tracks from sixty-key-mission personnel throughout every moment of the mission. Get this, "APOLLO 11 film team members created code to restore the audio and make it searchable, then began the multi-year process of listening to and documenting the recordings, an effort that yielded remarkable new insights into the events of the mission as well as surprising moments of humor and camaraderie", says Miller.

Miller explains, "What started out as a simple editing exercise, we questioned if we could tell the entire story of the mission using only archival materials, then it turned into a cooperative effort by any international team of experts to create the definitive work on Apollo11 for the screen." He continues, "The remarkable discovery of a cache of untouched large format film and audio recordings added another dimension to the project: it was more than just a film now, it was an opportunity to curate and preserve this priceless historical material."

Miller concludes, "When John F. Kennedy pledged in 1962 to put Americans on the moon by the end of the decade, he described it as a bold act of faith and vision. Apollo 11 bears witness to the culmination of that pledge, when America and the world came together in an extraordinary act of unity and resolve, to achieve on of the greatest and most complex feats in human history."

Miller and his elaborate team of collaborators give the audience an immersive experience and perspective of the astronauts, the team in Mission Control, and the spectators (millions of them) on the ground and says, "We vividly experience those momentous days and hours in 1969 when humankind took a giant leap into the future in APOLLO 11."