Apollo 11 (2019 film)

In late 2016, Todd Douglas Miller had recently completed work on The Last Steps, a documentary about Apollo 17,[6][7] when British archivist and film editor Stephen Slater suggested making a similarly themed documentary for the upcoming 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.[8] CNN Films subsequently became a partner in the film.[6] Miller's conception of the film was centered on a direct cinema approach. The final film contains no voice-over narration or interviews beyond what was available in the contemporary source material. Portions of the mission are illustrated by animated graphics depicting the parts of the Apollo spacecraft as line drawings, the designs of which are based on the cel-animated graphics in Theo Kamecke's 1971 documentary Moonwalk One. In addition, three wordless biographical sequences summarise the lives of Edwin Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins up to 1969 by means of family photographs and archive footage.

In May 2017, cooperation between Miller's production team, NASA, and the National Archives and Records Administration resulted in the discovery of unreleased 70 mm footage from the preparation, launch, mission control operations, recovery and post flight activities of Apollo 11.[7][9] The large-format footage includes scenes from Launch Complex 39, spectators present for the launch, the launch of the Saturn V rocket, the recovery of astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins and the Apollo 11 command module Columbia, and post-mission efforts aboard the USS Hornet. The documentary included this footage alongside conventional footage from 35 and 16 mm film, still photography, and closed-circuit television footage.[7]

Miller's team used the facilities of Final Frame, a post-production firm in New York City, to make high-resolution digital scans of all reels depicting ground based activities that were available in the National Archives. Specialized climate-controlled vans were used to safely transport the archival material to and from College Park, Maryland. The production team sourced over 11,000 hours of audio recordings and hundreds of hours of video.[7] Among the audio recordings were 30-track tapes of voice recordings at every Mission Control station. Ben Feist, a Canadian software engineer, wrote software to improve the fidelity of the newly available audio. Slater, who had synchronized audio recordings with silent 16 mm Mission Control footage in earlier projects, performed the task of synchronizing the audio and film.[6] The production team was able to identify "Mother Country", a song by folk musician John Stewart, in Lunar Module voice recordings. The song was subsequently featured in the film.[6]

Neon acquired worldwide theatrical distribution rights to the film in July 2018.[10]

A 47-minute edit for exhibition in museum IMAX theaters Apollo 11: First Steps Edition includes extended large-format scenes that differ from the full-length documentary.[11]

The film takes some liberties with the timeline of the mission. For example, the incident involving Michael Collins’s biomed sensors going out, leading him to wisecrack, "I promise to let you know if I stop breathing," occurred during the return voyage, on day 8 of the mission,[14] but is depicted as happening during the approach to the Moon before the separation of the command module Columbia and Lunar Module Eagle.

The world premiere of Apollo 11 took place in Salt Lake City at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2019.[15][16] It was given a limited release in the United States on March 1, 2019 in IMAX through Neon and was released in the United Kingdom on June 28, 2019 through Universal Pictures.[17][18]

• Footprints on the Moon, a 1969 documentary film by Bill Gibson and Barry Coe, about the Apollo 11 mission
• Moonwalk One, a 1970 documentary film by Theo Kamecke
• For All Mankind, the Oscar-nominated 1989 documentary film by Al Reinert about the Apollo program (1969 – 1972) featuring the music of Brian Eno
• Apollo 11 in popular culture

• Official website
• Apollo 11 at IMDb
• Apollo 11 at Metacritic
• Apollo 11 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Official trailer