'Behind the Scenes' of the Apollo Program

Dear Patrons, 

As you know, the Apollo Program series is being created by a talented motion graphics artist named James Malcolm, who has a lifelong interest in the history of space exploration. James has put together a 'behind the scenes' post about the research, editing and graphics of our Apollo Program series. It's a great insight into the creative and workflow process by a video professional, and I hope many of you will find it interesting! Here it is... 

I. Research

• Books first. I've been reading about the Apollo program for years so my bookshelf was already well stocked. Here's some of the non-digital bibliography! I'd recommend any of these if you want to learn more. Best place to start is 'A Man on the Moon' by Andrew Chaikin.

• But for specific detail I turned to Apollo press kits, flight plans, mission reports and loads of other documents from the time. The single best resource for this material is the venerable Apollo Flight Journal. https://history.nasa.gov/afj/

• I also want to give a big shout-out to Apollo in Real Time by @BenFeist, which has complete coverage of Apollos 11, 13 and 17. It's an incredible site. Ben was also kind enough to let us use some of the rare audio he's curated. https://apolloinrealtime.org/

• Stills! NASA has put an incredible amount of Apollo material online. My favourite resource is the Project Apollo Archive, hosted on Flickr, which contains every single photograph taken on every Apollo mission!
• There's a lot of Apollo video available online too, but finding it in high quality can be tricky. We're especially indebted to @TJ_Cooney, who's uploaded hours of very high-quality Apollo footage to his YouTube channel The Space Archive. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCITZhXvrfUvsO-vIuVxcTIQ
• The US National Archives website also has a great trove of Apollo video, including a lot of the mission control footage you can see in our film. https://archives.gov
• And a final shout-out to Gavin Price (@pilliarscreatio), who's constantly tweeting incredible details on the Apollo program, as well as Project Mercury and Project Gemini.

II. Edit

• Once the script is written, I record a temporary Voice Over (Charles Nove's much better VO doesn't come 'till later) and I make an audio-only edit of the film with music. This lets me iron out the pace and tone. I also re-write bits of the script that aren't flowing well.

• Music is so important and I spend a lot of time searching for the right tracks. The overall concept was to hear tribal/industrial/warlike drums in the action, and soft electronic music in the slower sections (Brian Eno's Apollo album was my North Star https://youtu.be/S6rmhXQUPJc)
• The selected tracks get cut to pieces and reassembled to match the flow of the story. All the music in this series is from http://artlist.io, who have a really incredible library.
• Then it's time to start adding stills and footage. There was a ridiculous amount of material to comb through so I use Adobe Bridge to organise and review everything. I'll also pop in reference images for the graphics sequences, which will come later.

• There's a lot of split-screen sections in this series. The footage is all laid out roughly in Premiere Pro during the edit, so I know it's working before the final graphics pass. Any 3D shots are cut in as wireframes, which can be quickly re-rendered as I adjust the shots.

• Once the edit is locked, it's time for Charles Nove to work his magic with the final VO record. Then there's the small matter of doing all the graphics - every shot in these films is a graphics shot!

• The final task is to add sound effects and do a sound mix. Effects help punch up dramatic moments and add texture to graphics work, whilst the mix makes sure everything can be heard clearly.

III. Graphics

• First up: colour! Lots of Apollo docs have a very monochrome look, but to me that era is about rich, saturated Kodachrome. Red, white, blue and green appear everywhere and I wanted to celebrate that.

• 3D! All the 3D shots were made in Cinema 4D. Style-wise I wanted a look that matched the diagrams in Apollo press kits. The toon shader in Arnold Renderer was the perfect tool for this. Thanks also to @cgpov's tutorials for helping me hone in on the look.

• But I couldn't have completed the project on time without Redshift Render, which was blazingly fast. I used it for the shots that needed a more photographic approach.

• Type! The Apollo program has such an established and beautiful type history. Futura appeared everywhere from the plaques left on the moon to the actual spacecraft control panels. Eurostyle was (I think) associated later, and appears extensively in Apollo 13 (awesome movie).

• Film effects! For a filmic look, almost every shot had a secret sauce of real film grain, Kodachrome-esque colour correction, and a tiny trick in After Effects where I 'wiggled' each frame just a tiny amount, to match the imperfect operation of a film projector.

• Working with stills! This is... too big a subject for this post. But basically I think rostrum camerawork is a really under-appreciated art form. So I tried hard. Also I added interest with some simple overlays that mimic the graphics in camera viewfinders. (And to see examples of this, you will have to watch the video!)

Ok, that's it! I really hope you enjoy the film. Now I'm off to make the third and final instalment in the series! In case you missed it here's the YouTube series link.