Apollo 11
Short description
Apollo 11 is a documentary about the first crewed moon landing, the 1969 NASA mission commanded by Neil Armstrong and piloted by Buzz Aldrin. Built largely from archival material, it follows the journey from launch through the moonwalk and back, drawing on footage and audio recordings to place viewers inside the capsule, inside mission control and among the crowds who gathered to watch the launch.
Todd Douglas Miller directed and produced the film, which was released in March 2019 and runs 93 minutes. It comes after his earlier documentaries, with CNN Films and Statement Pictures behind it. The cast consists of the real participants, seen and heard through archive footage, including Armstrong, Aldrin, Michael Collins, broadcaster Walter Cronkite, and NASA figures such as Bruce McCandless II and Charlie Duke.
The film drew unusually strong responses from both professional reviewers and general audiences. Critics gave it an average of 8.9/10 across 191 reviews, while viewers rated it 8.1/10 on IMDb and 7.9/10 on TMDB, from around 29,000 and 731 votes respectively. The modest gap between the critics' average and the audience scores suggests wide approval rather than a divide, and the relatively small vote count on TMDB points to a narrower audience there than on IMDb.
What's left behind the scenes
- The filmmakers utilized the work of Ben Feist (a NASA data visualization specialist), who had worked on improving the quality of 11,000 hours of digital audio recordings made during the Apollo 11 mission launch. Among other things, Feist indexed the recordings minute-by-minute and second-by-second, which helped the filmmakers synchronize the sound and imagery.
- In the crowd gathered to watch the spacecraft launch, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) can be seen being interviewed.
- Conversations between the astronauts and the flight control center specialists are shown without pauses, although in reality, there would have been a delay of about 1.25 seconds each way. The filmmakers decided to omit these pauses.
- The incident with Buzz Aldrin's malfunctioning biometric sensors, during which he joked, "Honestly, if I stop breathing, I'll let you know immediately," occurred during the return to Earth on the eighth day of the expedition; however, the film depicts this happening during the approach to the Moon, prior to the undocking of the command and lunar modules.
- The filmmakers were granted virtually unlimited access to the NASA archives. Many shots show events from perspectives and angles that no other documentary has ever shown. NASA had preserved the footage in perfect condition, meaning there was almost no need for restoration.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
