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Black-and-white stock also figured prominently in episode 4, which dealt with the Apollo 8 mission. Set against the political turmoil and social upheaval which rocked America in the year 1968, the episode covers a lot of ground. The director of this installment, David Frankel (Miami Rhapsody), offers, "We were trying to tell the history of 1968, the story of astronaut Frank Borman and his wife Susan, and the tale of the bureaucratic machinations which led to the mission, in addition to showing a lot of the details of the flight itself."
Frankel credits co-executive producer Tony To for coming up with the idea of shooting the earthbound scenes in black-and-white (intercut with documentary footage of the period) and the space sequences in color. "That idea provided a sharp contrast between a year of tragedy in America with the King and Kennedy assassinations, urban riots and the Vietnam War and the sense of glory and elation provided by the space mission," the director remarks.
Apollo 8 was the first mission to leave the gravitational pull of the earth and enter lunar orbit. Fearful that the module carrying her husband would prove incapable of returning, Susan Borman (Rita Wilson) begged NASA official Chris Kraft not to send the men into lunar orbit. That scene, which takes place on the patio of the Bormans' Houston home, was shot at a house in Florida. "It was a very dramatic scene, and we used remote heads to get a lot of craning camera movements," recalls Tattersall. "It was like creating a small stage set where we could allow the actors room to move and pace."
In the scene, Susan Borman, with her back to the house, is lit by moonlight cascading through the trees; Kraft faces her, backlit by the moon as well as the brightly glowing house, which proved to be an important light source.
The lighting for the sequence was quite complicated. To simulate moonlight, gaffer Jim Dillinger placed an 18K and a couple of 4Ks on top of a 170' Condor. The HMIs were uncorrected because the scene was being shot on the Ilford black-and-white stock. "When shooting black-and-white, you have to be even more aware of the color than when shooting color," suggests Dillinger. "You have to give it some texture and separation."
Tattersall continues the thought: "One of the aspects a director of photography and gaffer need to be constantly aware of when shooting black-and-white is that totally different colors for example, bright red and bright blue may appear to have terrific separation to the eye, but may photograph as identical shades of gray."
In the living room of the Borman home, electricians set up eight 4' x 4' bay lights, configured to make a large overhead box which corresponded to the rectangular shape of the room, and hung teasers along the sides. They then put a piece of bleached muslin flush against the exterior of the box and bounced blondes off of it, producing a gentle overall directional light which shone through the back door and out onto the porch. Outside, beneath the eaves of the porch, they bounced 650W redheads for additional, gentle overall fill. Dillinger recalls with a laugh, "The house was so bright, anyone walking up the street thought it was on fire."
In this episode and throughout the series, Tattersall relied heavily on bounce boards and soft reflectors, as well as Tiffen ProMist filtration on the lens. "I think it's important on television to soften the image," he muses. "Even though shot originally on film, the material ends up on an electronic, hard medium. The ProMists really help to make the look a little bit more filmic, just by taking the sharpness of the video out of it."
While the events depicted in From the Earth to the Moon are of nerve-racking intensity, physical action is limited, with much of the drama hopscotching between two very static locations: Mission Control in Houston where rows of men essentially sit at desks, watching computer screens and the interiors of the space capsules, where astronauts sit in cramped quarters staring at control panels. Lighting and camera moves proved invaluable in helping to foster a sense of activity and to enhance the dramatic tension. "People often weren't moving at all," remarks director Frankel. "Gale's photography and camerawork is really what carried the pace of the shows."
An exact copy of the Mission Operations Control Room referred to as MOCA was built at the Disney-MGM Studios. (A scene at Mercury Mission Control, which appears in an earlier episode, was filmed inside the actual facility at the Kennedy Space Center.) The MOCA set consisted of six rows of consoles, tiered so they rise slightly one above the other. Behind them, separated by a glass wall, was the VIP observation room. At the front of the main room were three large projection screens one 12' x 16' screen, and two 10' x 12' units which depicted the path of the command module, as well as live video feeds from inside the capsule.
The real MOCA is lit by overhead fluorescents, and for routine scenes Tattersall followed suit, using 4' Kino Flo fixtures. However, when a flight was experiencing problems and the crew's lives were at risk, he would bring down the level of the fluorescents and enhance the lights coming from individual computer screens and desk lamps. "I had a rule of thumb: if there was a lot of tension, I made the lighting more dramatic, coming more from the consoles and monitors, so you'd feel an intensity," he explains. "I also tended to go a bit cooler in those scenes, using 1/4 or 1/2 CTB to raise the color temperature."
The desks and consoles were stacked with manuals and books which could be used to hide massive numbers of Mini Flos. Chinese lanterns were also used extensively; hidden on the floor, they helped to separate a person's back from the dark green metal of the console behind him, or to provide a glow in a character's eyes. For the cooler, more dramatic scenes, the Chinese lanterns were wrapped in 1/2 CTB.
Special dimmable Kino Flos were used in the overhead lights. At times, Tattersall added NDs to knock them back even more, "when we wanted a very low level of ambient light four stops under mid-exposure, that sort of thing," he explains. "I also used something called Rosco Scrim; it's an unusual fabric which cuts light back about a stop-and-a-half. You know how fluorescents often have those egg crates? We just laid a sheet of this fabric on top of those."
In addition to the fluorescents, Par lamps were projected through square holes in the ceiling. Resembling practical fixtures, they were used more for effect than illumination, especially since Tattersall pumped smoke into almost every scene. "Everybody hated me on the set because I used about five million gallons of smoke oil," he declares. "That technique separates planes of focus and helps create a feeling of layers, which I think is terribly important on television because it's a fairly small screen. It helps to enhance separation and depth, particularly when you're shooting in black-and-white."
To compensate for the stationary actors who most often remained glued to their seats in MOCA Tattersall kept the camera moving. He would often mount a camera equipped with a snorkle lens from a crane positioned behind the consoles, and then track down the rows of hands and faces.
The most vexing location for the camera crew turned out to be the space capsule; shooting within it was akin to working in a phone booth. Like their real-life counterparts, the movie astronauts sat shoulder-to-shoulder, with 18'' between their bodies and the control panels and perhaps two feet between them and the back wall of the capsule. At times, the camera jockeyed for position alongside the actors; otherwise, it sat on a platform which circled the outside of the lunar module. Panels could be removed from the sides of the capsule to make filming easier, but it was never that easy, since everything was connected electronically. "It wasn't just a matter of ripping a wall off," says Tattersall. "You had to disconnect all of the circuitry as well."
Tattersall along with Dillinger, who shot second-unit footage inside the capsule tried to leave the lens inside the module at all times. "We never wanted to shoot from outside the capsule because the perspective would be wrong," remarks Tattersall. "It was important to convey the proximity and claustrophobia. We went from very wide angles, like 14mm, right through to 85mm for close-ups and even 135mm. Because the capsule was so small, you could never see anyone from head to foot, but we did have wide shots.
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