The moon landings as you've never seen them before
Stunning film animates thousands of NASA images to recreate the Apollo missions
It is a stunning new view of one of mankind's greatest achievements. A new short film has used digital effects to turn thousands of NASA images of the Apollo missions into a short film. Called Lunar, it uses techniques such as stop motion and panoramic stitching to bring the photographs to life. It was created by photographer and filmmaker Christian Stangl over 18 months, who describes it as an 'animated collage'. The idea came when Stangl was looking at Project Apollo Archive, a collection of more than 14,000 images from all of the flights in the Apollo program put together by space fans.
' I was fascinated by the amount and the quality of the Pictures,' he said. ' There were thousands of beautiful high- res photographies made by the famous Hasselblad- Moon camera. When I looked at the Archive, I knew immediately that I want to make a film with these photos!'
Two main techniques were used - stop motion and panoramic stitching. First Stangl analysed the images to find sets of photos that had the potential to be stitched together. ' Especially on the lunar surface, the Astronauts often focused on taking 10 or more pictures of one view,' he said.
To give the appearance of movement, he looked for short sequences of photos which had a recognizable coherent movement, which he said was usually just 2 - 4 frames. ' The challenge was to stabilize and time-stretch them to clips which were much longer then the original sequences,' he said. ' Honestly that was a tedious trial and error process.'
Stangl, whose brother Wolfgang provided the soundtrack, said the film is ' dedicated to all people who believe in peaceful expansion of our borders.'
Earlier this year stunning unseen photos of the 11 Apollo missions gave an inside look on the most famous flights in history through the lens of the few astronauts who have dared to explore space.
The breathtaking collection of images provide a new perspective on the flights from the astronaut's point- ofview.
During the Apollo missions, NASA made photography a high priority by redesigning cameras that could operate in space. The space agency invented ultra-thin film that would allow one roll to contain 200 exposures. Thousands of images were captured during the flights, but only a few made the cut for the public eye.
Some of the photos have their imperfections as they seek to show an unglamorous behind-the-scenes look at the work that went into these missions. The photos show litter left on the lunar surface, astronauts crossing unfamiliar and mountainous terrain, as well as sunlight glares on their camera lens and mishaps with their equipment.
(© Daily Mail, London)