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MillimeterBurning Love: Passion for Realism Fuels Effects in From The Earth To The Moon
May 1, 1998 12:00 PM, Ellen Wolff
HBO's 12-part miniseries From The Earth To The Moon is a rare example of a TV-produced, big-budget, visual-effects smorgasbord. While 10 different houses worked on the show's 600 effects shots, L.A.-based Pacific Title/Mirage created more than one-third of them, including a shot in which one astronaut pilots a lunar module across the dark side of the moon. It's a shot that exemplifies what visual effects Producer Bruce Richmond calls the "mantra" of executive producer Tom Hanks: "To see stuff that we've never seen. The public has seen a lot of stock footage from NASA," notes Richmond. "The whole point of this was to create things that had not been seen before."
Depicting a trip across the moon's dark side meant combining elements based on actual NASA data and photographs with 2-D and CGI elements invented at Pacific Title/Mirage. Dave Taritero, the Pac Title visual effects producer on the show, says "the genesis of this shot was a motion control element of a lunar module shot by [director] Jon Turteltaub. It was about a 1/4 scale model, shown flying right towards camera. The camera tracks it as it goes by and then flies away."
The miniatures were the responsibility of Hunter Grasner and Carlyle Livingston, notes Bruce Richmond. "They went through a lot of NASA footage to come up with a look for the motion control models."
One thing that NASA had no footage of, however, was the burning fuel being expelled from the lunar module's thrusters. Even Dave Scott, the astronaut who served as the show's primary consultant, couldn't help with this aspect, admits Richmond. "Dave said 'I never saw the burn-we were always up front driving!'"
But conversations with Scott, Richmond and Ernie Farino, the show's visual effects supervisor, yielded "copious notes as to what these thrusters should look and feel like," recalls Pac Title visual effects supervisor Ariel Shaw. "People assume that these thrusters are some sort of a fiery burn, but in reality, a chemical reaction causes that thrust. Pretty much the way Twinkies are made," he deadpans.
Shaw explains that "with this chemical burn, the first thing you see is a sparkling residue blowing out-they're actually small particles that hang around. Because we didn't have any hardcore reference, we took a little bit of liberty with what we thought would happen, which was that various wavelengths of light would be reflected off these particles." Using Wavefront Dynamation software, they created "this multispectral stuff floating around out there that's actually quite lovely." Since the burn had to trail the MoCo model, adds Dave Taritero, "we had to match that movement with the thrusters going off."
Another key computer-generated element in the shot was the moonscape itself, which was modeled in Wavefront Preview. Taritero notes that "we had reference material for this because when lunar modules orbited the moon they took photos continually." Images mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Lunar Planetary Institute, while not always high-resolution, became the basis for the displacement maps that were created to digitally simulate the moon's surface.
The end result, which shows the lunar module moving from the dark side to the light side of the moon, "was a special moment, like sunrise," says Shaw. "We had to show what that transition would look like." As the spacecraft approaches the horizon of the lunar landscape, adds Taritero, "you start to see a little CG flare produced by the creeping of the sun."
The digital elements were rendered in RenderMan using special shaders written at PacTitle, and then composited with the MoCo model footage using both Cineon and Wavefront Composer. Bruce Richmond considers the composites on this show particularly challenging because of Tom Hanks's commitment to accuracy. "A lot of people put atmosphere in space shots because it helps the comps tie together, "Richmond observes. "But Tom was very specific in saying 'There's no atmosphere in space,' which makes these comps very naked and more difficult to sell. There was a whole different level of comping that we had to pay attention to in this case."
The final result, notes Shaw, was finished onto D-1, with an eye to an eventual tape-to-film transfer. Some episodes have already been film-finished and screened at the White House to an audience which included Apollo astronauts.Bruce Richmond believes this made all the scrupulous research worthwhile: "With all the astronauts there, we couldn't just throw something up there that sort of looks like the moon. They know better."
Tom Hanks, executive producer; Jon Turteltaub, episode director; Tony Cutrono, visual effects cinematographer; Ernie Farino, visual effects supervisor; Bruce Richmond, visual effects producer; For Pacific Title/Mirage: Ariel Velasco Shaw, visual effects supervisor; Dave Taritero, visual effects producer; Dave Altenau, digital effects supervisor; Brian Steiner, thruster design artist; Guy Williams, moonscape artist; Jon Tanimoto; lead compositor
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