posted 08-15-2010 09:34 AM               

Moonscape is a free and freely downloadable high-definition documentary about the first Moon landing, funded and produced by space enthusiasts from all over the world.

It will show the full, unedited Apollo 11 landing and moonwalk, using only the original TV and film footage and the original photographs, rescanned and restored from the best available sources.

Moonscape will allow you to experience the Moon landing through the eyes of the astronauts. Photographs taken in sequence will be assembled into panoramic views; the TV and color film footage will be shown in sync with the radio communications and with the photos, allowing you to see rare and unusual details of the historic event from multiple viewpoints and with unprecedented clarity. Most documentaries during the past forty years have used footage whose quality was degraded by multiple analog transfers: Moonscape instead gets as close as possible to the sharpness and richness of the original images.

We're purchasing the amazing restored and retransferred 16mm footage of the moonwalk from Footagevault.com, the same source used by documentaries such as In The Shadow of the Moon. The photographs have been sourced from NASA's GAPE (Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth) with a resolution of 4400 x 4600 pixels. The complete restored TV broadcast will also be included. All the astronauts' communications will also be available in subtitles for clarity.

Differently from many other documentaries, Moonscape will not "cheat" by using footage taken out of context or from other space missions. Every picture and every sound will be true to the actual sequence of events, as documented by NASA's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. The only special effects allowed will be image stabilization, color correction and digital processing to generate high-definition panoramic views from the photographs.

When Moonscape is completed, it will be freely available for download at no cost, with no copyright restrictions except those provided by its Creative Commons license: basically, you'll be free to copy it to any medium, so long as you give credit to the authors. Yes, this kind of distribution is legal.

Moonscape is a free documentary, but making it doesn't come cheap. We're all devoting our time to this project for free, but buying the HD digital transfers is a big expense (several thousand euros/dollars) but it allows us to have the rights to distribute the documentary for free. And then there's the video editing software and hardware. So if you feel like donating some money, no matter how little, to the Moonscape project, you're most welcome: click on the Paypal link on the left. The names/nicknames of all donors will be included in Moonscape's end titles.

You're also welcome to contribute with work: we need graphics, subtitling, proofreading, fact-checking, translations, music and professional voice-overs (in multiple languages for international distribution). If you have any of these skills and are willing to contribute to the project, contact me, Paolo Attivissimo, in English or Italian.