MOONSHOT - THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 11
Dangerous Films, for ITV1

A 90-minute film, produced by Dangerous Films to mark the 40th anniversary of the first of the moon landings.

Dangerous Films director and visual effects supervisor Tim Goodchild, working as production designer  in Lithuania, asked how quickly we could build a model of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) to ship out to the studios in Vilnius.

The model was not to be used for filming, but was to be photographed in suitable lighting conditions to form the basis for a series of digital matte paintings. Tim initially wanted to see if we could super-detail a 1/32nd scale model that was available off-the-shelf. However, having looked at the figures, we were confident that we could provide as much more detailed 1/18th scale model within the budget available.

The model was ultimately shot on the moon surface set as a series of high resolution still images. These were used as the basis for the digital matte paintings executed by Tim Goodchild and then passed to Hayden Jones at Rushes who handled the final compositing.

A detailed article about of the construction of this model can be found in Real Space Modeller Volume 1 from Happy Medium Press: www.scififantasymodeller.co.uk