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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Obviousman on April 25, 2025, 05:02:28 PM »

That reminds me of the early days of Star Trek and when they first introduced the Orion slave girls. The actresses were painted a deep green but when the directors viewed the rushes, the colour of the Orions was all washed out. They increased the colour intensity by using brighter skin paint but time and time again when the rushes were viewed, the green skin colour of the Orion slave girls would be washed out.

Finally in frustration, the director asked the film processors if there was anything strange about the film being used. At first he said no but then remarked that they had been having trouble with some of the colours: these dancing girls kept on coming up with a dark green skin colour and they were having a terrible time trying to get rid of the green!

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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Jason Thompson on April 25, 2025, 07:59:51 AM »

Remastering also brings in color gamut issues and resolution issues. Most television at the time was shot on 35 mm film. You have to make different color correction and contrast correction choices when remastering for modern televisions. The "red" command uniforms in Star Trek: The Next Generation are actually fuchsia. All the processing decisions made during shooting and video transfer back then were made with certain assumptions in mind.

Yes, I've seen the comparison shots in which people have pointed out that you can now see the woodgrain and cardboard in the 24th century sets and props. One of the fascinating things before any of this was really a big thing was getting books about the production of such series and seeing pictures of the props. The hero props with moving parts and working lights look great, the others... not so much. But they didn't have to be because they'd be seen in long shot for a few seconds at a time taking up about 0.5% of the overall screen area, so crude construction and paint jobs were adequate.

I remember a big fuss about colour balancing issues on the release of the Doctor Who story 'The Invasion of Time'. TV production in the 70s was typically a mix of video in studio and film on location (more or less but we won't get into the minutiae!). When they came to release this story on DVD the colour balancing of the video and film sequences resulted in one character's robes appearing to change colour depending on which room he was in, being purple on one and red on another. Same costume, different colour effects of the media which were not fully accounted for in the remaster.

This has also bled into recent colourisation efforts for black and white Doctor Who stories. The TARDIS console room was always described as a 'gleaming white' futuristic control room. In monochrome TV production, white was about the worst thing it could be because it would just flare on the cameras. So they would design the sets with colours that would appear white on the screen. The TARDIS console in the 1960s was in fact very pale green. They never bothered re-painting it when it appeared in the first few colour seasons so the true green colour was there on screen for people to enjoy. We also uncovered a plethora of colour production stills from the time which showed the floor of the set to be blue.

So when they came to colourise some of those old stories, they've been colourised to match the reality of the sets rather than the intention of the producers. While the technical aspects of the work are superb, I do think that might have been the wrong choice.

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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Ranb on April 24, 2025, 07:11:54 PM »

Watched it during its initial run and half a dozen times since.  I can't speak to the veracity of all the scenes; like the movie "Apollo 13" some dramatic license is taken in a number of places, but I don't think anything's wildly inaccurate.   

I thought that the inclusion of the fictional characters was distracting and unnecessary; Especially
in the episodes about Apollo 7 and Apollo 13.  I did like the reaction shot of Emmett Seaborn when Al Bean burned out the video camera on the lunar surface.  The rest was lame. 

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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by JayUtah on April 24, 2025, 12:15:01 PM »

Remastering also brings in color gamut issues and resolution issues. Most television at the time was shot on 35 mm film. You have to make different color correction and contrast correction choices when remastering for modern televisions. The "red" command uniforms in Star Trek: The Next Generation are actually fuchsia. All the processing decisions made during shooting and video transfer back then were made with certain assumptions in mind.

You can obtain quite a bit of resolution from 35 mm film, but when planning for 480p broadcast, the film appropriately captures more resolution than you want or need. Set designers and builders in the pre-HDTV era had a very good eye for what would pass. When you actually visit these sets you can see how frankly crudely a lot of it is built. And this is important when sticking to schedule and budget. I talked to a few of the original TNG set and prop designers who were a little embarrassed to see all their shortcuts revealed in glorious 1080i.

As I said above, our documentary was shot using FTETTM space suits, but on video instead of 35 mm film. Now I really want to see what the 35 mm original footage looks like. We had the original suit fabricator on set, from Global Effects. He showed me the shortcuts such as silver nylon fabric used instead of Chromel-R ($1,300 per yard). I have access to an A7L suit (with the original Chromel-R), so maybe one of my projects can be to compare the photography under different conditions and see how close they got.

If anyone wants to rent an A7L replica used on the series, here's the link.
https://newsite.globaleffects.com/GEI_Site/C_b03_frameset.html

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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Jason Thompson on April 24, 2025, 04:08:18 AM »

I'm a little mad that they reformatted it to 16:9; all the shots were composed for a 4:3 screen, and some really important stuff (like the stuck thruster on Gemini winds up off screen in the remaster.

It bugs the hell out of me when things get remastered into a different aspect ratio. Even I, a non-expert in the field of TV and film, can fathom that shots and scenes would have been blocked for the intended aspect ratio of presentation (that's why people in many TV shows often stand unnaturally close to each other when conversing: the 4:3 ratio needs them to do that to get them both in shot together in anything but a wide shot!). Therefore, if you make it widescreen by trimming the top and bottom you lose stuff, and if you extend to the sides you get stuff on screen that was never supposed to be. The fact that stuff actually gets released after such alteration boggles my mind, because of the number of people the product must have got past who thought 'yeah, that's fine'. And so we have things like the missing thruster you describe, or the infamous Buffy and Angel releases that are full of crew and production hardware, or actors awaiting their cue to enter, on the extended screen width. Sheer infuriating idiocy, and frankly I find it disrespectful to the original creative team.

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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Jason Thompson on April 24, 2025, 04:01:10 AM »

I absolutely love this series. There's a fair bit of dramatic licence, of course, but when condensing events that took place over days, months or years into a series of 1-hour episodes that's unavoidable. A completely faithful adaptation would, most likely, be unutterably dull!

I love the attention to detail and the work put in to replicating the hardware (which makes things like the Saturn V footage that found its way into the Apollo 7 episode all the more baffling!), and that they tried to find ways to make the series much more than just a cataloguing of the missions. The drama, humour and raw emotion they got into it makes for a great and rewarding viewing experience.

Somewhat ironically, the episode I found least enjoyable was the Apollo 13 episode, but since they had not long done Apollo 13 as a movie they had to find a different angle for it. I don't think it's bad, it just doesn't hold my attention so much.

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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by jfb on April 23, 2025, 05:07:56 PM »

Watched it during its initial run and half a dozen times since.  I can't speak to the veracity of all the scenes; like the movie "Apollo 13" some dramatic license is taken in a number of places, but I don't think anything's wildly inaccurate.   

I'm a little mad that they reformatted it to 16:9; all the shots were composed for a 4:3 screen, and some really important stuff (like the stuck thruster on Gemini winds up off screen in the remaster. 

But otherwise, it's amazing.  "That's All There Is" (Apollo 12) is probably the high point of the series, followed closely by "Spider" (Apollo 9) and "The Original Wives Club" (multiple).   

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The Reality of Apollo / Apollo 13 doco on YT

« Last post by Peter B on April 22, 2025, 12:28:56 AM »

Just found this 2 hour video. It's an excellent piece of animation and explanation of Apollo 13, the mission, the accident, the recovery and the cause. I learned several things about the accident that I hadn't previously been aware of.

Highly recommended!

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General Discussion / Radiation and Absorbed doses; further reading?

« Last post by TimberWolfAu on April 21, 2025, 12:40:29 AM »

Hi Folks,

I'm finding myself with no course to study at the moment, so, where is a good place to start for further understanding of radiation and absorbed doses? Along the lines of calculating, impacts of different materials etc

Figured I have the time, so I might as well deepen my understanding.

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General Discussion / Re: NASA is lying for Trump

« Last post by Obviousman on April 07, 2025, 07:31:30 PM »

Sort-of related, there's a new video from Ellie In Space which goes into detail about just how bad things were on the Starliner as they approached the ISS, certainly far worse than I understood at the time.

I saw that - very good. I was able to understand!