Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: How the Neil Armstrong Biopic First Man Faked the Moon Landing

The film's production and costume designers, Nathan Crowley and Mary Zophres, tell AD how they pulled off the impossible
 
TEXT BY 
KATHERINE MCGRATH
Posted January 11, 2019
 
 
With the Golden Globes firmly behind us, all of Hollywood has eyes on the forthcoming Academy Awards, the nominations for which are to be announced on January 22. Sure to be among the films recognized for stellar—or maybe interstellar—production design is Damian Chazelle's First Man, a biopic that chronicles Neil Armstrong's obsessive quest to walk on the moon. The film begins in 1961 when Neil can barely break into orbit, and follows him through to the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969, capturing the development of NASA's space program and the emotional toll Armstrong's unrelenting quest took on his family. For Chazelle to bring that vision to life, the director enlisted an all-star team that included production designer Nathan Crowley and costume designer Mary Zophres, who spent months diving into NASA's archives, visiting the base, and meeting with Armstrong's family, among other laborious preparations. But for Crowley, there was one hurdle that plagued him most: How do you fake the moon?
 
The film was shot in Atlanta, whose surroundings are largely filled with lush greenery and endless trees, explains Crowley, "but I went to our locations department and said, 'Dumb question, but I don't suppose you have a large quarry around here?'" Much to his surprise, the crew found him a five-acre gravel quarry that they sculpted into a massive dust bowl by peppering the set with rocks and craters just as they appear on the lunar surface, using the precision of a Japanese gardener. "It was another incredible example of going to NASA and asking, 'I don't suppose you have a detailed map of the moon?' and then they come back to you with 28 maps in immense detail that show the paths they walked and everything!"
 
Months before any space suits were sketched or vintage wallpapers swatched, Zophres and Crowley were poring over NASA's photographs, documents, film footage, and archival items, and taking trips down to the space agency's headquarters in Houston. "As the missions progressed, they got more interested in documenting through photographs and film," Zophres explains. "There's a couple documentaries and archival footage that we watched over and over." NASA served as a consultant on the film, and allowed the team to look at space suits from the archives and take measurements, though they couldn't touch them. Nailing the accuracy of the space suits and understanding how they were made was critical to making the film believable, and to bringing its world to life on screen; in effect, they became a part of the world-building. "We had to manufacture a lot of the fabric," Zophres says. "I've never worked on costumes to this extent before. People all over the country got involved in this film. We reached out to collectors of vintage American clothing and of NASA memorabilia, and vendors put me in touch with mills from all over." As the team shared its research with its vendors, people began reaching out with exciting finds and contributions to help tell the story, whether it was a few yards of fabric from a dead stock, or vintage props. "It was a treasure hunt of the more rewarding kind," she adds.
 
Luckily, Crowley and Zophres worked together on another space film, 2014's Interstellar. "Just even the mechanics of how do you achieve oxygen in a suit that isn't pressurized? I learned how to cheat that [with Interstellar]," Zophres says. "That was helpful, but that was six or seven years ago. Technology has changed since then." Even with the previous experience, though, Crowley cites working on First Man as the most demanding learning curve he has ever taken on in any film. "You're coming at this as a filmmaker. It's not like we were in the space program. You're trying to understand the space stations, the shuttles, and the mission controls."
two people looking at a space craft
 
 
The film spans an entire decade, which Crowley and Zophres took great strides to accurately represent through fabrics and items on set. Neil and Janet Armstrong's house on the NASA base was redressed twice, though subtly, but keen eyes can detect an updated television set atop the refrigerator, or new lighting. "It was very subtle changes, because that was the world they were in," Zophres notes. "They're in a suburban neighborhood of Houston, where things changed subtly. It wasn't a coast." Both Chazelle and Gosling met with Janet in preparation for the film, who shared specific information about her family's life at the time, and how there wasn't much money to make ends meet. "They shopped at JC Penney, and Sears and Roebuck, and all of that was very informational to me. I tried to stick to cotton when I could, but as the era progressed, there was a shift towards polyester," she explains.
 
In a bid for authenticity, the film was shot entirely "in camera," meaning that in every frame of the film is real photography—not digital effects. "In First Man we did not have one single day of green screen," Crowley tells AD. "That's not to say there wasn't CGI, but you capture it all on camera." The opening scene of the film shows Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in a test flight as he attempts to break orbit. He's pictured sitting in the aircraft, above the clouds, looking down at Earth's orbit below, and what viewers at home see behind him is precisely what Gosling saw while shooting the film as it was projected on a massive, wrap-around LED screen in front of him. Zophres and Crowley both note that shooting in-camera brings a completely visceral experience for the actors, and allows them to better engage with the environment built around them. "Don't get me wrong," Crowley says with a laugh, "we're doing nothing new here. Projections and miniatures are as old as film, as I say. It's new technology and old techniques. All we did was modernize it!"

 T
 
lol, dal titolo del post mi sembrava un'altra sulla scia del "non
siamo stati sulla luna è tutto un complotto con la regia di kubrik"