The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footage

[svector]

turbonium said:

As for an Apollo hoax, why would that require Nixon being in office from start to finish?

In 1968, Kubrick had already made it look like astronauts and pens were floating around in the weightlessness of space. And he did it all with only the smallest fraction of NASA's budget and resources.

He didn't do it in a way that would fool eagle-eyed special f/x professionals, or the scientific community for 38 years. He also didn't do it with *videotape* as his medium.

Also, IIRC, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed brilliant starfields in almost every exterior shot, as Kubrick was obviously unaware that stars should not be visible in scenes where the cameras are set to properly expose things like space stations and planets.

How then would he have known to remove them when shooting the Apollo 11 "scenes"?

[PhantomWolf]

Also, IIRC, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed brilliant starfields in almost every exterior shot, as Kubrick was obviously unaware that stars should not be visible in scenes where the cameras are set to properly expose things like space stations and planets.

Actually apparently he did know, but made the decision to ignore it for the sake of art. Afterall, imagine the opening sequence to Star Wars if you did it scientifically accurate.

[svector]

phantomwolf said:

Also, IIRC, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed brilliant starfields in almost every exterior shot, as Kubrick was obviously unaware that stars should not be visible in scenes where the cameras are set to properly expose things like space stations and planets.

Actually apparently he did know, but made the decision to ignore it for the sake of art. Afterall, imagine the opening sequence to Star Wars if you did it scientifically accurate.

It's odd that he would agree to make all the space scenes silent in order to keep the lack of sound in a vacuum scientifically accurate, but he would choose to include stars for "artistic reasons".

"Sound I'll keep realistic, but light I won't"

Hmmmm.

[Bob B.]

svector said:

Also, IIRC, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed brilliant starfields in almost every exterior shot, as Kubrick was obviously unaware that stars should not be visible in scenes where the cameras are set to properly expose things like space stations and planets.

How then would he have known to remove them when shooting the Apollo 11 "scenes"?

You have to consider that in 2001 Kubrick was not conscientiously trying to reproduce what a camera would record. He was most likely trying to produce what he thought the human senses would experience had the audience been in the location of the camera. Thus to say he should have known a camera would not record stars I don't think is an appropriate criticism.*

Had Kubrick been responsible for producing the Apollo imagery, he would have to go about his business differently. Instead of portraying what a live viewer would see, he has to produce for us a scene as we would expect it to be recorded by a camera. How he chooses to produce a scene in 2001 versus the Apollo record is not completely comparable.

* It may be appropriate, however, to say he should have known a live viewer couldn't see stars because of glare and the lack of dark adaptation, but that's a different argument.

[JayUtah]

For the shots of Discovery flying in space Kubrick specifically asked for the starfield and specifically asked for it to shift in order to suggest relative motion of the spacecraft. And he did so knowing that it was neither photographically nor physically correct. I'll have to dig up which of my specific books on Kubrick's work contains that interview.

His contention in that case was that the viewer needed something against which to perceive movement, and he did not consider movement relative to the frame to be a sufficient cue because the viewer didn't know the frame was stationary.

I don't know of any statements in which Kubrick rationalized his selective exhibition and violation of actual space photography, but I do know that his overall goal was realism. Apparently he tempered it here and there with artistic license and, where necessary, practical storytelling.

[Jason]

The most obvious unrealistic gaff in 2001 is that Kubrick made no attempt to accurately portray the moon's gravity. All of the scenes on the moon feature people moving around in what is obviously Earth-normal gravity.

[Mr Gorsky]

The problem that movie (and tv) directors have with space scenes is that a scientifically accurate portrayal of a spaceship moving through space will look like a spaceship suspended against a black background. Without a starfield, and with the engines not firing (as they wouldn't need to once up to speed) there would be no sense of movement whatsoever in the shot. Add in the lack of sound and the viewer is probably just going to vote with his off button due to the sheer boredom induced.

At least with a moving starfield (with or without the constant engine firing) the viewer gets some sense of motion and movement in the scene (with or without sound).

[Ginnie]

I think one area where Kubrick failed in realism was in the scenes on the Moon itself. It is so dark and dreary, everything in shadow is basically black, not the bright scenes that we have in Apollo footage. Of course, how could he have known?

[svector]

bob said:

svector said:

Also, IIRC, 2001: A Space Odyssey showed brilliant starfields in almost every exterior shot, as Kubrick was obviously unaware that stars should not be visible in scenes where the cameras are set to properly expose things like space stations and planets.

How then would he have known to remove them when shooting the Apollo 11 "scenes"?

You have to consider that in 2001 Kubrick was not conscientiously trying to reproduce what a camera would record. He was most likely trying to produce what he thought the human senses would experience had the audience been in the location of the camera.

But that generally only holds true when we're seeing a shot of open space.

In the case of a near, outside observer looking in on the brilliant white Space Station V, the observer most likely wouldn't be able to see stars, as his vision would've adapted for the intensity of the space station. Same situation with a sunlit view of a moon or planet. Yet, the stars are very prominent in the film in those situations.

Others have said it was an artistic decision, but it was still a technical error in my opinion.

IIRC, Kubrick was the first director (or certainly one of the first) to eliminate sound during exterior space shots. Striving for that level of realism was considered unusual for the day, and was one of the elements that impressed me the most, the first time I watched the film. Of course in 1968, it wasn't common knowledge (and perhaps still isn't) that a brilliant starfield should not be visible in every space sequence, so hardly anyone perceives it as an "error".

Whatever Kubrick's motives were, I just find it a bit odd how certain HB's carelessly dismiss this bit of cinema history as they steadfastly insist Kubrick's team was responsible for all Apollo 11 special f/x.

If 2001 was considered the vanguard in special effects realism in 1968, why would the director suddenly make a wholesale change in his method of operation a year later, if his intent was to manufacture a realistic hoax film of the same quality, drawing on the successes and proven methods used during his previous film?

IMO, it's just another hole in the HB's logic, but maybe I'm the only one who sees it that way.

[donnieb]

Arguably, Kubrick could have put the stars in 2001 based on an artistic judgment about his audience's expectations, but left them out of the hypothetical faked Apollo footage where the goal was perfect realism.

But that leaves the HBs with yet another "coulda, woulda, shoulda" argument. I'm continually impressed with their ability to accept any farfetched chain of reasoning about how a hoax was perpetrated, but reject out of hand the straightforward explanation that NASA actually sent missions to the Moon.

[Bob B.]

svector said:

In the case of a near, outside observer looking in on the brilliant white Space Station V, the observer most likely wouldn't be able to see stars, as his vision would've adapted for the intensity of the space station. Same situation with a sunlit view of a moon or planet. Yet, the stars are very prominent in the film in those situations.

I mentioned this in my footnote:

bob said:

* It may be appropriate, however, to say he should have known a live viewer couldn't see stars because of glare and the lack of dark adaptation, but that's a different argument.

I agree that stars generally should not have been visible in the scenes, but that is not the specific argument you were making. You wrote:

svector said:

...as Kubrick was obviously unaware that stars should not be visible in scenes where the cameras are set to properly expose things like space stations and planets.

The above implies that Kubrick should have portrayed the scene as he knew it would be seen through a camera. My point was that he wasn't trying to show the scene through the lens of a camera, but rather through the eye of an observer. He is still wrong about putting stars in the scene, but whether or not stars should have been visible wasn't really the point I was trying to make.

On the other hand, had Kubrick faked the Apollo footage then he would have tried to portray the scene as it would be recorded by a camera since his goal was to produce a fake video and photographic record of a supposed actual event. This is not what he was trying to do with 2001.

[JayUtah]

The only point I'm reasonably sure about is the stars behind Discovery. That's where Kubrick specifically said he knew what should have been the case but did something else and gave the reason why. It was practical visual storytelling. In my theater we use blue with magenta shadows to signify nighttime not because we like being artistic or because we believe that's what nighttime looks like, but because there have to be enough photons aimed at the actors so the audience can see what's going on. Blue with a complimentary color is the least intrusive upon that illusion of setting. In some of the space scenes Kubrick simply needed something other than the frame against which to render motion, and stars are the least intrusive element in that context.

Kubrick's Moon might have been dark because it was nighttime; the expsure of the monolith to the sun is a plot element. It may have been dark because the lunar surface photos available to Kubrick were dark because of exposure. It may have been dark because Kubrick simply wanted it that way for mood.

The sharply-pointed features are likely to be artistic. Kubrick, as I said, had real photos of the Moon he could have copied if he had wanted. Instead he chose the wrong but common depiction. He may consciously have given the viewers the description of the Moon with which they were the most familiar.

The establishment of the environment need not continue indefinitely. After the transition from tossed bone to spacecraft, Kubrick sets up some space effects. And the same occurs on the trip to the Moon. The plot of the latter can be given completely in one sentence: "Heywood Floyd goes to the Moon." Kubrick intentionally paced many scenes in the film deliberately slower than usual. In this case the slow pace gives him the opportunity to set up the environment with some egregious zero-gravity effects.

But later when Floyd is at Clavius and then at Tycho, plot exposition takes hold. The viewer needs to pay careful attention to what is done and said rather than the setting in which that occurs. Having already set up the space environment, Kubrick can concentrate on storytelling. You don't have to keep establishing the setting. That's the big difference between fictional storytelling and factual reporting: you count on the viewer to remember where they are after you've established it.

And in practice it's difficult and expensive to keep up that illusion forever. If you watch the various featurettes made in the early 1960s set in space (probably produced by the U.S. Department of Moon) you see how abruptly they divide between "normal" shots and the egregious effects shots. In order to produce Kubrick was simply a much better filmmaker than that. He wasn't about to pollute all the rest of his Moon scenes with the serious practical limitations of mimicking diminished gravity for every shot, nor the clashing transitions between normal shots and effects shots. For storytelling purposes the sequences work. As actual depictions of the lunar environment, they don't.

Conspiracists sometimes argue that Kubrick would have gotten it right if he had just had a big enough budget, such as what NASA could have given him. I think that seriously begs the question whether Kubrick didn't get what he wanted. And of course that claim contradicts the other common claim: that 2001: A Space Odyssey is absolutely convincing in detail. If that were true, why would Kubrick need a bigger budget in order to get it right? Wasn't it therefore already right?

We have to keep in mind that the Kubrick hoax story began as a Usenet joke. And when left intact, it's a pretty funny joke because it plays on Kubrick's well-known perfectionism. In the original, Kubrick was hired to film the fake Moon landings, but got so fed up with the limitations of the special effects that he finally had to go shoot it on location on the Moon. The hoax believers often leave off that last part.

[sts60]

What's even funnier is when they don't leave off the last part as they're claiming we never went to the Moon.

In the case of a near, outside observer looking in on the brilliant white Space Station V, the observer most likely wouldn't be able to see stars, as his vision would've adapted for the intensity of the space station.

I was looking at some of the gorgeous high-resolution images from the ISS, and it is easily seen that there are no stars in the daylit images. What is the explanation for this? That there is no ISS? (You can see it and predict its motion yourself.) That there is no one on board taking these pictures? ("Hams" have often talked with ISS crewmembers directly.) That NASA has carefully eliminated all the stars from the images, and the astronauts and cosmonauts and ISS tourists are all lying? (Then why in non- daylit scenes can we see stars? I have pointed out before that Shuttle crew-sleep video from payload bay cameras shows stars during orbital night.)

Some related notes - my current wallpaper shows ISS crew during an EVA with the Earth in the background. Parts the structure in the shade, but exposed to the Earth, are illuminated. Parts of the interior structure, in shade and facing away from the Earth, are illuminated to a lesser extent by light scattered from the rest of the ISS. And, oh yes, the thermal covering is a bunch of loosely-connected pieces with wavy gaps. (Perhaps LOTR would like to look at the picture and tell us if it "devalues people's minds"? )

[JayUtah]

What's even funnier is when they don't leave off the last part as they're claiming we never went to the Moon.

I think Clyde Lewis' rendition falls into that category.

When I was in junior high school, the teacher handed out a worksheet one day. It was a list of specific marks to be made on the paper in specific places -- perhaps a dozen such instructions. The first instruction read, "Read all these instructions carefully before doing anything." The last instruction was, "Ignore the previous instructions; do not make any marks on this page, and hand it in." You can imagine the result. Only a very few people handed in a correctly blank worksheet. Those of us who did the assignment wrong in pencil had the option of sheepishly (but noticeably incompletely) erasing all the marks we had made. Those who did it in pen were simply screwed.

I wish the lesson had sunk in better than it has; I still gloss over important things because I'm on mental autopilot. But I think everyone needs periodic wake-up calls like that. Read carefully; sometimes it really matters.

[gillianren]

svector said:

IMO, it's just another hole in the HB's logic, but maybe I'm the only one who sees it that way.

Assuredly not. They don't see it that way, but how many times have you had an HB acknowledge a flaw in their logic who did not then realize their whole argument was built on logical flaws and acknowledge the validity of Apollo.