Christopher Riley Talks First Orbit

Independent production studio The Attic Room has paired with the crowd funding platform Indiegogo to sell movie credits for its upcoming DVD and Blu-ray release of its documentary First Orbit. The public can add their name to the credits if they pre-order a multi-language DVD or Blu-ray. They can also become an Associate or Executive Producer, or back the documentary as a Title Sponsor.

First Orbit‘s director, Christopher Riley, spoke from London over Google Talk about how his love of science and his respect of NASA led him to work on the film. He also discussed the difficulties of showing the flight plans of the Vostok 1, the first human spaceflight to ever travel around Earth, and what Soviet pilot and astronaut Yuri Gagarin saw during his pioneering orbital space flight. Riley also spoke about how meaningful it was to him how fans of the film around the world requested it be released on home video, and how selling the producer credits has helped make that happen.

Question (Q): You both directed and produced First Orbit. What motivated you to become involved in the project?

Christopher Riley (CR): Well, I first had the idea for First Orbit at the end of 2009. I did this installation for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11. I had taken all of the flight films from all of the Apollo missions, and projected it into various gallery spaces, in a couple of places around the world. I was trying to think of another similar project I could do to celebrate Gagarin in 2011.

My first idea for the project was to try to find all of the original footage shots of the Earth from space over the past 50 years. Everything that was shot by the Americans in the ’60s through the space shuttles in the ’80s. I was also trying to piece together Gagarin’s flight path from all of this footage. I started looking into this, and it was going to be so difficult, so I just kind of gave up on the idea.

But in early 2010, I thought I could film again by matching up all the orbits. That’s how the idea was born, really.

Q: The Attic Room has launched the opportunity on IndieGoGo for the public to buy movie credits for its forthcoming DVD and Blu-Ray release of First Orbit. Why did you decide to sell producer credits for the film to the public?

CR: Well, this was a film right from the start that we wanted to be something for the whole world to share. In the same way that the whole world sort of shared in the triumph of Gagarin’s original flight, back in 1961. So that’s exactly what we did, we achieved that by giving the film away over YouTube last year, and 3.3 million people have watched it now in that forum.

We also asked fans of this subject area to download copies of the film, and hold their own premieres on the 12th of April last year. We did all that without needing anymore money. We worked on that ourselves, with volunteers, and made it happen that way.

What came back from that were these ideas from the fans who saw the film at that time, and they wanted to know if we could put it in these other languages. At that time, it was obviously in Russian, with English subtitles. We kept getting questions if we had it in Arabic or French or Spanish, or whatever. We didn’t, we only had it in English at that point.

So we put up a transcript of the film in English on the website, and asked people to download it and add their own language, and send it back to us. People have been doing that for a few months, and we have exactly 30 languages so far.

Then we thought, how can we share these languages with everyone, as freely as possible? The best way is to put the languages onto DVD and Blu-ray. That’s obviously expensive, and we have to pay someone to do that. So to raise the money to do that part of the project, we decided to sell copies of the DVD in advance, so that’s what the campaign is about.

In return, if you buy a DVD before we make it, we’ll put your name on the film. You can also buy another credit on the film, an associate producer credit, or even an executive producer credit. We’re even looking for a title sponsor, one that might even want to be associated with the film as well. So this is a way for us to pay for the manufacturing of the DVD and Blu-ray discs, with all of these languages on them, in the hope that we can bring Yuri Gagarin’s story to an even wider audience.

Q: Why do you feel it’s important for Gagarin’s story to be available to so many people worldwide in 30 languages?

CR: There’s only one time in human history that a representative our species gets into an aircraft that we have built and designed, and gets thrown up into the atmosphere, and makes an orbit of the Earth. That’s only happened one time in our history, on the 12th of April in ’61. Of course, at that point, it was widely reported on around the world.

But there were a great deal of details in 1961 that weren’t reported on. There were only a few television and radio stations, and there was no Internet. So people couldn’t connect with Gagarin’s experience in the way that you may be able to do through the Internet these days. But people did still share it. It’s like something someone said to me last year, it’s our shared heritage. It’s a heritage around the world that makes us human.

So this is still an important part of our history today. It’s a shared heritage, a shared history. So if that’s the case, it’s important that with whatever language you speak, whatever culture you’re from, you can share that story of that first human space mission that went into space and orbited around the Earth. That’s why I think translating it into the 30 languages and allowing people of many different cultures to share Yuri’s story, it’s an important part of our shared history.

Q: First Orbit will be premiering on DVD and Blu-Ray later this month, at the request of fans. What was the feeling like, knowing that so many people wanted to buy the film on home video?

CR: I never imagined it being so popular and successful when we made it last year. But what’s so wonderful about it is that every year on the 12th of April, there are parties that are held around the world for Yuri’s night. There’s this big movement to celebrate this landmark and milestone in human history.

I hope that on future anniversaries, every year someone somewhere will watch this film on YouTube, or they’ll put it on and have a little party. They’ll celebrate flying around the world with Yuri, listening to what he had to say and enjoying these beautiful views of the Earth. It’s lovely to make a film that will be celebrated and remembered, so that’s a wonderful thing.

Q: What was the filming process like on First Orbit, and how much involvement did NASA have on the film?

CR: Filming First Orbit was quite a challenge. This was the first film I ever made that started off with a mathematics problem. So I partnered with a European space agency initially to work out if we could even latch the orbit of the current space agency to the one that Gagarin first used, back in ’61. We didn’t even know if that was possible.

That was the first problem. We did a lot of math to work out exactly if we could do that, and when the space station might actually pass over the same ground on the same day that Gagarin had flown. That was the challenge, but it happened about every six weeks.

Then we had to get fly-ins from the crews on the space station. Our principal collaborator was the Italian astronaut, Paolo Nespoli, who arrived at the International Space station at the end of 2010, just before Christmas. He started filming almost straight away through January 2011. We took every opportunity to film the ground as Gagarin would have seen it.

That, however, left a big gap, because Gagarin flew over the Pacific Ocean during the night. There’s almost nothing to see, there’s no towns or cities that are lit up from below, and it’s totally dark. There was almost no moon that night, either. We found that very difficult to film, and the European Space Station and Nespoli weren’t able to film anything over the Pacific for us.

So I contacted friends at NASA, and said “Do you have any night vision camera footage from the space station over the Pacific Ocean recently?” It turns out they had three tapes they had made of the Pacific. So they were helpful in making sure that we didn’t have a black gap in the film. We were able to construct a night sequence from the NASA footage that we got.

Q: You have worked with the NASA film archive for the past fifteen years on projects ranging from the BBC’s landmark series The Planets to the highly acclaimed feature documentary film In the Shadow of the Moon. What is it about science that you find so compelling, and makes you want to continue working on projects with NASA?

CR: That’s a good question. I grew up in a time when NASA was routinely sending people into space. When I was three, they landed the first men on the moon. By the time I was five, NASA had men living on the moon for three days and driving cars around, and that was incredible.

So I grew up totally in awe of these engineers in America who had achieved this. More significantly than that, they had given away all the images, footage, stories and adventures that they created. They gave them away, and children around the world were completely inspired by what they did.

I had gone into science myself, partly because of how NASA inspired me as a child. It was only years later that I went into filmmaking, and celebrated some of our greatest achievements in science. More specifically, I was interested in planet exploration and the projects that NASA gets involved with.

I guess, maybe more than anything, it’s a thank you for inspiring me, and celebrate what NASA continues to do. They represent all of us when they send their missions to the planets. It’s nice to celebrate that, and as long as I can celebrate that, that’s what I’d like to do.

Q: Do you think that NASA can launch more missions to the moon, and the other planets?

CR: Well, they continue to fly robotic spacecraft to the other planets, and it’s very successful. They launched a mission called Curiosity that left before Christmas and will land on Mars in early August. We’re all hoping and praying that it’s successful, and send back some new evidence from the Red Planet.

But sending humans back to the moon, and other planets, is a whole lot harder than sending robots. To do that, what you need to do is have a very long-term commitment from governments. It’s a political thing, and it needs political buy-ins for decades.

With the lack of the race to space, because the race is over, we all try to do things together now. Without a race and deadline, it’s very hard to see how NASA can build on its expertise and send men back to the moon. I suspect, very sadly, that that’s not going to happen again in my lifetime. But the dream is still very much there, it just takes the right political leaders.

Q: Do you have any upcoming science films lined up that you can discuss?

CR: Yes, one of the first things we wanted to do after First Orbit was to make another film, and maybe consider it a prequel of In the Shadow of the Moon. It’s something that celebrates the 550 people that have gone into space since Yuri Gagarin. It would feature interviews with them, and celebrate them. Also, it’s what those people saw and felt, and what lessons they can share with us collectively. That’s the next film that’s in production.

Just like we did with First Orbit to release the DVD, the next part of this year is going to be tapping those same people to make this other film. So that’s really our next plan.


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