From the Earth to the Moon is a 12-part 1998 HBOtelevision miniseries co-produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tom Hanks, and Michael Bostick, telling the story of the Apollo program during the 1960s and early 1970s in docudrama format. Largely based on Andrew Chaikin's 1994 book, A Man on the Moon, the series is known for its accurate telling of the story of Apollo and the special effects under visual director Ernest D. Farino. The series takes its title from, but is not based upon, the 1865 Jules Vernescience fiction novelFrom the Earth to the Moon. Hanks appears in every episode, introducing each of the first eleven. The last episode is represented in a pseudo-documentary format narrated by Blythe Danner, interspersed with a reenactment of the making of Georges Méliès' 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune, which was in part inspired by Verne's novel. Hanks narrates and appears in these scenes as Méliès' assistant.
Cast
The miniseries has a fairly large cast, driven in part by the fact that it portrays 30 of the 32 astronauts who flew, or were preparing to fly, the twelve missions of the Apollo program. Members of many of the astronauts' families, and other NASA and non-NASA personnel, are also portrayed. Several fictional characters are also included, notably television newscaster Emmett Seaborn who appears in nine of the twelve episodes. Astronaut David Scott, from Apollo 15, was the chief technological consultant.
Episodes
The twelve episodes, each directed by different individuals, use a variety of viewpoints and themes, while sequentially covering the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Lane Smith portrays Emmett Seaborn, a seasoned reporter for a fictional television network, who covers the U.S. space program from its earliest days, providing continuity for most of the episodes.
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Integration with existing films
The miniseries, concentrating on the Apollo space program, was produced with an intent not to repeat other dramatic portrayals of events of the space race. Project Mercury, which was portrayed in the 1983 film The Right Stuff, was briefly summarized in the first episode. Miniseries producers Hanks, Howard and Grazer, who had previously produced the 1995 film Apollo 13, shot the episode "We Interrupt This Program" from the perspective of the media covering that flight, as the film had already covered the story from the point of view of the crew and the mission control team.
Production information
Many of the actors had opportunity to interact and form friendships with the real life astronauts they were portraying. Brett Cullen, who played Apollo 9Command Module pilot and Apollo 15 commander David Scott, was invited to the Scott family home each time an episode he appeared in was first televised. Two short clips from the final scenes of Apollo 13 were used in "That's All There Is"; a splashdown sequence, and a view of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima. The original series was shot in Super 35, intended to be viewed on standard television sets of the time in 1.33:1 aspect ratio. With the proliferation of widescreen flat-panel TV sets the series was remastered in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio and re-released in 2005 as a 5-disc DVD box set. As is the case with most material shot in this format, the widescreen framing causes the loss of the top and bottom parts of the frames from the original broadcast, but reveals additional information on the left and right. This is not always noticeable because of careful transfer process, but in some scenes important details are lost. For example, in the first episode, when the Gemini 8 / Agena assembly is tumbling around in space with a stuck thruster, the thruster is not visible in the new widescreen version, as it is cut off by the top of the frame. Some captions have also been compromised. Parts of the mini-series were filmed at the Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. Scenes of the moonwalks were shot inside the blimp hangars on the former Marine base in Tustin, California. Approximately half the area inside was converted to the Moon's surface, with the remainder used to hold production trailers. To simulate lunar surface gravity, weather balloons filled with helium were attached to the backs of the actors playing the astronauts in the lunar extravehicular activity scenes, effectively reducing their Earth-bound weights to one-sixth. The score of "Spider" prominently features an imitation of the main title theme from the 1963 World War II movie The Great Escape, and Tom Kelly jokes about having a crew digging a tunnel out of the Grumman plant. The episode also featured a real Apollo Lunar Module, which had been built for the Apollo 18 mission but was never used due to budget cuts. Blythe Danner, who narrated the final episode, had previously worked on location at the Johnson Space Center for the 1976 movie Futureworld, filmed in the same buildings where Apollo moonwalkers had recently trained.
