American Cinematographer - April 2010 - 68

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Filmmakers in Orbit

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Above: STS-125 astronauts and Hubble 3-D filmmakers gather around the Imax Cargo Bay Camera at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Astronaut as Filmmaker” event on July 14, 2009. From left: Commander Scott D. Altman, producer/director Toni Myers, mission specialist Michael T. Good, mission specialist Michael J. Massimino, mission specialist Andrew J. Feustel, pilot Gregory C. Johnson, mission specialist John M. Grunsfeld and director of photography/astronaut trainer James Neihouse. (Megan McArthur was unable to attend.) Right: The Cargo Bay camera, which holds 5,400' of film, is prepared for installation on the Orbital Replacement Unit Carrier at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.

April 2010

American Cinematographer

Photo at left by Matt Petit, courtesy of A.M.P.A.S.; photo at right by Dimitri Gerondidakis, courtesy of NASA.

he only filmmakers aboard the space shuttle Atlantis capturing footage for Hubble 3-D were the astronauts themselves. Capt. Gregory Carl Johnson was the pilot of Atlantis, and the man primarily responsible for the control of the CB3D Imax camera while in orbit. “It was a lot more pressure than I thought it would be!” says Johnson, a NASA test pilot and former Naval Aviation officer. “We receive photography instruction as part of the basic astronaut training, and we all [carry] digital cameras, but working with the Imax camera really changed things. The problem was that you couldn’t predict when a scene would start and stop; if a task on the shot list got delayed by 10 minutes, it could suddenly slip into night. Although there’s a mile of film in the camera, it’s only eight minutes’ worth, and it was up to us to get what the filmmakers needed in 20-30 second bursts. “[Director] Toni Myers suggested specific lens choices for specific moments, but it was really up to us to decide what to do at any moment,” he

continues. “If the ground was in view, then Toni wanted us to use the 30mm lens and set the focus at infinity, but we had to make sure that whatever was closest to the camera was also in focus. Judging focus using the laptop computer that controlled the camera was very difficult, so we relied on diagrams in the cockpit to estimate distances and set our focus that way. We’d say, ‘If the space walker is over there, he’s 10.2 feet away,’ and that’s where we set the focus.” There was room for only one Imax camera, so the crew also worked with Canon XH G1 HDV cameras. One of the main in-shuttle videographers was astronaut Mike Massimino. “I did a lot of crew interviews — I was interested in bringing out the personalities of the crew and telling the story of the mission,” he says. “Toni had special instructions for us to follow when we shot video. They were different settings than what we shot for NASA, and some of it was pretty complicated, so I had to have a cheat sheet: install wide conversion lens, use headphones to monitor sound, filter

off, focus manual, AGC off, auto white balance on. We had to use a separate microphone and attach that to the XLR. We had to switch to 24p instead of 60i and set the shutter to 1/48. Toni always wanted us to do manual focus and manual exposure. Exposures were the most complicated part, especially on the Imax camera. Rocket equations I can handle, but exposures are complicated!” “There was an incredible amount of pressure to get it right,” recalls Johnson. “I think I’d rather be in head-to-head air combat going 100 knots in an F18 than have to be responsible for those eight minutes of footage again!” But the results were worth it. “Being out there on a space walk is truly incredible, and when I saw some of the 3-D footage of that on the Imax screen, it came as close to real as it gets,” says Massimino. “I got the same chills watching the footage as I did when I was up there. It really got my heart going again.” — Jay Holben

American Cinematographer - April 2010

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