Robert A Heinlein - Shooting Destination Moon (Article)

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SHOOTING DESTINATION MOON

“Why don’t they make more science fiction movies?”

The answer to any question starting, “Why don’t they—” is almost always,

“Money.”

I arrived in Hollywood with no knowledge of motion picture production or

costs, no experience in writing screen plays, nothing but a yen to write the

first Hollywood picture about the first trip to the Moon. Lou Schor, an agent

who is also a science fiction enthusiast, introduced me to a screen writer,

Alford van Ronkel; between us we turned out a screen play from one of my

space travel stories.

So we were in business— Uh, not quite. The greatest single production

problem

is to find someone willing to risk the money. People who have spare millions

of dollars do not acquire them by playing angel to science fiction writers with

wild ideas.

We were fortunate in meeting George Pal of George Pal Productions, who

became infected with the same madness. So we had a producer—now we

were in business.

Still not quite— Producers and financiers are not the same thing. It was

nearly a year from the writing of the screen play until George Pal informed us

that he had managed to convince an angel. (How? Hypnosis? Drugs? I’ll

never know. If! had a million dollars, I would sit on it and shoot the first six

science fiction writers who came my way with screen plays.)

Despite those huge Hollywood salaries, money is as hard to get in Hollywood

as anywhere. The money men in Hollywood write large checks only when

competition leaves them no alternative; they prefer to write small checks, or

no checks at all. Even though past the big hurdle of getting the picture

financed, money trouble remains with one throughout production; if a solution

to a special-effects problem costs thirty thousand dollars but the budget says

five thousand dollars, then you have got to think of an equally good five

thousand dollar gølution—and that’s all there is to it.

.1 mention this because there came a steady stream of non-motion-picture

folk who were under the impression ~hat thousand-dollar-a-week salaries

were waiting for them in a science fiction picture. The budget said, “No!”

The second biggest hurdle to producing an accurate and convincing science

fiction picture is the “Hollywood” frame of mind—in this case, people in

authority who either don’t know or don’t care about scientific correctness and

plausibility. Ignorance can be coped with; when a man asks “What does a

rocket have to push against, out there in space?” it is possible to explain. On

the other hand, if his approach is, “Nobody has ever been to the Moon; the

audiences won’t know the difference,” it is impossible to explain anything to

him; he does not know and does not want to know.

We had plenty of bothsorts of trouble.

That the picture did not end up as a piece of fantasy, having only a comic-

book relation to real science fiction1 can be attributed almost entirely to the

integrity and.:~

good taste of Irving Pichel, the director. Mr. Pichel is not a scientist, but he is

intelligent and honest. He believed what Mr. Bonestell and I told him and saw

to it that what went on the screen was as accurate as budget and ingenuity

would permit.

By the time the picture was being shot the entire company—actors, grips,

cameramen, office people— became imbued with enthusiasm for producing

a picture which would be scientifically acceptable as well as a box office

success. Willy Ley’s Rockets and Space Travel was read by dozens of

people in the company. Bonestell and Ley’s Conquest of Space was

published about then and enjoyed a brisk sale among us. Waits between

takes were filled by discussions of theory and future prospects of

interplanetary travel.

As shooting progressed we began to be deluged with visitors of technical

background—guided missiles men, astronomers, rocket engineers, aircraft

engineers. The company, seeing that their work was being taken seriously by

technical specialists, took pride in turning out an authentic job. There were no

more remarks of “What difference does it make?”

Which brings us to the third hurdle—the technical difficulties of filming a

spaceship picture.

The best way to photograph space flight convincingly would be to raise a few

hundred million dollars, get together a scientific and engineering staff of the

caliber used to make the A-bomb, take over the facilities of General Electric,

White Sands, and Douglas Aircraft, and build a spaceship.

Then go along and photograph what happens.

We had to use the second-best method—which meant that every shot, save

for a few before takeoff from Earth, had to involve special effects, trick

photography, unheard-of lighting problems. All this is expensive and causes

business managers to grow stomach ulcers. In the ordinary motion picture

there may be a scene or two

with special effects; this picture had to be all special effects, most of them

never before tried.

If you have not yet seen the picture, I suggest that you do not read further

until after you have seen it; in this case it is more fun to be fooled. Then, if

you want to loOk for special effects, you can go back and see the picture

again. (Adv.)

The Moon is airless, subject only to one-sixth gravity, bathed in undiluted

sunlight, covered with black sky through which shine brilliant stars,

undimmed by cloud or smog. It is a place of magnificent distances and

towering mountains.

A sound stage is usually about thirty feet high, and perhaps a hundred and

fifty feet long. Gravity is Earth normal. It is filled with cigarette smoke, arc light

fog, and dust—not to mention more than a hundred technicians.

Problem: to photograph in a sound stage men making a rocket landing on the

Moon, exploring its endless vistas, moving and jumping under its light gravity.

Do this in Technicolor, which adds a sheaf of new problems, not the least of

which is the effect of extra hot lights on men wearing spacesuits.

The quick answer is that it can’t be done. -

A second answer is to go on location, pick a likely stretch of desert, remove

by hand all trace of vegetation, and shoot the “real” thing. Wait a minute; how

about that black and star-studded sky? Fake it—use special effects. Sorry;

once blue sky is on Technicolor emulsion it is there to stay. With black-and-

white there are ways, but not with color.

So we are back on the sound stage and we have to shoot it there. Vacuum

clear atmosphere? No smoking—hard tb enforce—high speed on all blowers,

be resigned to throwing away some footage, and leave the big doors open—

which lets in noise and ruins the sound track. Very well, we must dub in the

sound—and up go the costs—but the air must be clear.

Low gravity and tremendous leaps—piano wire, of

course—but did you ever try to wire a man who is wearing a spacesuit? The

wires have to get inside that suit at several points, producingthe effect a nail

has on a tire, i.e., a man -wearing a pressurized suit cannot be suspended on

wires. So inflation of suits must be replaced by padding; at least during wired

shots. But a padded suit does not wrinkle the same way a pressurized suit

does and the difference shows. Furthermore, the zippered openings for the

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摘要：

SHOOTINGDESTINATIONMOON“Whydon’ttheymakemoresciencefictionmovies?”Theanswertoanyquestionstarting,“Whydon’tthey—”isalmostalways,“Money.”IarrivedinHollywoodwithnoknowledgeofmotionpictureproductionorcosts,noexperienceinwritingscreenplays,nothingbutayentowrite hefirstHollywoodpictureaboutthefirsttrip...

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