55
I was the archive producer of the "Apollo 11" film.
As Ben says, there's nothing materially misleading in the film, and any "liberties" that were taken are well within the boundaries of acceptable techniques for documentary makers.
It could be argued that the Collins biomed sensor quote mentioned was in some way misleading, but I don't think it really matters where that line was used because it doesn't pertain to any particular significant milestone in the flight, and we aren't claiming that it was. It essentially could have happened at any point... I think there would be more of an issue if we'd specifically linked it to an important sequence, e.g placing it during the landing.
The same goes for the "Mother Country" music sequence... the section of the on board audio when we know the music was played wasn't from Day 7, it was from when they were in lunar orbit... but this makes no material difference... they had the music with them on the on board tapes, and as used in the film it's essentially a montage sequence, backed by a song they were historically verified as having with them. The audience understands the "rules" of the "deception", for instance as Ben says, they know when we see a shot of the command module with Mike Collins "alone" in lunar orbit that there wasn't a cameraman out there filming him in a spacecraft while Neil and Buzz were on the surface.
The problem is where filmmakers actually try and change the historical events to suit the narrative they want to tell, and change the historical truth of events, so that would be us including something like Neil Armstrong throwing the bracelet into the crater for his daughter... we don't have any evidence that it happened, so it's inappropriate to use that in a documentary. Where these boundaries are can be subjective, but I think most credible documentarians understand where the line is.
Recent Posts