Spotlight: Man On A Mission

  • Q & A with Mike Woolf

    1. How did you find Richard as a subject?
    When you live in Austin you know about Richard Garriott. From watching Highlander you know “there can only be one.” Put those together and we knew there could only be one “first son of an astronaut to go to outer space.”

    So when I was at a wedding and saw Richard was a guest, I asked him if anyone was filming his adventure. He laughed and said, “Funny you should say that, Brady Dial just asked me the same question 20 minutes ago.” And a filmmaking partnership was born.

    2. With so much of Richard’s life lived in the fantasy world of developing video games, do you think he had a real conception of the reality of what he wanted to do by going into space?
    Richard started investing in private space travel when he was in his 20s. He’s visualized this trip a million times – probably 35 million times to be exact. So, 20 years later, once he was able to punch his ticket, he had a crystal clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish with his space flight.

    I remember the spreadsheet he showed us before he went up – it was a minute-by-minute schedule of his entire 10 days on the ISS.

    3. Do you think the commercialization of space will ever happen?
    It already has.

    Right now you can buy a ticket on a Zero-G flight and experience weightlessness. In a year, you’ll be able to buy a seat on a sub-orbital flight. And while the price to catch a ride to the Space Station is $45 million now, Richard believes that the price will come down by orders of magnitude in the future. And in 10 years, you’ll be able to buy a ticket to orbit the moon!

    4. You interview Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who also shares this passion for going into space. Why do you think so many high-power people share this dream? What is the allure of outer space?
    When Sergey Brin says, “I see this as the beginning of a potentially great new industry,” we should listen.

    Richard considers himself one of the “Orphans of Apollo.” That’s the generation who grew up with the success of the moon landings and assumed NASA would lead us to many more successes in space above and have everyone down here flying around on jetpacks.

    Clearly this never happened. But this generation grew up to be the entrepreneurs who created the technology revolution and never forgot their childhood dreams.

    So they’ve taken it upon themselves to create a private and profitable way to explore space. They have billions in their pockets from creating one great American industry and are putting it towards creating another.

    They were promised jetpacks – and they want them.

    5. After everything you’ve observed, would you want to go into space yourself?
    Hell yeah! But I have to say filming Richard for so much of his training was very satisfying and cost a whole lot less.

    6. At a certain point in the film, when Richard goes up into space, he takes over the camera work and storytelling himself. How did you integrate Richard’s footage and perspective into the story you wanted to tell?
    When Richard came down he gave us about 10 hours of awesome HD footage (and space cooties). But it was a few weeks later when he swung by the studio to show us what he filmed on his little point and shoot camera.

    So we huddled around the computer and watched his view from inside the tiny capsule during the fiery re-entry through the atmosphere. Typically during this part of a space movie, we lose radio communication and wait for John Glenn to start whistling. But here was footage looking out the window of the spacecraft while it becomes a 4000-degree fireball.

    Richard achieved a lot of firsts with his flight but the most incredible thing he did visually was give us this perspective.

    7. How did you keep in contact with Richard when he was in space?
    Brady had the rather thankless job of staying at Moscow mission control during Richard’s entire time in space. He would film the daily check-ins with the ISS but after a few days realized that crackly radio conversations about paperwork protocols wasn’t going to make it to the big screen.

    But then, on day 5, a special ham radio call came down from the ISS and he was there to capture an historic conversation between Richard and his father.

    You see, Owen Garriott was the first person to take a ham radio to space when he flew on the 9th Space Shuttle mission in 1983. This opened the door for all astronauts to talk to amateur operators on earth and school kids around the world. He spoke to Richard from the new device back in 1983.

    So now here was Owen Garriott receiving a call from space, from his son, via the ham radio technology that he put in motion.

    Owen watched Richard’s rocket launch and was there to greet him when he landed – but this little conversation, from astronaut son to astronaut dad, turned out to be one of the emotional highpoints of the film.


    This clip is the extended version of that ham radio call. While it was much too long for the final film it includes a bunch of ham radio history and the very first call from space.

    8. It is frequently mentioned that Richard is a second generation space traveler, as his father had been an astronaut. Why did you choose to focus more on Richard’s own journey, as opposed to his relationship with his father?
    Well, we could have. We could have also spent more time on his Soyuz back-up Nik Halik (“The Thrillionaire”), on his elaborate haunted houses, his Mardi Gras float and the Russian Moon Rover that he owns. But that cut was 2 hours, 43 minutes. So to get the film to 83 minutes, we had to follow a harsh rule – if the scene wasn’t integral to Richard’s journey to get to space – we cut it.


    Here’s a quick clip about Richard’s Lunakod on the moon.

    9. What was one of the most challenging/rewarding experiences for you while making the film?
    Biggest challenge? No P.A.’s on set! It was brutal. Me, Andrew and Brady were pretty much the whole crew. And Richard had to do the filming all by himself in space. We offered to come along put he didn’t have another $35 million to spare.

    Most rewarding? There’s no question that filming the rocket launch was the biggest payoff. We were all pretty tweaked from the travel, filming and vodka – added to that was the pressure that there was not going to be a “second take.”

    That morning, Andrew was on a platform filming the launch with our brand new RED camera, Brady had his back to the rocket and was filming Owen and family, and I just happened to set up next to Renita Fincke the wife of astronaut Mike Fincke – Richard’s commander on the mission.

    After months of following Richard, from Austin to Star City and now to Khazahkstan, the engines finally fired.

    Immediately I found myself trying to process the contradictions of the moment: the rocket looked so small but the power of the thrust was shaking my chest. For a vehicle that was heading to space it sure was going slowly. We had been building towards this moment for months but as the rocket rose out of sight it was clear our journey was ending and Richard’s was just beginning.

    Then there was the constant little voice in the back of your mind saying “don’t blow up, don’t blow up, don’t blow up….”

    This all become even more immediate when I looked over and saw Renita staring towards the sky. Here was her husband and father of her kids leaving on a very dangerous and very long mission – 6 months on board the ISS. All of the complex emotions were painted clearly on her face.

    To sum it up, we knew a rocket launch was going to be exciting but had no idea it could be so emotional.


    Because we had more cameras than operators I set up our crappy video cam and just hit record for launch. Watch it here.

    10. Can we expect another project from you in the near future?
    I’d love to do a series with Richard as the host where we meet other pioneering dreamers like him, who make impossible visions come true.

    So, uh, if you’ve got a sponsor who wants to fund this, please call. Thanks!


    January 18th, 2012 | jwilka |

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