How Stanley Kubrick
Faked the Apollo Moon Landings:
Alchemical Kubrick II
By
Jay Weidner

Copyright July 20 ^th 2009
Sacred Mysteries Productions

Page 3:

The astronaut is about six feet in front of the Scotchlite screen. Please note how everything is in focus from the rocks and pebbles close to the camera all the way to the crystal clear mountain behind the astronaut. As we shall see very soon, even that is impossible.

Also please note the other tell tale evidence that permeates the Apollo images: There is a stark difference in the ground texture between the set and what is being projected onto the screen. You can almost count the number of small rocks and the granularity of the ground is clearly seen on the set. But once we get to the screen on the other side of my line this granularity disappears.

This next image is slick little piece of work. When first viewed one is sure that they are looking across the vast unbroken lunar surface from beginning to end. With the Earth rising, it is truly a stunning shot.

But sure enough - a close examination reveals the set/screen line once again. Again please note the change in the texture of the ground immediately on each side of the line. The little pebbles and dust seem to disappear behind the line.

Doesn't the fakery just make you all patriotic inside?

5). DEPTH OF FIELD: MORE EVIDENCE

Besides the telltale evidence of the horizon line between set and screen and the changing granularity of the texture of the ground, there is another telltale fingerprint that comes with Front Screen Projection. This has to do with a photographic situation called depth of field. Depth of field has to do with the plane of focus that the lens of the camera is tuned to.

The main rule of thumb in photography is that the larger the format of the film the less depth of field. For instance, 16mm film has a large depth of field. 35mm has a smaller depth of field and 70 mm (which Stanley was using in 2001 as were all of the astronaut-photographers in the Apollo missions) has an incredibly small depth of field.

What this means is that it is virtually impossible for two objects that are far apart in the lens of a 70mm camera to be in the same plane of focus. One of the two objects will always be out-of-focus. Filmmakers like to use depth of field because it creates soft out-of-focus backgrounds that are visually very pleasant to the human eye.

While watching the ape-men scenes at the beginning of 2001, one can see that everything is in focus. Whether it is the apes - or the far away desert background - they are all in focus. This is because the Front Projection Screen on which the background desert scenes is projected is actually not far away from the ape actor. In reality the Scotchlite screen containing the desert scene is right behind the actors just as the Scotchlite screen is right behind the astronauts in the Apollo images. So whatever is projected onto that screen will usually be in the same plane of focus as the actor-ape or the actor-astronaut.

This depth of field is impossible in real life using a large format film like 70 mm. Keeping everything in focus is only possible if everything is actually confined to a small place.

It may look like the ape-men are somewhere in a huge desert landscape but in reality they are all on a small set in a studio.

It may look like the astronauts are on a vast lunar landscape but actually they are on a small confined set.

According to the NASA literature, the Apollo astronauts were using large format Hassleblad cameras. These cameras were provided with large rolls of 70 mm film on which they took the images. This large format film is exactly the same size film that Kubrick was using when shooting 2001.

The plane of focus, the depth of field, on these cameras is incredibly small. This should have been a huge problem for the astronaut-photographers, who would have to be constantly adjusting the focus. We therefore should expect to see a lot of out of focus shots taken by the astronauts. When you consider the fact that, because of their helmets, they did not even have the ability to see through the viewfinder of their cameras, this would have only increased the chances that most of what they would be shooting would be out of focus.

I have gone through the entire photographic record of Apollo program, both at Goddard in Greenbelt, Maryland in the main photographic repository at NASA's Houston headquarters.

When the Apollo photographic record is examined, the exact opposite of what one would expect to find is discovered. Instead of many out of focus shots, we find that nearly every shot is in pristine focus. And these amateur photographer-astronauts have an uncanny sense of composition, especially when one remembers that they are not even able to look through their camera's viewfinders. Their images have the unmistakable quality of a highly polished professional photographer.

Before embarking on his film career Stanley Kubrick was a professional photographer working for Look Magazine.

Honestly, even a professional photographer looking through the viewer of the camera would be hard pressed to come up with the pristine imagery and crystal clear focus of the Apollo astronaut amateur photographers.

Unfortunately though, for everyone involved, the fact that everything is in focus in the Apollo record is the old telltale fingerprint of Front Screen Projection.

Examine the above photographs from Apollo. Please note how everything is in focus. As one goes through the entire Apollo record they will discover that the astronaut photographers never seem to have a problem with depth of field. Even though you could never get everything to remain in focus over such vast distances here on Earth, somehow the rules of physics are bypassed when men shoot photographs on the lunar surface.