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With no hope of equaling the special effects of "2001" on their tight budget, film-makers use ingenuity to create a dazzling trip into space
It was felt from the earliest conceptions of "TO FLY" that the film would be incomplete without a sequence depicting not only our present ventures into space, but portents of the future, as well. The whole motion picture represents an outward expansion from Early America and that motion had to continue through the rest of the film.
The space sequence was originally designed as a series of stills showing views of our solar system, galaxy and the universe. None of us ever thought that would really be acceptable and in our earliest pre-planning we decided that money saved on the other sequences would be earmarked for a more ambitious space sequence.
Unfortunately it is not possible to make a large-screen film on space without automatic comparisons to "2001". Needless to say we didn't have the millions of dollars necessary to equal or surpass "2001", but we still had the comparisons to live with, unfair or not. The volumes of material written about the production of that picture were a starting point in our research. We found that there were many things they had worked out by trial and error that we could incorporate or expand upon. For example, we were forewarned that our most difficult task would be the filming of starfields that looked correct both in 70mm IMAX and later in 35mm release. Many times our 35mm printdowns showed no stars whatsoever, while the corresponding IMAX negative looked normal. When the stars looked normal in our 35mm print-downs they looked like basketballs in IMAX. Obviously the answer was a compromise of very narrow limitations. This was a problem that plagued us throughout the filming of the sequence.
The other major thing we learned from "2001" was the use of movement. Not only is there constant movement of spacecraft in that film, but the background starfields are constantly moving as well.
We had some very severe limitations in the manner in which we could shoot the space sequence. The most conventional full-screen optical effects are not possible in IMAX, not even acceptable dupes. The camera would not single-frame or...