A Christmas gift they won’t already have…

Independent production studio The Attic Room has launched a unique Christmas gift opportunity on the crowd funding platform www.indiegogo.com/firstorbit by selling movie credits for its forthcoming DVD and Blu-Ray release of ‘First Orbit’; one of the biggest independent film successes of the year.

First Orbit premiered with English subtitles at over 1600 crowd sourced screening events in more than 130 countries in April 2011, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering spaceflight. Eight months on, the film has been translated by fans into more than 30 languages and in response to requests from around the world a DVD and Blu-Ray version of the film is to be manufactured next year.

First Orbit Producer/Director, Chris Riley says; “We think this is a unique Christmas present for the person that has everything. We are giving you the opportunity to add their name to the credits by pre-ordering a multi-language DVD or Blu-Ray and they can also become an Associate or Executive Producer, or even back the film as a Title Sponsor”.

This will be the first time that the story of Gagarin’s complete spaceflight, in his own words, becomes accessible in so many languages; “Gagarin’s mission might have been a Russian triumph, but it was always something that the world celebrated. Fifty years on people from across the world have united once again, to help share this story from our collective human heritage” Riley says.

Transcripts of all the languages so far are available, to download for free at: www.firstorbit.org/translations and in keeping with the crowd-supported spirit of the project the producers wanted to involve as many people as possible in this next phase of the project, and so IndieGoGo seemed the perfect partner.

For further information, hires images and broadcast roll

Please contact Rufus Stone or Sarah Millar. T: +44 (0)20 7287 9601         Email: rufus.stone@sisteris.com or Email: sarah.millar@sisteris.com

Notes To Editors

The Film Makers

• Christopher Riley Director and Producer – First Orbit, worked on data from NASA’s Spacelab 1 project, flown on an early Shuttle mission, for his Ph.D. at Imperial College, University of London before embarking on a career making science documentaries for the BBC. He has worked with the NASA film archive for the past fifteen years on projects ranging from the BBC’s landmark series ‘The Planets’ to the highly acclaimed feature documentary film ‘In the Shadow of the Moon ’. He created his first video installation from this material for the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing during the summer of 2009. ‘Apollo Raw and Uncut ’ played in gallery spaces in London and Montreal and was the first time the entire 23 hours of Apollo mission flight film archive and been screening in public.

• Paolo Nespoli Director of Photography – First Orbit, is a European Space Agency astronaut. He was born the year that Sputnik was launched and went on to study aerospace engineering in both Milan and New York. Paolo was selected as an astronaut in 1998 and made his first space flight onboard Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-120) in October 2007 on a 15 day mission working on construction of the International Space Station. He returned to the Space Station in December 2010 as a member of Expedition 26 for a six month stay in orbit, conducting experiments in fluid physics, radiation, biology and technology demonstrations, as well as public outreach work like the First Orbit project.

• First Orbit was made in collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of the International Space Station.

• The film ‘First Orbit’ was created by matching the orbital path of the International Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin's Vostok 1 spaceship.

• The film can be seen theatrically on the 12 April at one of more than 200 “Yuri's Night” parties being held around the World to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of human space flight. For more information visit www.firstorbit.org

Yuri Gagarin & Vostok 1

• Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut who, on 12 April 1961, became the first human to journey into outer space, launching to orbit aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. His call sign for the flight was 'Cedar' - meaning Siberian Pine. Ground Control refered to themselves as Dawn.
• His pioneering flight around the world took 108 minutes.
• Unsure of the effect of space flight on a human being, the spacecraft's controls were run by an automatic system, with Gagarin only permitted to take control in an emergency.
• The flight of Vostok 1 began at 06:07 Universal Time (UT), boosted into orbit by a Vostok-K series rocket.
• Since the Vostok capsule's parachute landing system was deemed too rough for a cosmonaut to risk Gagarin ejected whilst still seven kilometres above the ground. He made his final descent on his own parachute and landed back on Earth 108 minutes after launch.
• He was back on Earth having flown right around the Earth by 07:55 UT.

How the film ‘First Orbit’ was made

• Whilst the film archive of Gagarin in training, preparing for his flight, and on his world tour afterwards, is extensive, footage of his actual flight hardly exists.
• When a new giant windowed cupola was added to the International Space Station in early 2010 documentary film maker Chris Riley came up with the idea of filming a new view of what Gagarin would have seen fifty years ago.
• The space station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes or so, but doesn't always follow the same route as Gagarin took. So to find out when filming opportunities might occur the European Space Agency (ESA) teamed Chris up with German orbital mechanics guru Gerald Ziegler.
• Ziegler discovered that the Space Station covered similar ground to Gagarin's spaceship every week or so. But to complicate things further the film makers needed to film at exactly the same time of day that Gagarin made his flight; passing over the launch site, near the Aral Sea, at 06:07 UT and on into the night side of Earth over the Pacific Ocean at 06:37, before emerging into sunlight again over the Southern Atlantic at 07:10 UT and passing across the whole African continent and the Middle East, and returning to the ground at 07:55 UT, just north of the Caspian Sea.
• Further calculations confirmed that opportunities to film this trajectory from the Space Station at this exact time of day only came round every six weeks or so.
• The second challenge was fitting these filming opportunities into crew time on board the Space Station. The astronauts are obviously very busy, conducting a packed programme of experiments, Earth observations and activities like sleep, exercise and meal times meant that accommodating this extra filming request was another problem for the ESA mission directors to solve.
• Mission directors Roland Luttgens and Giovanni Gravili worked closely with the team to turn the filming opportunities Gerald Ziegler identified into the precise technical notes needed to translate Chris's camera directions into instructions for the crew.

• After a brief test shoot in November 2010, conducted by NASA's expedition 25 astronaut Doug Wheelock, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli filmed most of the footage for the project in early January this year, showing the Earth as Gagarin would have seen it almost exactly fifty years before.
• The result is a mesmerising journey beyond the atmosphere - an entire orbit of the Earth in real time - that only around five hundred people have ever experienced for real. What Paolo has recorded is a very gritty, real view of the Earth from space. "You can see scratches and blemishes on the windows", says Chris, "and we’ve purposefully kept some of the moments when Paolo moves the camera in the film too, just to remind us that this footage has been recorded by human beings up there rather than unmanned robotic satellites."
• Paolo never appears in the film himself, but as the Space Station flies into the night side of the Earth over the north Pacific you can catch a glimpse of him reflected in the window as he floats towards the camera to adjust it.
• "Gagarin flew over a lot of ocean during his mission", Chris reminds us, "and on the days Paolo filmed there were some stunning cloud formations hanging over these deep blue vistas. But one of my favourite views from orbit occurs as we cross the Sahara Desert and head up towards the Middle East. There's the whole of north Africa and the glowing red Sahara and the winding dark Nile river laid out beneath us - just as Gagarin would have seen it as he made his final approach towards the landing site. Completely coincidently, as Paolo filmed this final leg of the flight, the camera lost its focus on the Earth and started to blur the view - giving the illusion that we are descending back into the atmosphere as Vostok 1 did during re-entry. "It was perfect for the end of the film" Chris reflects.

• "On this final flight path back towards his landing site, the scenes we shot for ‘First Orbit’ are slightly to the east of the original Vostok 1 trajectory" admits Chris "but because we are so high up the vista was pretty similar to that of Gagarin's vantage point."

• The finished film is being given away through the web site www.firstorbit.org and streamed to the world in a global YouTube premiere on the 12th April. “We hope it will be used as a central part of people's celebrations around the world on the 12th April” says Chris.

• One last difference, which the film makers have added, is the Moon. "When Gagarin flew into the night side of the Earth on the 12th April 1961 it was a crescent Moon" says Chris. "According to his autobiography Road to the Stars, he tried to look for the Moon out of curiosity, to see what it looked like from space. But unfortunately it was not in his field of view. 'Never mind' he writes, 'I'll see it next time.'" Sadly there was never a next time for Yuri. He was not allowed to fly into space again and died in a plane crash in 1968. "We thought it was a nice gesture to put in the Moon he never got to see", explains Chris.

• The Yuri's Night network of parties around the world will be showing it, but if there's not one happening in your area then why not download or stream the film and invite a few friends over and hold your own celebration. It's a unique opportunity to remember Yuri and the great adventure of human spaceflight that he kicked off 50 years ago.

The Music

• The music in the film is all composed by Philip Sheppard and comes from his album Cloud Song. First Orbit's producer Christopher Riley first worked with Philip in 2006 on the Sundance Award winning feature documentary film 'In the Shadow of the Moon' and since then Philip had been working on a new suite of music inspired by spaceflight. The result is a mesmerising combination of imagery and music which we hope convey the spectrum of emotions which no doubt went through Yuri's mind as he gazed down upon the Earth.

The Vostok 1 Mission Audio

• Audio recordings of Gagarin's flight were made both onboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft and back on Earth from the radio communications received during certain periods of his flight.

• With the help of Dr Iya Whitely from IACE, the British Council, the Russian Space Agency – Roscosmos and The Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation we have tracked down the original Vostok 1 mission audio recordings, digitally restored and translated them and weaved them into the film. We believe this is the first time the complete Gagarin Mission audio has been heard outside of Russia.

Credits and Partners

• Without the generous support of the European Space Agency (ESA) 'First Orbit' would never have been made. Their scientists, engineers and public affairs staff were invaluable partners in this project from start to finish.

• Other partners include YuriGagarin50 (YG50) in the UK and Yuri’s Night network.

• Without composer Philip Sheppard's spellbinding music the film would lack its emotional impact, and we are extremely grateful for his enthusiastic support.

• Iya Whiteley, from the human performance company IACE, generously gave her time to help us track down and translate the original mission archive audio recordings from the Vostok 1 flight.

• Additional audio archive research was supported by Andrea Rose and Alexandra Smirnova at the British Council, Vitaly Davydov and Tatiana Fomicheva at Roscosmos, Alexander Shaposhnikov and Vladimir Smirnov at The Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation.

• Film editor Tabitha Moore created our opening titles in her spare time, juggling our demands with her own very busy schedule.

• Stephen Slater, the film's editor, took on the onerous task of grappling with formats, resolutions, frame rates and world atlases to unravel the folders of media files we were sent from the Space Station, to turn them into a coherent film which accurately & beautifully charts the flight of Vostok 1.

• Additional orbital views of the Earth were sourced and supplied by NASA, where we are particularly grateful to Jody Russell, Gayle Frere, Mike Gentry, Silvia Gederberg, Sheva Moore, James Hartsfield and Kylie Clem.

• The Yuri's Night 2011 Executive Team have helped us promote the film to their network, and The Department of Humanities, Imperial College, London, Radio Zero in Portugal, d::gen network, collectSPACE, Redstation Limited, the KiwiSpace Foundation in New Zealand and the Victorian Space Science Education Centre in Australia, the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, the Foundation for Space Development, South Africa, and the South African Space Association are supporting us in our digital distribution of the film.

• Finally John Bradley at IT Centa has generously given his time to create firstorbit.org.

For further information, hires images and broadcast roll

Please contact Rufus Stone or Sarah Millar. T: +44 (0)20 7287 9601         Email: rufus.stone@sisteris.com or Email: sarah.millar@sisteris.com

For further information please contact Rufus Stone T: 44 (0)20 7287 9601        

Email: rufus.stone@sisteris.com

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