Apollo 12: Ocean of Storms
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Spacecraft FilmsDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Restored, Special Edition, Surround Sound
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 630 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Spacecraft Films
Movie Reviews of Apollo 12: Ocean of Storms
Movie Review: "Blind" moonwalk made live !
Summary: 5 Stars
I just went through this another marvelous material from Spacecraftfilms and of course, I was most curious how they will manage with moonwalk reconstruction having not a full hour of both TV footage and 16mm sequence camera film footage available. They did very well! The combination of TV, film, photos, maps, training footage is made very lively extracting maximum from existing minimum. It's really a pitty that TV camera was gone - the few minutes available show that this colour camera quality has been a giant leap compared to the misty Apollo 11 pictures.
I have (again) a comment to the final part of the flight - parachute descent, splashdown and recovery. While the onboard parachute descent and recovery (after splasdown) footage is very good, the parachute descent footage taken either from the ship or rescue helicopter (?) is taken from a big distance and it's not focused. There must be some other - better quality - material available somewhere, however, I admit, it may be very difficult to locate it after so many years.
As the parachute landing is the integral part of the flight I would always appreciate more material, even having multi-angle option (onboard, from the ship, from the helicopter) in full length, the parachute descent does not take more than five minutes! The drogue chutes descent (not onboard)is also available ( with AS-16 at least, see NASA movie "Nothing so Hidden")- these are very rare and interesting materials. I hope that this kind of footage will be included in some of the Skylab or ASTP material (afraid it's too late for Apollo 14 and 16).
Launch sequence is short but very nice, the TV footage of the spent S-IVB after TLI is unusually long and also very nice (listen to the discussion between Pete Conrad and MCC trying to identify some light reflections from the stage - Conrad being quite excited, MCC cool and "not that much interested").
The most beautiful footage (for me) is the LM undocking and station keeping (it's even twice here - once in the Undocking section and the second time in the Lunar landing section). The light conditions are excellent and you can watch the LM from the undock to being far away (from CSM) above the lunar horizon - very impressive. I think this is the best from all Apollo missions.
Onboards are in usual very good quality, it would help to have chapters identified in the disc brochure.
Overall comment - excellent material, very challenging to put together, I can't wait the rest of Apollo and Mercury mainly, Spacecraftfilms deserves again a big THANKS!
Laurenc Svitok
Bratislava, Slovakia
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