Moon: Duncan Jones interview

Duncan Jones discovered a twist on the traditional film screening and subsequent Q&A. Instead of the director taking questions from the audience he’s asking said audience the questions. “Which side of the moon is best for Helium 3 mining?”
Jones was in Houston last March presenting his movie Moon to a doctrine of NASA scientists. After a string of film festival (Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW) screenings Moon gets a limited mid-summer release from Sony Pictures Classics.
“It’s not a PR stunt. NASA asked to see the film,” Jones grins. “Online one of the NASA employees asked ‘Why is it set on the far side of the moon, don’t they realize there are higher deposits of Helium 3 on the near side?’”
Moon stars Sam Rockwell as astronaut Sam Bell, working on a three-year solo mission for a mining company on the moon.
A whirlwind opening infomercial informs the audience that Helium 3 has replaced traditional fuels and is green as well as profitable. This sequence depicts harvesting the energy substance on the Moon and delivery systems that bring it to Earth.
“Helium 3 is a potential fuel for something called fusion power. It’s an energy source that could replace fossil fuel,” Jones tells Free Press Houston in an exclusive interview. “The problem with fusion is most of the fuels leave radioactive waste. Helium 3 burns clean but doesn’t exist in any great supply on Earth. On the Apollo mission when they brought back lunar rock samples they found concentrations of Helium 3.”
As Bell nears the end of his work contract he experiences profound fatigue. At one point Bell discovers that someone else is with him on the lone mining base. It’s a new version of himself come to replace his old self.
“The film was initially darker until Sam put his stamp on the role during some improvs. One of those was the “Walking on Sunshine” scene,” says Jones of a part of the film where the two Sams act out their aggressions arguing about the volume of the song by Katrina and the Waves playing on a portable device.
Jones modeled some of the shots after Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, which featured Jeremy Irons acting opposite himself.
Explains Jones: “We used a mechanical dolly that will replicate the same move twice, at the same speed and on the same plane. If you have a static object like the set, when the camera makes that move the second time the images overlap without ghosting but anything that is moving you can shoot in multiple versions.
“There was a lot of films we paid homage to,” adds Jones. “Silent Running being one of them, Outland, the original Alien. There were a few films that we that we consciously watched and thought about trying to isolate what it was we loved so much.” Throw in some fiction by Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, and 2000 A.D. the comic book from the UK. “2000 A.D. had these 1 and 2 page stories called Future Shocks,” recalls Jones.
“The science fiction today looks made by people who seem to be embarrassed about science fiction. You’re only supposed to like it if you watch the effects or are being wowed by the aliens themselves. The intellectual curiosity that you get from literature is something that doesn’t come across in films anymore.”
Bell’s work is aided by a computer, Gertie (voiced by Kevin Spacey). The monitor displays a smiley face as a kind of screen logo. “It’s an iconic image. I used the smiley face because I thought it was a nice illusion to the 70s era Smiley Face as well as icons that people use when they’re texting.
“I always worry that people are not going to take what I say in the right spirit, so I always add a wink face or use a smiley face at the end of the message. So, I thought if you’re building a machine to interact with a cranky blue-collar worker you want to keep his spirits up,” comments Jones.
In the recent Watchman movie the registered Smiley Face is used and royalties were no doubt paid. Jones grins in response to the copyright comment. “We did have to look into rights clearance. If you use the official Smiley Face with the black oval eyes, there’s a specific style of Smiley Face you pay for. What we created was a variation of texting icons, a colon here a bracket there. Gertie obviously references HAL from 2001. But I also wanted to set up expectations and then twist them,” Jones remarks about the computer. “There’s a philosophy that says if you believe a machine to be sentient you should treat it with the same moral value as another human.
For the interiors Jones shot in a Super 240 aspect ratio. The dimensions of the mining bases main corridor are 2.4 times wider than they are high. “When we’re shooting right down the middle of the hall it should be the same shape as the projection itself,” says Jones.
“There’s a book of photography from the Apollo moon missions called Full Moon by Michael Light. That was our visual reference for moon exteriors. Various astronauts while on the moon took all the photos, and it’s black and white until you see a sparkle of gold from one of the pieces of equipment.
“Our exteriors were done with model miniatures, again trying to reference the science fiction films I mentioned earlier. Cameron’s Aliens has some amazing miniatures work. What we’re able to do is use modern post-production techniques on top of model miniatures. I personally built a huge piece of lunar landscape. Shoveling sand and covering it with Fuller’s earth. The lunar rovers are being pulled across the ground with fishing line. That gave us a textured believable look.
“We had a company, Cinesite in the UK, digitally extend the lunar landscape and enhance the models. The star field was digital. Technically the stars don’t show up in photographs. But when we tried the scene with a black sky it looks wrong,” explains Jones, who adds. “There’s so much reflectivity off the surface of the moon from the direct sunlight that it obscures the stars. The level of brightness is known as the albedo by scientists.
Since the film features Sam Rockwell in almost every scene you don’t realize the number of ways different actors pop up. In video transmission from the home planet Bell talks to colleagues and his daughter.
“Kaya Scodelario who plays Eve Bell is in a very popular television show called Skins in the UK; then there’s Matt Berry, who’s a successful comedian and on a show called The IT Crowd; and Benedict Wong a terrific actor and a buddy, he’s was in Sunshine.” Jones himself makes a vocal cameo appearance as a radio commentator heard in the airwaves during the closing sequence.
Moon opens on July 3 at the Angelika Film Center.