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Christopher Riley describes the making of First Orbit, which uses footage shot from the International Space Station and original mission audio to recreate Yuri Gagarin’s historic first space flight • Follow Yuri Gagarin’s flight, live from 7.07am on Tuesday • Read an interview with Yuri Gagarin’s daughter • Watch a preview of First Orbit There comes a time in the history of a planet when any technologically advanced life forms that have evolved on its surface decide to send one of their species into space. Planet Earth had to wait over 4.6bn years for this moment, and when it came 50 years ago there were no cameras on board the spacecraft to capture for posterity the first spaceman’s view of his home. Rather than being an oversight, this probably had more to do with the fact that filming technology had been left behind by our sudden leap into the Space Age, and there simply wasn’t enought room inside the cramped Vostok 1 capsule for Yuri Gagarin to wield a primitive, bulky TV or film camera. So in early 2010, with the new giant cupola window installed on the International Space Station , and with digital filming technology now firmly in the Space Age, I began to wonder if it might be possible to trace Gagarin’s pioneering orbit around the Earth once more – and this time to film it. With the enthusiastic backing of the European Space Agency , the idea moved into its mathematics phase: to work out if the space station ever even crossed the same ground path as that of Vostok 1. Armed with the orbital elements of both spacecraft, Esa engineer Gerald Ziegler calculated that every six weeks we would get chances to film over the same ground and at the same time of day as Gagarin’s flight. The filming Using a transcript of Gagarin’s original mission communications, I began to story-board the film, listing the different camera angles we’d need from the cupola to illustrate what he’d seen. Working closely with Esa mission directors, we then began to translate these camera directions into technical procedures for the space station crew, using the language of modern space flight and the space station users manual as our guide. Esa astronaut Paolo Nespoli was scheduled to be on board the space station at the end of 2010, and would act as our director of photography, filming the scenes. Paolo is an experienced photographer and has worked with film cameras and dark rooms since he was a boy. He was due to reach the ISS in November, and if we were going to get the film finished in time for the 50th anniversary we would have just one opportunity to film our “first orbit” at the end of December and during early January. . Working closely with Ziegler and the mission directors, we refined our filming times every few days as the orbit of the space station shifted with each visit from a Soyuz spacecraft or a space shuttle. Through Christmas 2010 our master spreadsheet of camera instructions was tweaked and changed as we struggled to keep up with the drifting windows of opportunity for filming, trying to embed last-minute requests for Paolo into an already full crew schedule, and hoping for good weather around the entire planet on the days we would film. Due to the differences in flight path between the ISS and Vostok 1 we filmed our orbit in five different segments, each single camera take sometimes covering more than 10,000km of ground. Back on Earth, in the edit, the task of matching up these camera takes began, using Google maps to identify coastlines and eyeballing sun angles to guide our construction of the film. The music It quickly became apparent that to make the film more engaging I needed over 100 minutes of new music to go with the pictures and so, not really having a budget, I sent a cheeky email to composer Philip Sheppard – whom I’d collaborated with on the film In the Shadow of the Moon back in 2007. I didn’t expect a reply: Philip is very busy and in great demand. But he did write back – and emailed me a few tracks soon afterwards. They came from an album he’d been working on called Cloud Songs which was inspired, coincidentally, by space flight. And even more coincidentally it turned out that the tracks were already on the International Space Station. Philip is a friend of the husband of Nasa astronaut Catherine Coleman – who flew up to the station with Paolo in November – carrying Cloud Songs on her iPod. So at one end of the station Catherine was listening to the First Orbit music, while at the other end of the station Paolo was filming First Orbit, without either of them knowing. Philip’s music has been an invaluable part of the project and sets the different moods for the film, from the launch and flight over frozen Siberia, to the approach of the terminator and dusk, through the long dark night over the Pacific Ocean, to dawn breaking and the welcome return of the sun just south of Argentina. Then on into the morning light of the South Atlantic, Africa and the Middle East to re-entry and landing. Mission audio The third element of the film is Yuri Gagarin himself. From the start of the project we had transcripts of what he said during the mission and one of our goals was to track down the mission audio to incorporate into the film. Little did we know how hard it would be to find. Almost a year of enquiries by the Russian-speaking space flight consultant Dr Iya Whiteley eventually located it in the Russian State Archive, and with further assistance from the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos and the British Council , we managed to marry up Gagarin’s commentary with the new pictures. Hearing Yuri’s excited voice describing his first view of the Earth and his first experience of the weightlessness of space flight is mesmerising and places him and Sergei Korolev firmly back at the centre of this recreation of one of the most significant moments in the history of life on Earth. First Orbit will have its planet-wide premiere from 7.07am British Summer Time (6.07am GMT) youtube.com/firstorbit and on over 600 screens around the world in 60 countries . In the UK the BBC will screen it on their giant city centre screens across the country at exactly the same time as Gagarin made his flight 50 years ago – 07:07 BST on 12 April. Guardian Science will also host the film in conjunction with a live feed of mission updates and comms (via Twitter) in sync with the original flight. There is more information at firstorbit.org . And you can follow the Vostok 1 mission comms in real time on Twitter with hashtag #orbit1 and through the iPhone and Android Apps ‘First Orbit’. • Dr Christopher Riley is the producer and director of First Orbit and founder of the online film archive Footagevault Yuri Gagarin Space Documentary guardian.co.uk