Several of the recordings captured by the astronauts during the mission are featured in this documentary. These recordings by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins earned them honorary memberships in the American Society of Cinematographers.
In an interview in the March 8, 2019 New York Times, documentary filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller stated that his crew had their own mission rules regarding the footage used in the film: "We did have kind of our own mission rules. We said, if it didn't happen on that day at that specific time, we're not using it."
He did say that he did break this rule on several occasions, using shots from Apollo 8's propulsive push rather than Apollo 11's but that he would document where he used different clips from other launches.
He did say that he did break this rule on several occasions, using shots from Apollo 8's propulsive push rather than Apollo 11's but that he would document where he used different clips from other launches.
The filmmakers were given pretty much unrestricted access to the NASA film archives. Much of the footage used contains alternative camera angles and footage that has not been used before in any other moon landing documentary. The film footage was preserved in ideal archival conditions by NASA since it was shot fifty years ago so needed very little restoration work because of this.
The electronic music soundtrack was played entirely on instruments available in 1969.
The team that put together this documentary used the work that Ben Feist did when he increased the quality of 11,000 hours of digitized audio recordings of taken during the Apollo 11 launch, according to an article in the New York Times on March 8, 2019. Feist also detailed the recordings by minute and second, making it easier for the documentary team to sync up audio and video sequences.