To the Moon and Beyond

To The Moon and Beyond is the title of a special motion picture produced for and shown at the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair. It depicted traveling from Earth out to an overall view of the universe and back again, zooming down to the atomic scale. It was filmed in a Cinerama process using a camera with a single fisheye lens and projected onto a dome screen.

The film was made in a format called "The New CINERAMA - 360 Process" It was shown in a 96 foot high "Moon Dome" that was part of Transportation and Travel building (Pavilion No. 123) in the Transportation section of the Fair and was presented by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. The film was narrated by Rod Serling.

Text from ad in the World's Fair Guide Book:

YOUR MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE

AT THE WORLD'S FAIR! THE NEW CINERAMA-360 PROCESS TAKES YOU...
TO THE MOON AND BEYOND
YOU will be propelled on the most fantastic, incredible voyage through billions of miles of space . . . from its utmost outer reaches . . . back to the Earth itself, and into the center of the minutest atom. All through the magic of Cinerama!
AT THE TRANSPORTATION & TRAVEL PAVILION 3 SHOWINGS EVERY HOUR

The film was created using Cinerama 360º - a process that recorded on 70mm film at 18 fps using a fish-eye wide angle lens. It was projected in a doomed theater using a similar wide angle projector. The film was made by Graphic Films Corporation, a company run by former Disney animator Lester Novros who had been making technical films for NASA, the US Air Force, and various aerospace clients.

Stanley Kubrick saw the film at the Fair and was so impressed by the its special effects and accurate depiction of scientifically based material he hired Graphic Films as a design consultant on a film he already had in pre-production, 2001, A Space Odyssey. Graphic Films' Lester Novros, Con Pederson, and background artist Douglas Trumbull would air-mail research based concept sketches and notes covering the mechanics and physics of space travel to Kubrick in England during pre-production. They would go on to create storyboards for a portion of the space flight sequences seen in the film. Trumbull would eventually leave Graphic Films to become a special effects supervisor on 2001.

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