operation avalanche ( film )
operation avalanche is a found - footage nasa conspiracy thriller shot clandestinely on real locations .
i just can' t get over how intense operation avalanche was, jesus christ .
screenprism spoke with johnson and producer matthew miller at the sxsw premiere of operation avalanche .
operation avalanche is expected to land in toronto theatres later this year — and that’s no hoax .
read more: sundance review: ‘dr. strangelove’ meets christopher guest in moon conspiracy tale ‘operation avalanche’
xavier dolan' s latest leads the race, with race, operation avalanche and weirdos close behind .
looking for movie tickets? enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing operation avalanche near you .
toronto director matt johnson’s operation avalanche is set to enjoy its world premiere at the sundance film festival in park city, utah, in january .
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operation avalanche
director matt johnson in the mission control room at johnson space center in houston, texas .
operation avalanche (matt johnson). 94 minutes. opens friday (september 30). see listing. rating: nnn
operation avalanche, a film by toronto' s matt johnson, speculates about the rumored faking of the apollo 11 moon landing. the film has been selected to make its world premiere at the 2016 sundance film festival in park city, utah .
poster for operation avalanche. filmmaker matt johnson says the film relies heavily on recent updates to “fair use” laws regarding artistic appropriation of material previously considered untouchable due to copyright restrictions .
operation avalanche
is an inventive grab - bag of a film, a movie about making a movie that no one was supposed to know was a movie at all .
conspiracy theories and cold war - paranoia pulse through “operation avalanche, ” a comedy - thriller directed by matt johnson. it opens friday .
even though you have lived your entire life in toronto, you decided not to have
operation avalanche
premiere at the toronto international film festival last fall, for sundance this past january .
in addition to being a suspenseful action flick with plenty of laughs, operation avalanche is an homage to film and the process of making movies, from documentaries to science fiction. while the film’s characters demonstrate some filmmaking methods from the days of yore, the zapruder team had to develop some new techniques to make it look like operation avalanche was shot on 16mm and then buried for 50 years .
there’s a great chase scene involving vintage 1960s cars that looks like something hollywood would have cooked up on a much bigger budget than operation avalanche enjoyed .
but seriously, johnson interjected, operation avalanche relies heavily on recent updates to “fair use” laws regarding artistic appropriation of material previously considered untouchable due to copyright restrictions .
“operation avalanche” premiered at this year’s sundance film festival before going on to screen at south by southwest in march and will screen montreal’s fantasia festival next week. it will hit theaters on september 16th from lionsgate premiere .
park city, utah—“i want to give a shout out to our legal team right now, ” a smiling matt johnson said following friday’s sundance film festival world premiere of operation avalanche, his apollo 11 moon hoax thriller .
matt johnson, director and star of
operation avalanche ,
is documented by a film crew at the l. a. times studio at the sundance film festival in park city, utah, on jan. 23. (jay l. clendenin / los angeles times )
operation avalanche
shows real historical footage from nasa' s apollo days as well as footage of real nasa employees at work. none of them had any idea about the film' s true purpose at the time .
xyz films, which is made up of ucla tft alums and producers nate bolotin, nick spicer (m. f. a. ’06) and aram tertzakian, has the film operation avalanche showing in the sundance next section .
race comes in just behind juste la fin du monde with eight overall nominations, while before the streets, operation avalanche and weirdos, tie for third place with six each .
that film has already secured distribution with lionsgate for 2016, so be sure to be on the lookout this year to see it for yourself. for more on operation avalanche, be sure to visit them on sundance, imdb and facebook .
the end result is the clever found - footage conspiracy thriller
operation avalanche ,
which premiered in january at sundance and opened friday at the nuart theater in west los angeles .
director hugh gibson stands with his award for best canadian film for his film
the stairs
at the toronto film critics association awards, on tuesday, january 10, 2017 .
cinematographers jared raab and andy appelle (who play the cameramen in the film as well), and film editor curt lobb recently shared some secrets with us about how they seamlessly blended original footage with archival, creating a look for operation avalanche that sold the period — and on a relatively small budget too .
“operation avalanche” is rated r (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). reds under the bed and something nasty in the garage. running time: 1 hour 33 minutes .
for all their (remarkably successful) attempts to steal shots from nasa and shepperton studios (as described in the video above when they are thrown out of shepperton because of the avengers), it seems the venture has paid off. operation avalanche was accepted to sundance after what johnson describes as “a miracle”. regardless of any divine intervention, it seems johnson, raab and appelle’s previous film the dirties helped pave the way to sundance, as everyone was waiting for their next film: operation avalanche .
we will have a pre - release screening of operation avalanche on tuesday, september 6 at 4pm in the folino theater. the filmmakers matt johnson (writer / director / producer) will be in attendance for a q & a after the film .
well, in terms of being accessible, the dirties was released on vod and streaming platforms, and operation avalanche is coming out in theaters. so that’s gotta be a huge difference, just in terms of the number of eyes on your film .
a cute, spunky found - footage thriller undone by a lumpy plot and a weak ending, “operation avalanche” revisits the urban legend that the moon landing was faked, with some fresh twists .
after debuting at the sundance film festival earlier this year, the faux documentary operation avalanche will be coming to theaters this fall. and for conspiracy theorists who think the moon landing was faked by the government, this could just be more fuel to the fire .
we spoke at sundance just after the premiere of operation avalanche, but you’ve been on the festival circuit for quite awhile now. have you noticed any trends or similarities with the way audiences react ?
soon you’ll get to know exactly what we mean; operation avalanche should hit theaters later this year. lionsgate snapped up the film months ago, and already has a distribution plan. in the meantime, fire up room 237 and start polishing your tin - foil hat .
dolan also picked up a best director nod for his film. he’ll compete against chloe leriche for avant les rues (before the streets), kevan funk for hello destroyer, matt johnson for operation avalanche, and mathieu denis and simon lavoie for “ those who make revolution. ”
after making its toronto premiere at the hot docs festival – a ballsy programming choice, given that it isn’t a documentary – matt johnson’s operation avalanche finally gets a theatrical run at the tiff bell lightbox this week .
i have never watched a piece of content that so immediately resonated with me as much as the first episode of nirvanna the band the show. and then it was the dirties. and now it' s operation avalanche .
with operation avalanche opening in limited release last weekend – and expanding into more theaters tomorrow – i spoke with johnson via telephone to get his thoughts on the film’s reception, his current relationship with nasa, and the new series he’s been working on for the past year. enjoy the interview below .
operation avalanche tells the story of four undercover cia agents in 1967 who seek to document nasa and america’s race to the moon. only problem being that nasa won’t make it in time, so the agents decide it’s time to fake the moon landing before russia beats them to it. from writer / director matt johnson, operation avalanche required a discreet camera that could allow them to keep filming on the down low, which led them to the blackmagic pocket cinema camera .
this friday (sept. 16) an ethically questionable and totally thrilling fake documentary about the first moon landing premieres in theaters. in the film, titled
operation avalanche ,
two cia agents pose as documentary filmmakers to infiltrate nasa and investigate a russian mole. then they stage the 1969 apollo 11 moon landing .
premieres jan. 22 at the sundance film festival (sundance. org) .
just when you thought the found footage genre was dead (again), along comes operation avalanche, a movie that is thankfully not another cheap horror film - - it’s a cheap thriller of sorts. largely forgettable and annoyingly acted, the movie has its moments but never amounts to a whole lot. full movie review »
i remember my very first film’s public show. it was in 2005 as part of the student thesis - festival at cleveland state university. together with my film school classmates – i organized a small film event, consisting of several thesis films from our final production class at csu’s film program. our goal was to get together
operación avalancha (operation avalanche) de matt johnson es un falso documental que aborda el mito de que el alunizaje de 1969 fue falso y que las imágenes que se vieron de la llegada del hombre a la luna se rodaron en un plató .
the rogers best canadian film award, voted on by the 39 members of the toronto film critics association, features a cash prize of $ 100, 000. the two runners - up – matt johnson’s operation avalanche, about a cia operative trying to fake a moon landing, and kazik radwanski’s how heavy this hammer, a drama about a man addicted to online gaming – each received $ 5, 000 .
i’m glad you mentioned shooting illegally, because one of the most interesting pieces of operation avalanche is that you guys went into nasa under false pretenses, and shot a bunch of footage that ended up in the film. at sundance, they hadn’t really commented on that – but between then and now, have you heard from them ?
that’s not to suggest you shouldn’t check out operation avalanche when you get a chance — the shepperton sequence alone is worth it. (it should be released by lionsgate sometime this year .) but i’m much more excited about what matt johnson does next .
awesome, man, i’m glad things are going so well. operation avalanche was one of my favorite films at sundance, and i’m glad it’s getting a theatrical release. i’m excited for you, and hopefully we’ll get a chance to chat again soon .
movie news, screening invitations and reviews from the world of independent film and beyond .
me thinks the reports of the demise of found footage films was premature! every time i turn around i keep finding brilliant examples that quite frankly blow my mind! in fact. . i was so immensely pleasured by this titillating government conspiracy found footage film that you can now find operation avalanche listed in the newly revised kama sutra; - )
character matt and andrew have id cards made up with their titles of director and camera, respectively. this reflects their real life status as operation avalanche' s director and cinematographer. this sequence is supposed to subtly act as an opening credits sequence without breaking character .
“operation avalanche” doesn’t mark the first time director matt johnson and owen williams have played “themselves, ” although it’s hard to imagine a more inventive use of the duo’s reality - blurring faux - doc sensibility, which previously earned them top honors at slamdance 2013 for “the dirties. ” pretending to be the film crew that faked the apollo 11 moon landing, [ … ]
thankfully, operation avalanche has more going for it than its questionable legality. (it' s not that questionable; johnson actually shouted out the film' s lawyer following its sundance screening .) set against the backdrop of the cold war in 1967, it' s by turns a buddy comedy, a thriller, a conspiracy theory film, and—thanks to a gnarly car chase—an action movie. it starts out like a christopher guest film, winds its way through oliver stone’s jfk and / or wag the dog, and eventually becomes enemy of the state .
the moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the apollo program and the associated moon landings were hoaxes staged by nasa with the aid of other organisations. operation avalanche was the preceding order in the arms and space race to bankrupt the soviet union in the cold war .
it also looks like vintage film, with much grainy b & w and desaturated colour imagery .
curt lobb: pablo would mess with the film reels; he’d dirty and scratch them up .
new print created by sundance institute and ucla film & television archive. shown by permission of miramax
what kept running through my mind throughout the last third of operation avalanche was just how much better the film could have been if it had ditched the found footage conceit and told its story in a more conventional form; if it could have focused on simply telling the best version of this story instead of constantly servicing the set - up. matt johnson’s first film, the dirties, followed a similar approach, using a meta - documentary premise to tell the story of a pair of friends making a movie about bullying that goes horribly awry. it’s clear he’s comfortable with the format, and to his credit operation avalanche is more ambitious in every possible way. but it’s already clear that johnson is a young filmmaker who has outgrown this particular bit of cinematic sleight of hand .
operation avalanche is a period found footage film following a pair of young cia agents (matt johnson and owen williams) who initially go undercover at nasa to expose a russian mole. but while posing as a documentary crew, they actually learn that there’s no way nasa is going to win the race to the moon. so they have an idea, and you already know what it is .
his follow - up, operation avalanche ,
investigates the truth behind the cia' s involvement in the space race
and promises to be just as invigorating as his debut. according to a press release, lionsgate has snapped up all u. s. and canadian rights to the film. production is scheduled to begin on june 30 in toronto, houston, and washington d. c .
that conversation has taken center stage with you lately, and seems to be accompanying your film here .
i kept hoping that
operation avalanche
would eventually get so good that it would force me to overcome my innate skepticism. i didn' t need the film to do anything except make me feel something for these characters, or at least make me want to invest in their cover - up scheme. that moment never came, and i can' t help but feel that' s because johnson and boles didn' t do enough research on the type of characters who would, in the' 60s, leap at the chance to fake the moon - landing. you can only coast so far on a novel idea' s fumes, and
operation avalanche
doesn' t go far enough .
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operation avalanche is set to enjoy its world premiere at the sundance film festival in park city, utah, later this month. the logline is appealing: a pair of cia agents infiltrate nasa in 1967 and endeavour to fake the moon landing – a period mockumentary. but when johnson wants to make a movie about the infiltration of nasa, he isn' t content to merely stage it. he needs to infiltrate nasa for real .
here are the salient points: johnson’s first film, the dirties, didn’t play tiff, and johnson chose to take operation avalanche to sundance 2016 rather than offer it to tiff 2015. plenty of canadian filmmakers aren’t happy with tiff, but few of them will say so on the record, so johnson instantly became a maverick. he’s also willing to discuss his dissatisfaction with telefilm canada’s funding preferences, and that has generated even more coverage .
reviewed at sundance film festival (next), jan. 28, 2016. running time: 94 min .
stranger things is a great example of that. it has the look of an ’80s movie through and through, but you know it’s not an ’80s movie because you’re not watching it on film. film does all these weird things that look like mistakes, but you can’t plan them. through this process, we discovered that if you want something to look like it’s on film, the only way to get that look consistently is to actually use film .
a multimillion - dollar car chase, mind you, requires more than the will of one man' s creative aspirations. johnson was afforded the opportunity by lions gate entertainment, which will distribute operation avalanche in the united states this year. that' s a rare privilege for an independent filmmaker from toronto; few reach escape velocity and make it stateside. johnson is of course well aware of that – and made the decision himself to premiere at sundance rather than locally, at the toronto international film festival, which had invited him to screen the film this past september .
operation avalanche is a very difficult beast to describe, but an easy one to love. set in the late 1960s during the simultaneous cold war and space race between the u. s. and russia, it’s structured like a documentary within a documentary, but it plays like a vintage espionage thriller or 1970s paranoia classic like the parallax view .
he definitely has a point. tiff and telefilm could both be doing a lot better by emerging filmmakers; johnson’s sparked a conversation the industry very badly needs to have, and i’m really glad he’s done this. but now that operation avalanche is playing in town, we have to shift the focus back to the movie, not its maker .
across the walls of the zapruder offices sprawl pages of script notes and storyboards for projects in the works – bigger and more ambitious projects than even operation avalanche, though of the details i have for now been sworn to secrecy. but i do wonder if johnson isn' t concerned about having his intentions so plainly on display. not a chance .
necessary to be a late - night talk radio / dorm room smoke session favorite: a super - secret government organization (probably the cia) enlists a filmmaker (possibly stanley kubrick) to fake footage of us astronauts on the moon. matt johnson milks this preposterous idea for drama and laughs in * operation avalanche, * which opened at sundance last week .
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johnson: i think it had to start as something linked to a new film, but hopefully the conversation keeps going .
we' re thrilled to be in good company at the guanajuato international film festival, mexico: urltoken - july 23rd .
ucla film & television archive, in conjunction with the sundance institute and others, has digitally preserved and / or has had new prints created for the following films, which premiered at the sundance film festival and will be shown again in january .
but here' s the crazy part: the makers of
operation avalanche
say they really did lie to nasa so they could gain access to the johnson space center in houston, texas. there, they told nasa that they were filming a real documentary about the moon landing. instead, the filmmakers created a hilarious but fake documentary about faking the moon landing .
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
after
the dirties
picked up the grand jury prize at the slamdance film festival, the 31 - year - old toronto - based filmmaker and his crew thought about expanding the model they created for the first film and make a period documentary .
operation avalanche is, in the end, a clever entertainment, but all the work that johnson, boles, and co. have put in — the savvy recreations and incorporation, the documentary - style filming, not to mention plugging into a world of conspiracies both imagined and real — gives it extra resonance. for what emerges is a portrait of a time period when our whole relationship with the filmed image was beginning to change. americans had already seen a president shot on tv. they would soon see men walking on the moon, even as they also saw images of death and destruction in vietnam. the earnest enthusiasm with which operation avalanche begins, and the paranoia and fear toward which it proceeds, chart the course of an entire nation .
and operation avalanche is… well, it’s fine. conceptually, it’s pretty nifty, taking the form of a found - footage conspiracy thriller about a pair of junior cia agents (johnson and his dirties co - star owen williams, once again using their own names for their characters) who attempt to out a russian mole at nasa and wind up faking the apollo 11 moon landing .
the one thing i really like about operation avalanche that really kind of sets it apart from other indie flicks is that it feels like a lot of indie directors are trying to go for this darker, nihilistic or pessimistic tone, and there’s such an air of optimism in this film. especially with your character – no matter what obstacle you put in his way, he’s going to get it accomplished, which – after speaking with you a few times – seems like just an extension of who you really are .
mm: especially [ documentaries ] from the period, especially the look of the film, all those seminal docs from the 60s .
the sequence is simply delightful, and it’s operation avalanche at its very best: clever, funny, and so in love with movies themselves that it nearly forces you to smile. those kind of flashes come throughout the film — it may be the only found footage movie i’ve ever seen where they show somebody actually cutting the footage you’re watching — but that delight starts to fall away as the team begins to suspect that they’re being hunted by russian agents, or even worse, double - crossed by the cia because they know too much .
what they’re really doing is trying to unmask a russian mole within nasa, but in the course of their sleuthing, they discover nasa has been hiding an earth - shaking fact: the space agency is nowhere near ready to land a man on the moon, not in time to meet the end - of - decade deadline set by late president john f. kennedy, whose bold challenge opens operation avalanche .
just don' t ask them to give you justifications for the more implausible footage ostensibly captured by the film - within - the - film' s
documentarians .
put on the spot, johnson would probably just invent an elaborate, if entertaining, set of lies .
the nominations for the 2017 canadian screen awards were announced tuesday, honouring the best in canada’s film and television industries over the past year .
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operation avalanche is a sly little comedy - thriller, but, also like room 237, it’s an act of movie love. “the moon landing is the greatest movie ever made, ” johnson tells me in a sundance condo, his boyish enthusiasm echoing the eager cheerfulness of the film - buff character he plays in the movie (a character named, appropriately enough, matt johnson). “what piece of cinema is more famous than neil armstrong walking on the moon? ” the only other possible contender is probably the one that gave johnson’s production company its name: zapruder films .
turning lack of sophistication into a virtue is a skill that the filmmaking hyphenate matt johnson has in abundance. three years ago, he directed and starred in his first feature, “the dirties, ” a shrewd commentary on the warped relationship between image and reality. now he and his prime collaborator, owen williams, are back to poke that beast some more with “operation avalanche, ” a cold war comedy - thriller pulsing with paranoia .
the film is directed by matt johnson, who co - wrote the script with josh boles. johnson previously directed “the dirties, ” about two high school best friends who make a film about getting revenge on school bullies only for one of them to take it more seriously than the other .
johnson, who recently received a master' s degree in film at york university in toronto, chatted on the phone from his hometown this week .
villeneuve’s next film is the hotly anticipated blade runner 2049 with ryan gosling and harrison ford. presenting the prize, mckellar joked that the director’s last film, the science - fiction drama arrival, was really about bilingualism, and an alien race that comes to earth and forces us to learn their language .
while i prefer matt johnson' s more comedic work, operation avalanche' s more dramatic approach is pretty effective. it' s clear a lot of thought and care went into developing the world and logic. the visual aesthetic, too, is pretty remarkable, especially considering the fact it was filmed with a blackmagic pocket cinema camera - and the amount of' illegal' filming that they actually got away with is also pretty impressive to learn about .
ingeniously using his low budget to address his ambitions, johnson has directed, co - written (and starred in) a unique science - fiction film .
for his first film, 2013' s
the dirties ,
which revolved around two high school friends making a film about the school' s bullies that goes awry, matt johnson wanted to make it so authentic he enrolled in a high school and convinced students and teachers he was an actual student .
the ballad of narayama
is a japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. what a space it opens…
i left the film thinking of shakespeare’s famous line: “there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ”
congratulations to the class of 2018! above is a snapshot of the thesis film projects completed by the this year’s graduating class. this reel features the narrative, animation / visual effects and documentary projects created by the 2018 graduates of dodge college of film and media arts at chapman university. this video was compiled and edited by
it’s very hard to convince people of that when you’re dreading the result. and in many ways, operation avalanche talks about where that can lead, and the really dark, awful places that can take people like me. which it did – the story of that movie is very much the story of that movie getting made. but i think that real life is pretty optimistic and buoyant, and when movies come out that try to say it’s not, i try to reject that .
ultimately, the movie falls apart for the same reason so many other found - footage films do: it wants to tell a bigger story than the premise allows. watching documentary footage of johnson and his team building a fake lunar rover on a soundstage makes complete sense within the framework of the film; accepting that somebody’s going to keep a camera rolling when people’s lives are at stake, or when the characters find themselves in a high - speed car chase with bullets whizzing by, simply doesn’t. if i’m thinking about the feasibility of the style, i’m not inside the world of the movie — and operation avalanche kicked me out time and again .
we did a full color grade on the digital and then our film artist did multiple prints on different film stocks to get different [ looks ]. we did physical damage. i took a piece of the movie, hung it on my bike and rode my bike around the university campus so that it would get all destroyed .
this apollo - era would - be suspense - thriller mockumentary is more an exercise in' look how film - school cool and clever we are' than anything else .
in 1967, four undercover cia agents were sent to nasa posing as a documentary film crew. what they discovered led to one of the biggest conspiracies in american history .
it’s not the cleanest of set - ups, and the with the actors playing roles named after themselves and the film we’re watching ostensibly a documentary made by the group’s own team, the movie starts eating its own tail pretty early on. but operation avalanche is nevertheless a blast in the early stages, blurring the lines between reality and fiction as the duo first set up shop at nasa, then start outlining how they’d actually fake footage from the moon. johnson isn’t terribly strong as an actor, particularly in the heavier dramatic scenes, but he nails the overeager, selfish buffoon aspect of his character, and is immensely entertaining even while his character alienates the members of his team .
it seemed awfully easy to for you and your crew to get permission from nasa to film there by telling them you were college students doing a documentary on the apollo mission .
these kids are similar to our film’s characters. they’re just guys messing around with a movie camera, which is why that footage of them goofing around in the street and waving to people fit so well in our film. because filmmakers were so serious during that era, very little footage of that kind of jovial, loose camera stuff exists on 16mm .
while i was on a shooting hiatus with my last film, in football we trust, i lived in israel / palestine for 7 months on a rotary ambassadorial scholarship, which i had been awarded after graduating from chapman university. while there, i taught film, mentored local filmmakers, assisted ngos launch media advocacy projects, and continued my post - graduate
it sounds like comedy, and the film has many funny moments — but there are also many frightening ones, when other players in the scenario set out to silence any squealers .
much like the characters they portray in the film, johnson and his team gained access to nasa under false pretenses – they posed as a documentary crew shooting a film about the apollo missions. when you see their onscreen counterparts inside mission control, those aren’t sets – they’re the actual locations, and in most cases the crew had only a single take to get the scene just right. the result is an engrossing and entertaining film about one of the oldest conspiracy theories in america, and the ambitious cia agents who managed to pull it off .
they just do a fantastic job of showing how the moon landing could have been convincingly faked to a pre - internet world — the film crew even built a realistic lunar landing module .
aa: there’s that interesting sequence with bracket saying he’s going to shoot down apollo 11. matt [ johnson ] buried that film because it’s the first thing his character buries in the movie .
johnson: that was his big project, he did all the vfx, there are about 200 effects shots in the film, but that was his baby. we had already gone to shepperton studios and broke in and shot those scenes illegally. that was the first film we rolled, was us breaking into that studio. we shot it when we were over there for the uk release of
melanie duke (bfa / da ’17) started a new role with 20th century fox as a creative content coordinator. erika cohn’s (bfa / fp ’09) film will receive its la theatrical release on april 20th at the laemmle monica film center. erika will be around afterwards for a q & a. jj englert (bfa / crpr ’15) has started a company, industry jump ,
howie mandel hosts the 2017 canadian screen awards, to be broadcast live from toronto’s sony centre for the performing arts on sunday, march 12. here is the complete list of film and television nominees :
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the group also presented quebec director denis villeneuve with the tfca 20th anniversary award for excellence, recognizing his record three wins of the best canadian film prize, for 2009’s polytechnique, 2010’s incendies, and 2013’s enemy .
canada’s richest film prize has been won by toronto filmmaker hugh gibson for his documentary the stairs, a penetrating and sympathetic portrayal of the city’s regent park neighbourhood, focusing on three staff members at its community health centre .
we never told them ,
said matt johnson, the director and lead actor .
we invited them to the screening of the movie at the south by southwest film festival, but no one ever came .
even though we were using a lot of older stocks, they would have been from the ’80s, not the ’60s. film technology has improved to the point where film is much better now than it was in the ’60s, so we had to do some degrading early on in the first color pass. shift some of the blacks a little toward red. things that these ’60s films naturally do. conor was huge for that .
that was our first big challenge. we started shooting the color footage on 16 and then we started realizing that we were shooting so much footage — we were going through 10, 000 feet a day. we realized we could get a film artist to [ reprint digital footage ] on 16mm. conor fisher used a lab and did a one - to - one exchange of every single frame of the film. it took him four months .
mj: but i don' t think many people watching the film are going to read those things instantly. because on the surface it' s sort of a conspiracy thriller, as opposed to a criticism of government .
mj: yeah, that was pretty complicated. and that was the biggest challenge technically going into this movie was to make it look like we shot on 16mm. so we did everything. the opening of the movie is actually shot on black - and - white 16mm film. we had a really smart film artist named pablo perez do a frame - to - frame transfer of the entire movie to 16mm in a really, really dirty lab in toronto .
( full disclosure: xyz films, in which screenanarchy founder and editor todd brown is a partner, is involved in the production and sales of the film. he was not involved in the writing or editing of this article. )
the film stars johnson and owen williams, johnson’s accomplice in the dirties, as two young cia agents posing as filmmakers. they are pretending to be making a documentary about nasa’s preparations for the july 1969 first moon landing by apollo 11 .
life after death: it’s just the first month of 2016, but it seems safe to say there will be no crazier film this year involving major actors than swiss army man, the existential love story having its world premiere at sundance .
it' s the cheapest way to make a movie ,
he jokes by way of explanation .
whatever the characters are going after is the same as the film itself. if we can align those things it makes it easy for us. the less i get in the way of what' s happening in real life while i' m shooting, the better it is. the less work we do ahead of time, the better the film is .
johnson and co - writer josh boles, who also stars in the film, don’t actually believe that apollo 11 was a hoax. they studied the many conspiracies theories out there, as any fan of the x - files would tell you .
mj: it’s mostly what you see in the movie. in both cases, in fact, what we show the audience is more or less what we did. with nasa, we went in posing as a documentary film crew saying that we were from a film school in toronto, which we both were at the time. and we said we were making a documentary about the apollo program, in the exact same way the characters say they’re making a documentary about the apollo program .
the canada majority copro with france, which is currently vying for a best foreign language film nomination for the 2017 oscars, was produced by dolan and nancy grant of sons of manual, nathanaël karmitz of paris - based mk2 and sylvain corbeil .
with a full budget of $ 1. 25 million and a physical production budget of just $ 400, 000, johnson and his team needed to keep costs down. this was helped by their need to be discrete, forcing them to use no additional lighting as well as use small lavalier mics with zoom recorders. their choice of lenses, old bolex glass from the 40s and 50s, also helped keep costs down while helping them achieve the filmic look that was necesary for the period piece. shooting in prores helped save digital space and kept them from needing too many sd cards. the other half of their budget, roughly another $ 400, 000, went toward licensing music for operation avalanche, such as tracks from creedence clearwater revival .
you know what? it' s pass / fail. i passed. my professors were really happy with the film. they thought i was crazy at first, but in the end i think they were surprised i was able to do it .
, i wish they didn’t include press on my film because it’s now angled the story so it seems as though i’m talking about my own career in relation to telefilm. i’ve made out fine; i just understand that system because i went through those things .
johnson: as lightly as we could. what i didn’t want was for him to be a character in the film and have someone play him, it would be so hokey—but as soon as tristan zerafa was like,' i can just make him.'
you’ve done a couple of these found footage films where you have a dual role as the camera operator: using camera movement to emote, yet still capturing the action. is doing this type of film second nature by now, or do you get specific direction ?
xavier dolan’s cannes winner juste la fin du monde (it’s only the end of the world) picked up nine canadian screen awards film nominations, including one for best picture, the academy of canadian cinema and television announced tuesday morning at a press event in toronto .
dolan’s latest is one of 10 films nominated for best picture at the 2017 csas. also nominated are les mauvaises herbes (bad seeds), produced by luc vandal and lorraine dufour; avant les rues (before the streets), produced by chloe leriche; hello destroyer, produced by daniel domachowski and haydn wazelle; old stone, produced by xianjian wu, chi - an lin, jing wang, and sarah stallard; operation avalanche, produced by matthew miller, lee kim and matt johnson; race, produced by louis - philippe rochon, dominque seguin, jean - charles levy and luc dayan; maliglutit (searchers), produced by zacharias kunuk; those who make revolution halfway only dig their own graves, produced by hany ouichou; and weirdos, produced by marc almon, mike macmillan and bruce mcdonald .
the aptly named zapruder films operates out of a house just off the trendy queen street west in toronto. with criterion movie posters plastered on just about every square inch of wall space, shelves of dvds arranged chronologically, and a nintendo 64 in the living room, it feels more like a film student’s dorm room than a production house. while some of the staff do live there, nearly a dozen full - time creatives also work from the house, contributing to some of the most interesting and exciting films coming out of today’s independent film scene .
sundancing: i also caught friday night’s hot - ticket midnight world premiere of babak anvari’s under the shadow, a horror film set in the tehran of 1988 during the iran - iraq war, with a mother and daughter dodging bombs as well as an evil presence in their home .
mj: you mean, thematically, what it is we’re trying to do with this film? that’s a good question because i' m sure it could get misconstrued that we think that that this is almost like a proof of concept that the moon landing was faked. and because you put so much work into this film and we want audiences watch it, it’s almost like we' re trying to create a thesis that this is how it happened, and you should believe this. but really that’s a very surface reading of what this movie’s actually about .
our producers are always telling us to shred our creative documents. why? this is the great gift of the things we do: they' re not stealable. somebody could have gotten a hold of our avalanche script before we made the movie. what are they going to do? it says to sneak into nasa and stage a $ 2 - million car chase. what is anyone going to do with this ?
jr: get it as close as possible. we noticed that when we went to film, it smoothed out everything. it took all of the slight differences, the curves, and the grain structure, and it painted a layer over the top that gave it a unified look .
as much of the film is “shot secretly” in places such as nasa and stanley kubrick’s london studios, matt johnson and his cinematographers / performers andrew appelle and jared raab needed the blackmagic pocket cinema camera to get great footage while being as low profile as possible. “we needed a camera you could have under your coat, ” says johnson. but not just any camera of course, one you could shoot a film on. the pocket cinema camera (which, as appelle points out, had only been out for less than a month) was their camera of choice for these secretive shoots because of its size combined with its dynamic range. as raab explains, “when we found the pocket camera it just fit both something tiny and compact, where we could do our secret shooting, but it also had the dynamic range that could totally sell this film. ”
so he called mike after the film to say “hey, i just saw this” and he gave him my phone number. so i’m hoping the individuals at nasa get a chance to see it and have the same response that these guys did, because they went wild. it was awesome .
mj: no, we haven' t heard from either of them, but we reached out to nasa because obviously galveston is not too far away from austin [ where the film played at sxsw ], inviting the people from nasa to come to the screening, but we haven’t heard anything yet .
a film like this is a lot like watching an incredibly well constructed and performed magic trick; convincing you that what you' re seeing is real, even if it goes against everything you' ve known before hand, and there' s a greater sense of relief and satisfaction when everything comes together flawlessly .
mj: and of people having so much power. in our film, two guys essentially are changing history because the c. i. a thinks that' s going to be good for the cold war, not really seeing the ethical dilemmas that owen keeps bringing up during the film. and of course because matt cares about nothing other than his own self - promotion, he doesn' t ask those questions of himself at all until the very, very end when he thinks, “oh wow, maybe i shouldn' t have done this. maybe the costs to success are higher than i had first thought. ”
this movie is not based on a true story. nasa really has landed six missions and 12 astronauts on the moon. but the film will likely spark the interest of conspiracy theorists who believe nasa did, in fact, fake the moon landing — which it didn' t. [ top 10 apollo hoax theories ]
we needed them to [ find ] the film clips, which they did, which was really amazing. right now that photographic department is closed at nasa, sadly. nasa is criminally underfunded. our production company is the largest individual carrier of nasa archival footage in the world. it' s actually kind of sad.
operation avalanche is a 2016 american-canadian found footage conspiracy thriller film directed by matt johnson , who co-wrote the film with josh boles . johnson and owen williams star as cia agents who infiltrate nasa to expose a potential mole , only to become embroiled in a conspiracy to fake the 1969 apollo 11 moon landing . 
operation avalanche is a 2016 american-canadian found footage conspiracy thriller film directed by matt johnson, who co-wrote the film with josh boles. johnson and owen williams star as cia agents who infiltrate nasa to expose a potential mole, only to become embroiled in a conspiracy to fake the 1969 apollo 11 moon landing.
operation avalanche is a 2016 american-canadian found footage conspiracy thriller film directed by matt johnson, who co-wrote the film with josh boles. johnson and owen williams star as cia agents who infiltrate nasa to expose a potential mole, only to become embroiled in a conspiracy to fake the 1969 apollo 11 moon landing.