Good Night Oppy - Film and Reflections, A place for discussion of the Film "Good Night Oppy" by Ryan W Options

[paxdan]

Hello All,

Just thought I'd make a post to celebrate the streaming release of Good Night Oppy, a new film by Ryan White about the MER mission. I watched it last night on Amazon. It was amazing to reflect on the success of MER rovers and the intertwining of people's lives with the rovers. As someone who lurked on the mer.lp forum which was a precursor to unmannedspaceflight I want to pay special tribute to Doug, the founder of this forum, for creating this space and congratulate and celebrate his eventual ascension to nerdvana, JPL itself, to work on the MER missions by way of bootleg postcards!

Watching this forum grow, seeing the panoramas, postcards, and maps posted to bring along a bunch of folks on the first overland exploration of another planet is an experience I will never forget. For 15 years I checked in everyday without fail to the MER rovers, I strongly suspect I've seen every one of the half a million or so photos returned by the mission. But more importantly I remember with such clarity the stops along the way - For Oppy: Eagle, Endeavour, Victoria, Endurance. The Blueberry bowl, bounce rock, etched terrain, Purgatory, Spirit point, Homestake vein visiting the backshell and so much more. For Spirit: the sol 17 anomaly at Adirondack, Bonneville, the trek to the Columbia hills and the pot of gold, summiting Husband hill, Homeplate and the mystery of 'Ultreya', dust devils galore and the discovery of evidence for a thermal spring.

The MER rovers were literally the adventure of a lifetime, and what was amazing and made it possible was the decision by Steve Squyres to put the raw images online immediately. It made possible the armchair exploration which became such a big part of our lives. I am so grateful for all the folk who made maps and panoramas, who poured over images and made anaglyphs movies and animations.

So I just want to say thank you to Steve, Doug and all the folk who got involved, both at JPL and in the wider community for Sprit, Opportunity and the MER rover experience.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and reflections on the MER Mission, and maybe share a few memories and images too.

Daniel

[djellison]

I'm proud to have been a tiny part of MER right near the end, especially of realizing that ridiculous dream of an MER selfie that I think I first thought about in 2008.....but thanks to the policy that Steve and Jim put in place right back at the start to release all those images....all of us here were a small part of MER from the very beginning.

My screen time in the movie definitely outsizes my contribution to the mission a thousand fold - but I'm still really happy with how the movie came out. This is not NOVA PBS / Nat Geo etc etc - it's not the detailed scientific/engineering story that some might be searching for. But it IS something no other documentary has managed to be - a very accurate look at the emotional story of the people involved.

It takes plenty of creative license in doing it - things are out of order, the VFX for solar flares - personifying the rover a LOT - but at the service of telling that emotional story accurately.

I will credit ILM with doing a lovely job in making some nice patches of Mars. I was on Zoom with them for several hours showing them how to get into the PDS data, how to use HiRISE DEMs, Pancam RAD .img files and they did a beautiful job of bringing all that together ( a few screenshots attached )

Ryan White has done something really rather special - he's put the emotional closure on to the end of the mission that I think many of us have been missing since Sol 5111. As a movie it has the power to show the world that despite being robotic spacecraft, these was a very very human project.

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[vjkane]

I'm proud to have been a tiny part of MER right near the end, especially of realizing that ridiculous dream of an MER selfie that I think I first thought about in 2008.....but thanks to the policy that Steve and Jim put in place right back at the start to release all those images....all of us here were a small part of MER from the very beginning.

My screen time in the movie definitely outsizes my contribution to the mission a thousand fold - but I'm still really happy with how the movie came out. This is not NOVA PBS / Nat Geo etc etc - it's not the detailed scientific/engineering story that some might be searching for. But it IS something no other documentary has managed to be - a very accurate look at the emotional story of the people involved.

It takes plenty of creative license in doing it - things are out of order, the VFX for solar flares - personifying the rover a LOT - but at the service of telling that emotional story accurately.

I will credit ILM with doing a lovely job in making some nice patches of Mars. I was on Zoom with them for several hours showing them how to get into the PDS data, how to use HiRISE DEMs, Pancam RAD .img files and they did a beautiful job of bringing all that together ( a few screenshots attached )

Ryan White has done something really rather special - he's put the emotional closure on to the end of the mission that I think many of us have been missing since Sol 5111. As a movie it has the power to show the world that despite being robotic spacecraft, these was a very very human project.

Doug - I watched the movie last night, and needed to get a tissue for the tears. Yep, loved those rovers.

Your quotes spoke beautifully to the mission and what it meant to many. Thank you..

[john_s]

Really enjoyed it- and great to see Doug making such an eloquent contribution (though with so many personal stories included, I wish they'd found room for his remarkable story too). Not surprised he played a big role in getting the CGI right. Yes, I wish they'd included a bit more of the science that drove the mission, and more actual spacecraft imagery (would have been nice to see the real dust devil footage along with the CGI dust devils, for instance), but still a great piece of work.

John

[djellison]

Really enjoyed it- and great to see Doug making such an eloquent contribution (though with so many personal stories included, I wish they'd found room for his remarkable story too).

I was literally just on a media call for the doc with Ryan White (the director) and Jessica Hargrave ( his producing partner ) and they said they did have some of my personal story edited together but it ended up on the cutting room floor ( as did the science results of Spirit ) as the movie was just getting too long. I'm very pleased that Bekah, Abby, Ashitey, Vandi and Jennifer's stories all are a part of this movie - my story is out there in a few ways already, but I hadn't heard theirs told before

To their credit - every time we're on a media call together, they go to great lengths to make sure that my story is a part of what we talk about.