Questions for Duncan Jones, Director of the Film Moon (With Video!)

• Digital Hollywood
• science fiction
• special effects
• Questions for
• NASA
• Moon

PM: Where did you get the idea for Moon?
Jones: I read a book by Robert Zubrin, Entering Space. It was all about how we could financially justify colonizing the solar system; there was a chapter on colonizing the moon and using helium-3 as a source for fusion power. It did seem to be a very logical argument about why you would have a reason to set up a moon base. I think one of the things that is limiting about NASA leading the space race is that everything they do is researched, but it doesn't have any direct relevance to how it affects our lives. But with helium-3, there is a very direct link to how we could use that as a resource here on Earth and why it would be profitable.

Speaking of NASA, you recently did a screening of Moon there. What was the reception like?
It was fantastic. After the movie, we talked about how you would build the moon base and whether you could actually create concrete using the lunar regolith. There was a specialist who designed and worked on something called mooncrete. You can use the lunar ice and use the elements in lunar regolith and actually break it down and create a concrete. That was something that was quite plausible, so I got excited.

[PM advisory board member and astronaut] Tom Jones said that one of the things I got right was the mundaneness of working in that environment. You do a lot of really boring stuff again and again and again. There's not a lot to do up there. You've got your job to do and a lot of time to kill. I think that is what it's going to be like—until they can build a big center with things that can entertain you.

Why did you choose to put the base on the dark side of the moon when there's more helium on the near side?
That came up at NASA. My reason is that when you start harvesting helium-3, what you're basically doing is scooping up the first few inches of lunar regolith and bringing it into the harvesting machine, cooking it to release the gas that you're going to store, and then kicking the detritus out the back. Because it's going through the cooking process, there will be chemical changes, which may affect the color of the regolith. That's going to affect, possibly, the reflectivity of what's kicked out. If you haven't done it before, and you're going to be doing it on a large scale, literally changing the reflectivity of the moon, what's that going to do to wildlife or all sorts of things back here on Earth? Do you want to take the risk of doing that on the near side before you've done it on the far side to actually see what's going to happen? So that's my argument. And they thought it was a good one.

Did you look at the surface of the moon when building the models?
I used Michael Light's book Full Moon, which contains his cleaned up original photography from the Apollo missions, and the Japanese Selene missions where they had the HD cameras and they actually did the satellite pass around the surface of the moon. It gives you an idea of just how barren the moon is. It looks like a ball of clay—so manufactured, it doesn't look real.

Did you base your mining technique on any real-life earth technology?
Not much more than bulldozers, to be honest. I worked with concept artist Gavin Rothery—we like big chunky bits of equipment and things that look like they do a big job. We used model miniatures. We didn't use a lot of money for an indie sci-fi film. We also felt comfortable that it would give us a really unique look. So we had two sound stages, one that had the interior lunar base and one that had the exterior lunar landscape with two different models of rovers that were about a foot across. And then a different scale that were about 3 feet across for more detailed photography. They were just pulled along with bits of fishing line. A great post-production company called Cinesite did all the clean-up on them, as well as the digital set extensions and the lens flares, and made it look good.

Did you build an actual GERTY robot?
Yes, there's an actual GERTY. More than you might think in the film is an actual GERTY. When he's moving around the base, that's CG, but for most of the static stuff that's a live-action prop.

How did you control him?
We had someone called a GERTY wrangler, and his job was to lie on the floor behind GERTY and move him around. We had another guy in charge of the device for opening and closing the iris.

Did GERTY have elements of artificial intelligence?
There is limited AI. GERTY is not wholly sentient. He really is a system as opposed to a being in his own right—that was one of the things I wanted to get across. The audience, and the different Sams, bring their own baggage to GERTY. They're the ones who anthropomorphize him and basically make him out to be more than he is. GERTY's system is very simple: He's there to look after Sam and make sure that he survives for 3 years. That's it. When you start watching the film, you're already making unwarranted assumptions about GERTY because of the HAL 9000 references and Kevin Spacey's slightly menacing voice. That's what the Sams do as well. The company itself, Lunar Industries, is nefarious. GERTY is not. He's doing his job. He has conversations with the company but he doesn't tell Sam because he's programmed not to. It's as simple as that.

Was GERTY based on any real-life technology?
GERTY is very much based on the Cog project at MIT and what Daniel Dennett was working on. The idea was to create a machine that was incorporating more than one type of sense data. So it had cameras for eyes, tactile fingertips and a moving robotic arm. It had an audio capture system. It was basically taking all of these various forms of data, giving it the eyes to see something and have the arm reach out and touch it in the right place. Dennett was working on how we would apply ethics to a machine like that if it were to become self-aware. That was my reference on robotics side.

What about the ethics of cloning? That worries me less. The one thing that worries me about cloning is it limits the genetic variation of any given species. Identical twins are clones. And people don't get up in arms about twins. They're going to have different experiences in life and it's going to make them different people. Experience to me is much more important than if they have the same genetic background.

What's up next for you?
It looks like I'm going to be doing another science-fiction film next. I love Blade Runner, it's one of my favorite films, and I've always been really… depressed that there was never—not a sequel, because I don't think it's right to make a sequel about Blade Runner, but no one's really tried to make a film which was set in the same kind of world or had that same kind of field. So that's what I'm doing, a big-city mystery story that takes place in a future Berlin.

Ridley Scott has a copy of Moon right now, actually. I'm a little nervous. I had three people I wanted to watch it: Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam and Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman and Terry Gilliam have both watched it and loved it, so now I'm just waiting for Ridley Scott, which is the big one for me. That's the really scary one.

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