09.04.09
webpick of the week
Education, Consumer
“When President Kennedy challenged the nation to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade, his appeal led to one of the greatest technological achievements in U.S. history,” said Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
We Choose The Moon is an interactive recreation of the historic Apollo 11 mission to the moon, inspired by John F. Kennedy’s grand vision. The site launched (at 9:32am on July 16, 2009—exactly 40 years to the minute after the historic launch) with a four-day experience brought to life with real-time details. After the four day live event, the site became a self-guided tour of the mission that visitors can explore at their own pace.
While many of the images, video and audio are public domain, this is the first time they’ve been aggregated and organized to allow visitors to experience the mission as it happened, using archival audio, video, photos and “real time” transmissions.
The site is made up of CG sequences (built by Domani Studios), depicting 11 “mission critical” events of the voyage, as well as 450 archival photos and videos from NASA and the JFK Library. The live event from July 16–20 also featured 102 uninterrupted hours of audio transmissions between Houston and the astronauts, so site visitors could feel like they were there listening for the entire duration of the trip. The most interesting 650 pieces of the mission audio transcript were extracted then tweeted over Twitter in real-time so people could follow the mission another way. In this way the CG, the photos, video, audio and the Twitter feed would all sync to give users the most immersive experience.
• The site was created on behalf of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and generously hosted by AOL with an audio experience powered by SHOUTcast.
• Information from 2,223 pages of declassified documents influence the site’s authentic recreation of the mission.
• The project took eight months from concept to completion; production lasted just under three months.
• Over the course of the four-day live event, there were 1.25 million unique visitors to the site and the coverage on television, print and online added up to over 160 million media impressions, all with no paid media pointing to the site.
• Two weeks after launch the site had 3 million visits from 216 countries.
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