Client
Lightroom
Location
London, Houston
Collaborators
Tom Hanks
Lightroom
Sector
Cultural Institutions & Museums
Services Provided
Storytelling
Narrative Development
Creative Concepting & Experience Mapping
Filmmaking & Animation
Design
Video & Animation Design
Sound Design
Experience Design
Immersive Media Design
Technology
Immersive Media & Projection Mapping
Delivery
Technical Direction & Production Management
The past and future of space exploration
This immersive experience brings the story of the Apollo lunar missions to life at a spectacular scale. The show is co-written by Tom Hanks and Christopher Riley, designed by Journey and produced by Lightroom.
Following its debut at Lightroom London, the show is now open at The Kennedy Space Center. ‘The Moonwalkers’ combines archival NASA footage, newly filmed interviews, and an original cinematic score to take audiences on a journey to the Moon, and back again. Alongside the story of Apollo, it offers a forward-looking perspective on the Artemis programme, imagining the past and future of space exploration as a single, continuous narrative.
The challenge was to reframe how the familiar story of the Apollo missions are experienced. Using Lightroom’s vast projection environment, Journey transformed the space into a first-hand view of the moon landings as they happened, placing audiences inside a narrative journey that is as spatial as it is cinematic.
Fly me to the moon
Across a 50-minute runtime, visitors are taken from the launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the Saturn V rocket ignites and lifts through the atmosphere before giving way to the stillness of space. The Moon reveals itself at an immense scale. As we move into orbit, the weight of the moment comes into focus, before descending in a cloud of regolith and continuing across the lunar surface.
Drawing on Andy Saunders’ Apollo Remastered, the experience brings audiences closer than ever to the reality of the missions. Digitally restored from original Hasselblad film, the images reveal detail lost for decades, projected at monumental scale, while spatial audio and a dynamic score shape the emotional rhythm, the total effect of all these elements in combination dissolves the boundary between viewer and story, positioning the audience right alongside the protagonists at the centre of humankind’s greatest adventure.
Accessible performances, including BSL, relaxed, and sensory-adapted showings, ensure the experience can be engaged with by a broad audience.
“There are times when I have seen it and I’m thinking, why are the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now?
You can’t just say it’s because of the words that you’re hearing, you can’t just say it’s only the image, you can’t just say it’s this phenomenal score.
It’s that playing of it all together and when that happens, I think you’re in the hands of damn good storytellers.”
– Tom Hanks
A symphony of space
‘The Moonwalkers’ helps audiences to really feel the impact of the moon landings – transforming an event that, in many ways, feels so far away, into something that is tangible and unforgettable.
Impact
★★★★★
The Times
★★★★★
Evening Standard
★★★★
The Daily Telegraph
★★★★
Time Out