The astronauts themselves did all the filming in space. They served as the directors, camera people, sound recordists, and lighting experts. Imax Corporation has trained 81 astronauts as filmmakers over the past 10 years--eight of them for MISSION TO MIR--and always found them to be exceptional students.

To learn how to operate the IMAX camera, the four shuttle crews went through 25 hours of training at the Johnson Space Center. While creating the right lighting or finding the perfect angle presented a challenge for the cinematographers in space, manipulating the in-cabin camera through Mir’s cluttered six-to-eight-foot-wide passageways proved to be even trickier. “It’s heavy,” astronaut Charlie Precourt says of the 85 pound camera. “Of course, in space it’s zero gravity, but the camera has a lot of inertia. Once we got it moving, it was a challenge to try and stop it from crashing into a wall.”

Supervising the astronauts’ work from Earth were producers Toni Myers and Graeme Ferguson. Myers’ previous outstanding work in space films includes THE DREAM IS ALIVE, BLUE PLANET, DESTINY IN SPACE, and the Imax-produced 3D film L5: FIRST CITY IN SPACE. Ferguson, Imax Corporation co-founder and past president, collaborated with Myers in the aforementioned space films, and produced OCEAN, HAIL COLUMBIA! and INTO THE DEEP.