HOUSTON, WE ARE NOT ALONE

According to NASA, Apollo 17 (which launched on December 17, 1972) was the last manned mission to the moon. Budget cuts were cited by President Nixon as the reasons why the Apollo program was canceled… or was it?

The goal for this “found footage” conspiracy film, was to successfully design & create a digital experience that could deliver original content that was so controversial, so viscerally intense, that users would be compelled to engage in the story and share the experience with their friends. This would ultimately ignite conversation and raise awareness for the film.

To achieve this, Project C cleverly devised, and executed, a highly classified and two-pronged, grass-roots web attack that consisted of the Remote Terminal v3.14 » website housing secret documents and files, and the Mission Control Blog, Apollo 18’s unofficial support website and voice of the conspiracy.

HIGHLIGHTS

The Remote Terminal

Remote Terminal v3.14 » with its stylized DOS screen served as a digital portal to an impressive cache of top-secret documents which were all related to the Apollo moon missions 18 through 20. Project C’s detailed and historically accurate collection of fictitious classified materials blew the lid off a shocking cover up. The controversial files found on the site were heavily redacted, and even time-locked ,as to challenge and inspire users to discover and decipher the many hidden meanings of the top-secret documents.

Mission Control Blog

The controversial Mission control blog continued to peel away layers of conspiracy with increasing intensity as the release date of the film approached. Combining the minimalist layout of the WordPress platform with extensive and backdated posts, Project C cemented the legitimacy of the blog’s mysterious author, Tyler Gordon, an amateur conspiracy-theorist and the self-proclaimed nephew of the astronaut originally scheduled to pilot Apollo 18. “Tyler” blurred the lines of fact & fiction by juxtaposing Project C’s covert creative-content with actual NASA materials.

Loaded with original Content

The Viral campaign was loaded with original content, created entirely in-house.

The audio file, entitled Apollogate features President Richard Nixon confirming the existence of a Black Ops AS-18 lunar mission, as covertly recorded by telephone surveillance equipment, circa 1973.

This classified NASA document » illustrates an authentic and historically accurate representation of NASA’s Apollo 18 Lunar Module On-Board Mission Transcription Records. “Uh, Houston, we are not alone!”

NASA Issues Public Statement

This experience was so real that NASA had to issue an official, Public statement » that insisted, “the film is a complete work of fiction”.