The Five Corners of Utah and Mars

Very few of short film directors can claim to have been judged at the script stage by an astronaut and granted a film premiere at the Kennedy Space Center.

Michael Becker, a veteran feature film and commercial director who returned to Santa Fe, New Mexico after many years spent working in Los Angeles and Europe, entered and won a contest sponsored by Lockheed Martin. The astronaut involved in the judging process was Bruce McCandless and the theme of the contest was "space exploration."

The end result, Delivery from Earth, premieres Thursday December 4th at the Kennedy Center and several hundred other museum and science center locations, as part of Orion launch day celebrations. The futuristic Mars Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is being rocketed into space and splashed down in the Pacific a few hours later as part of an inaugural EFT-1 test procedure.*



Becker shot his film, about a family watching broadcast reports about the first birth of a human child on another planet, Mars, with a mostly Navajo cast at the Four Corners of Utah. That location is not far from Monument Valley, an area mined by John Ford and many, subsequent others.

Becker traveled to Florida at the beginning of the week. "From the seed of an idea about a child born on Mars, a project was realized by bringing together many talented people," he said. "We hope audiences enjoy watching the film as much as we enjoyed making it."

*Update (December 4th):
The Orion EFT-1 launch was delayed until Friday December 5th.

[Lockheed Martin Filmmaker Contest]