An Oral History of the Epic Space Film The Right Stuff | WIRED

"PHILIP KAUFMAN: We combined the great NASA footage with pieces that were built on the set. We were pioneering in that kind of insertion of actors into historical events. For example, we combined footage of the real Alan Shepard being loaded into the capsule with Scott Glenn doing it on the stage. We had Scott Glenn shaking hands with Kennedy; they did the same thing in Forrest Gump and made a big thing out of spending a million dollars to do it. We did that in one afternoon."

Moving from film stock to digital, at least so far, has achieved less creative results. All you have to do is animate the scene you want via CGI and show it in near darkness or with extreme short cuts so you can't really tell what is going on and the brain of the viewer fills in the blanks. Sad.