The Australian Working Dog team - who was also responsible for the critically acclaimed independent film "The Castle" - found their inspiration for their latest film "The Dish" in factual events.

"600 million people watched the televised images of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, perhaps the most-watched event of the 20th century," says screenwriter Tom Gleisner - he wrote, produced and conceived the film together with Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy and Rob Sitch (who also directed the film).

"The Dish" earned awards for Best Screenplay and Best Music from the Film Critics Circle of America. It recounts the emotions, drama and humour behind the four-day Apollo XI mission in July 1969 and the extraordinary role that Australia played in televising the historical lunar landing to the world.

"The Dish" is located on a remote sheep farm in the rural town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia. It is a mammoth, 1000-ton radio telescope equal in size to a football field. In 1969, NASA intended to use the Australian telescope as a back-up to its prime receiver in Goldstone, California. But a last-minute change in the Apollo XI flight schedule change rendered the Goldstone telescope ineffective, and the Aussie dish became NASA's only hope for conveying to the world man's first steps on the moon.

""The Dish" is the story of people basically thrown into the deep end," says Rob Sitch. "Three scientists who spend their lives doing fairly routine, humdrum work out of an astronomical installation in the middle of New South Wales suddenly have the opportunity of greatness thrust upon them, a chance to be responsible for broadcasting pictures of the greatest television event of the 20th century."

While researching and writing the screenplay, the team discovered the sheer magnitude of the Parkes radio telescope and the challenges filming on it would present.

"You climb up 200 to 300 feet onto the dish and suddenly what you thought you could do on paper disappears," says Sitch.

Even more daunting than the size of the dish itself was the idea of approaching the staffers of the imposing telescope. "We realised early on that we had to get the permission of the operators of the dish, or we could never have made the film," says Gleisner. "For awhile we considered posing as a group of Canadian astronomers. We would have gotten away with it, but we couldn't handle the accents. We had to come clean and reveal that we're making a film about a crucial piece of equipment in a pivotal moment in Australian history … and we're doing it as a comedy-drama!"

Fortunately, the staff at the Parkes telescope was more than accommodating. "They literally shifted major experiments for us to shoot there," says Gleisner. "They bent over backwards to manoeuvre the dish to our needs. We were getting it to do things that I don't think the manuals allow."

During their 10-year partnership, the creative team known collectively as Working Dog, has successfully navigated from morning radio show to television to feature film.  "The Castle", which grossed $10 million at the box office in less than 20 weeks, was an exercise in low budget filmmaking, and acquired by Miramax for worldwide distribution (with the exception of the UK and South Africa).

Currently, they produce a national live television talk show called "The Panel" - for an hour each week they offer their observations of the past week's events.