Starlink: Battle for Atlas

The film opens on a small boy in the depths of a forest, daydreaming of a future in space. Shot in Prague, DoP Steve Annis captured the natural beauty of the landscape, before the narrative takes an intergalactic turn to a fully CG supercell storm and arid planetscape, viewed from the cockpit of our hero’s spaceship, the Zenith.

Framestore drew on multiple disciplines in-house to fully previs the extensive space sequence, developing the look of the hero Zenith asset to feed directly into production design’s true-to-size build, which would ensure seamless inside-outside action. The spaceship’s movements in battle were choreographed on a full motion base gimbal, with a 360° interactive lighting skypanel set-up adding further veracity to the shots.

The landscapes of Utah provided backplates for the planet sequence, shot with a drone and augmented to include a full alien civilisation, atmospherics, debris and a handful of creatures. Back in orbit, Framestore had fun with the chase, leaning into a pedigree learned from recent space epics of film and advertising. In the grade, Simon Bourne used subtle colour to distinguish the worlds: from the dream-like depths of the forest to a subtle, soft sci-fi feel on the planet’s surface, before the strong contrasts of outer space.

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