Worlds Beyond: A look behind the scenes

When I was given the major project assignment, it was very much a blank page in terms of what form it could take. This resulted in a considerable amount of brainstorming and trying different ideas before I finally decided on the video. A lot of my content is static image-based such as posters, leaflets, and the like and I wanted to push myself and try something new.

What if I was to take my existing skills and expand into animated video content? I wanted to produce something that felt cinematic and vibrant. I was inspired by science fiction films and series such as Star Trek and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Autism

Although aesthetically based in the science fiction genre, the film is actually about autism. Divided into segments, it is about the experiences of being autistic. For example the ship scraping scene is a representation of increased sensitivity to loud sounds and pain.

The sequence with excessively bright suns represents photosensitivity common with autism. The liquid aliens sequence was symbolic of the challenges autistic people face regarding communication.

Production

The initial ruined Earth scene was inspired by Interstellar which has a similar devastated dry Earth scenario. The idea was that humans didn’t make this journey so much because they merely desired to explore but because situations forced them to in order to survive. The flying ash effect was actually a snow simulation in after effects modified to be lighter and recoloured. The ship design was a particular complication, I wanted something distinctive, to avoid cliché saucer designs or aping designs from other shows.
I am interested in steampunk and scrap punk aesthetic so looked at how others had design vehicles. I also looked at natural forms for inspiration such as flowers. However, the intent wasn’t to make the ship sleek and stylish, rather it should look cumbersome and thrown together in a hurry.

The narrative was that the original ship was considerably smaller but the need to transport and maintain so many people at once pushed them to extend it using whatever materials were available. The result was a hodge podge of components bolted on. I also decided that rather than having a strictly predesigned form to conform to, I would allow the components to dictate the shape. This randomness would assist in avoiding typical spaceship shapes.

I experimented with 3D and physical modelling using bits and pieces from a charity shop but eventually went for the photo compositing method. When I was working on other parts of the project prior to finalising the spaceship design, I used a cartoon red spaceship as a placeholder which I later swapped out for the final design.

For the interior scenes I used a similar compositing method with various photography of industrial sites, warehouses, and the odd train bridge. The actual item wasn’t important, only what it looked like. For the scene where the rocks tear through the ship’s hull (representing pain and noise sensitivity), I was having trouble sourcing a suitable curved hull look and was checking various submarine interior photography and related.

Living in the Midlands, there aren’t that many submarines about. Eventually I found a workaround, the charity shop I mentioned above were throwing out a metal, cylindrical, small bin. I was initially having trouble getting a photo as the camera could not get back far enough within the confines of the bin, so they cut the bin in half for me (lengthways). When I took photographs of interior of the bin, I was able to use this as the metal wall.

However, there was still the issue of the tear in the metal and making it look convincing. For this, I was able to find a Coca-Cola can in the shared recycling, cut that in half with scissors (it’s very thin), and used a craft knife to tear a ragged hole through the middle. I photographed this, cut out the torn portion and composited it with the bin half and, hey presto, torn ship’s hull! It’s all about thinking outside the box or, ah, inside the bin I guess?

For the shuttle scenes, I wanted to show an exploratory shuttle scoping out a planet (the Too Bright) sequence. This was a simpler process than the torn-hull sequence. I found an electric air freshener diffuser in a charity shops (yay for charity shops) and this was used as the “shuttle”. I Blu-tacked a transparent drawing pin in the output hole to act as a spotlight and a nut (metal, not food) on the side. It’s simple but it works!

In early drafts of the video, there was too much ship travels left to right/right to left and I was concerned it would feel a bit flat. The catch with the ship being a 2D image is that I can only move it in so many ways. Thus, to add some variety I incorporated more point-of-view shots as if looking through the ship windows. For the design, I was inspired by a restaurant I visited years ago which had previously been an orangery and had a very interesting large circular segmented window. This design had strong steampunk spaceship vibes to me and the experience stuck in my memory and became the basis for the design in the project.