Studio’s VFX team delivered over 800 shots, including all space environments, on director Johan Renck’s sci-fi drama starring Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan; film now streaming on Netflix.
Leading VFX studio MPC recently delivered over 800 shots on Netflix's Spaceman, the science fiction drama directed by Johan Renck and written by Colby Day, that stars Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan.
Based on the 2017 novel, “Spaceman of Bohemia” by Jaroslav Kalfař, the film is set six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, when an astronaut, Jakub (Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late.
The MPC team worked closely with Renck and production VFX supervisor Matt Sloan from the pre-production stages through to final VFX.
"As the sole vendor on Spaceman, we had the freedom and responsibility to develop these memorable environments and characters,” said VFX supervisor Craig Calvert. “The majority of shots we created were for the looming Chopra dust cloud, and all interactions within, and the stoic arachnid creature Hanuš. Additionally, we crafted the unsettled feel of all the memory shots that Adam Sandler's character Jakub is struggling to reconcile."
MPC’s Art Department, led by art director Leandre Lagrange, began working with Renck in 2020 to design the Chopra cloud, a fictional space entity with magical particles that trigger Jakub’s memories.
“Our main challenge was to define the look of the Chopra cloud,” said Lagrange. “We provided mood boards and concepts based on Johan’s vision and iterated on the design from there. The particles were to react to Jakub’s thoughts, so we experimented with several approaches before landing on the right one.”
The studio’s artists conceptualized the look of the Chopra Cloud as seen from the ground on Earth, as well as the view of the cloud up close as the protagonist’s spacecraft approaches it.
“We designed the sequence in which Jakub enters the heart of the Chopra cloud, floating through an ethereal, all-encompassing cloud of dazzling, undulating particles, to 'The Beginning,'" continued Lagrange. “Our challenge was to visually communicate that this was the place where everything began. Johan wanted 'The Beginning' to react like a sound visualizer, vibrating with a beat. We had to figure out how to render the ethereal design and make it animate when it reacts to sound and make it clear how the animation relates to the sound.”
MPC’s Previs team, led by previs supervisor Isaac Hingley, worked on multiple sequences in pre-production, helping to block out and choreograph the action inside the space station between Jakub and Hanus. After principal photography wrapped, postvis supervisor Herman Lee joined the team, to edit and fill out the environments as well as giving Hanus a preliminary performance to shape the edit. Lee’s team animated on the Hanus rig provided by the layout department, allowing keyframes to travel into the MPC pipeline.
The Environment team at MPC crafted multiple settings for the film, incorporating expansive simulated cloud renders and employing DMP enhancements for the external clouds. A notable achievement was the creation of a cyclorama capable of accommodating active cameras with parallax. The team played a crucial role in dissecting design intricacies and crafting images that embodied the director's vision. For the final act of the film, MPC created the interior of the Chopra cloud, visualizing “every sound in the universe.”
This process, according to MPC, was complex for its FX department in terms of initial development through to the final shot execution from both a creative and technological perspective.
MPC’s Character team created Hanuš, an eight-legged space spider voiced by Paul Dano. Artists drew inspiration from tarantulas, creating a giant full CG character. MPC's animation team, guided by the director, found subtly within the character’s emotional performance, cementing his presence in scenes shared with Jakub.
VFX supervisor Craig Calvert said, "Hanus was a fantastic character to bring to life! Voiced by Paul Dano, Hanus has a very soft, measured cadence to his speech and retaining the subtleties of that performance was key to the character's success. Paul's facial and voice performance was captured, and the animation teams designed all the expressions, mandible clicks, and other non-human responses to mirror the intent of Paul's delivery."
MPC created all space environments in the movie, as well as the Jan Hus1 space shuttle and digital doubles of Jakub in his spacesuit for exterior shots.
Watch: “MPC - Spaceman VFX Breakdown”
Spaceman is now streaming on Netflix.
Source: MPC
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
