Onboard Diary

Alberto Ortega, The Cosmonaut's FX director

As regards visual effects, "The Cosmonaut" has a couple of added challenges to those common to any major project.

On one hand, since we are talking about a period film (not too distant, but it is still a period film), we have the doubt of adhering to reality or affording us the luxury of taking some liberties to contribute with some ideas to reality. We found the first clash when thinking about the space shuttle. In that period's reality, it was nothing else but a rocket held by some pieces of iron. Nevertheless, the idea of covering that image up with huge modules and facilities becomes definitely attractive. Nico still doubts about this idea among a million more.

On the other hand, one of the other things that had been discussed has been the content of the monitors in the control room. The monitors of the period were nothing else but really ugly green screens with huge numbers and lines. Nico wanted to skip the rigour in this point, so we did many monitor design tests to finally get something like this:

Original shot:


Edited shot:


I think it is the right decision, since we have got a retro but modern design that fits in the style of that period.

There is a second challenge. The film tells a part of the story that did not actually happen. It shows the launch of a spacecraft that has never been built, and just remained as a prototype.

So thanks to sketches and photographs of that time, our friends in the NYX Visual Effects, directed by great Rod Tebisx, have reconstructed the spacecraft to shape the moon landing sequence. Here you can see two amazing samples of how the work is taking shape:



This is just the beginning. The edition of the different sequences will be done soon, and we will have more challenges regarding visual effects, and we will tell you about them.