Territory Studio has released their reel for this year’s blockbuster film The Martian, showcasing all of the intricate, beautiful, and realistic user interfaces seen throughout film.
The movie is based on Andy Weir’s fantastic book (which I finished this summer and highly recommend on audio book). When I heard Ridley Scott was directing this film I had a lot of reasons to be excited, he has directed some of my favorite movies such as Blade Runner and Alien.
Casting Matt Damon as the main protagonist of this film was next to genius. He fits the do-it-yourself crazy space pirate botanist persona perfectly.
Territory Studio keeps surprising us by creating fresh looking designs for each of their films. Just look at their stunning work on Guardians of The Galaxy, Jupiter Ascending, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ex Machina to get an understanding of just what high quality designs they’re producing.
Territory Studio was kind enough to provide some high resolution screens that I’ve added below alongside screenshots of their reel.
ARVE Error: need id and providerWhen you watch this film you can appreciate just how important of a role the UI plays to tell the story. There is a lot of screen time dedicated to showing Mission Control observing all of the data on the monitors; the Hermes crew interfacing with their ship and the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle); Watney interfacing with the HAB (Habitat) system, the Rover, and his space suit.
What fascinated me more than anything is that Territory Studio was able to take something as complex as Houston Mission Control, with all of its massive data-sets and technical complexities, and make it into something that looks both futuristic and completely believable. It turns out Territory Studio was able to consult NASA through the Director of the Planetary Science Division Dr. Jim Green, the Program Executive for Solar System Exploration Dave Levery, and the Manager of Multi-Media Programs Bert Ulrich.
Here is a picture of the real Mission Control taken in 2005:
And here is Territory Studio’s vision of Mission Control in the near future:
Congratulations to those that worked on this film. I firmly believe that it has helped in making people excited about space travel, and even inspired NASA to redesign some of it’s graphical interfaces and the user experience of their systems.
Territory Studio was responsible for all of the UI you see in the film itself, which must have been an incredibly huge undertaking. The UI you see in promotional videos such as the video where the Hermes crew gets interviewed was done by other studios and I’ll be sure to share some of their work with you soon.
20th Century Fox Credits:
Director: Ridley Scott
Production Designer: Arthur Max
Sup. AD: Mark Holmes
Motion Graphics Art Director: Felicity Hickson
Territory Credits:
Creative Director: David Sheldon-Hicks
Producer: Sam Hart
Art Direction: Marti Romances
Lead CGI: Peter Eszenyi
Design and Animation: Daniel Højlund, Marti Romances and Sam Keehan.
NASA Headquarters:
Director, Planetary Science Division: Dr. Jim Green
Program Executive for Solar System Exploration: Dave Lavery
Manager, Multi-Media Programs: Bert Ulrich
Playback Credits:
Compuhire
Showreel Edit: Marti Romances
Audio: Zelig Sound
