In 2005, I worked on an in-ride film called Apollo 3000 at the Earth Explorer science centre in Ostend, Belgium.
The ride is one of those drop-tower affairs. Visitors enter a space capsule, which launches at high speed to the top of the tower, at which point the film runs. The ride mechanism delivers various jolts and jounces at key moments, with the final white-knuckle drop surprising people at the end.
The drop-tower design meant I was locked to a 90-second time limit, within which the client wanted as much going on as possible. I pitched four storylines of varying complexity, ranging from a straightforward tour of the planets to an ambitious narrative that began with a launch from a futuristic base on one of Jupiter’s moon and culminated, after a searing close encounter of the surface of the sun, with a crash-landing on Mars.
In the end, they opted (wisely) for a simple whistlestop journey through the solar system. That didn’t sound too hard … until they started adding requests for a flypast not only of the planets but of the International Space Station too … oh, and while you’re at it, can we include as many other pieces of space hardware as possible … and we need to visit the site of the first moon landing … and when we go past the ISS make sure the audience can see an astronaut inside …
Despite the ever-expanding scope of work, tight budget and even tighter timescale, I somehow manage to squeeze the quart into the pint pot. Circumstances at the time meant I was doing all the work in my living room at night after a day’s work at my regular job. Believe me, the ‘time left to render’ progress bar never moves as slowly as it does as four o’clock in the morning.
Technically speaking, my workflow was basic even by 2005 standards. I modelled and animated everything in 3DS Max, running on a fairly modest PC. I grabbed stock meshes of satellites off the internet. Those I couldn’t find, I built myself. I’d hoped to find a mesh of the ISS, but nothing was quite right for my purposes so, in the end, I created that from scratch too. I assembled the final cut in Adobe Premiere, using basic transitions to stitch together the various segments rendered out of Max.
I used Max to create the graphic overlays too. Not the most obvious solution but, given that the reticules had to track their targets so closely, it seemed to make sense. I created the reticules as simple 2D objects, slaved their movements to the various moons and space probes I’d already animated, then went back to the venerable Premiere to comp it all together.
Once I’d completed the film, I turned it over to the immensely talented Jim Bishop, who composed a quirky and energetic soundtrack. Technical wizard Simon Mitchell integrated our media files into the complex ride control system. The project was managed by Nick Farmer. Our client was Merlin Entertainments Group.
Graham Edwards 