Happy World Space Week 2023!
To celebrate World Space Week 2023, we’re thrilled to present our brand new Space VFX Showreel!
Unveil the cosmic tapestry of our team’s out-of-this-world work over the years, from the vastness of galaxies to the tiniest details on astronauts’ visors.
Want to learn more about our work on these incredible projects? Scroll for details!
Sci-fi epic Interstellar marked our fifth collaboration with acclaimed director Christopher Nolan.
As lead VFX partner, our DNEG crew, led by Production VFX Supervisor Paul Franklin and DNEG VFX Supervisor Andy Lockley, contributed to several of the film’s most pivotal sequences, including the Tesseract (the four dimensional space allowing time to be seen as a physical dimension), the robots TARS and CASE, and the alien world landscapes of massive waves, frozen clouds and ice. Additionally, to avoid using a greenscreen in any of the space sequences, the team crafted digital space vistas for projection on-set!
One of the most significant contributions (and challenges!) was the film’s wormhole and supermassive black hole. We partnered with leading astrophysicist Professor Kip Thorne (Interstellar’s Science Advisor and Executive Producer) to create the most accurate depiction of a blackhole and wormhole yet seen, which led to the publication of two scientific papers. You could say our Interstellar team turned science fiction into science fact by providing new insights into the powerful effects of black holes!
For their extraordinary work on the film, our team won the 2015 Oscar® and BAFTA for ‘Best Visual Effects’.
DNEG Episodic contributed primarily to the first two episodes of Netflix’s Away, which tells the emotional journey of an astronaut’s struggle as she leaves her husband and daughter behind to embark on a dangerous mission with an international space crew.
Our work on the series included a spectacular base on the surface of the moon, a rocket launch from that base and an exhilarating space walk sequence. The team blended a small practical set into a massive CG environment, constructed a spacecraft, added digi doubles and zero G objects, as well as augmented space suits with CG visors and reflections to help bring this series to life!
Explore more of our work in our VFX Breakdown below:
For Doctor Who: Flux, the 13th season of BBC’s iconic series, our Episodic team delivered 502 VFX shots and 179 assets – the most VFX shots featured in a Doctor Who season, ever! It was such a thrill for our Episodic crew to be part of this historic moment for the show.
With the action of the season taking place across the entire universe and in different time periods – not to mention the multiple alien threats – our team delivered a very wide range of visual effects, from creature and environment builds to FX integration and destruction.
Learn more about it in this interview with VFX Supervisor Andrew Robertson, then immerse yourself in the action with our VFX Breakdown!
As primary VFX partner on First Man, director Damien Chazelle’s striking Neil Armstrong biopic, our DNEG team had the opportunity to redefine the meaning of shooting ‘in camera’.
To get the clarity and brightness and capture as much in-camera as possible, we were tasked with creating multiple rendered sequences in prep for use on a giant 60 foot wide by 35 foot tall curved 180 degree LED screen. This allowed us to shoot certain space and in-flight elements with our CG content fitting seamlessly within the boundaries of a film being shot 16mm & 35mm.
To allow Chazelle more freedom and flexibility when working with the actors, we created content for entire sequences – some lasting 10,000 frames! In the beginning, the team was also rendering front and side views to the screen, but quickly realised creating 360 spherical images gave us the most flexibility. And this was all work done before shooting even began!
In post, we did a large range of ‘invisible VFX’, including restoring and enhancing some of the original 1960-70’s NASA archival footage, intensive FX work for the Apollo launch shots and more.
In 2019, our crew behind First Man was honoured with the 91st Academy Award® for ‘Best Visual Effects’!
Dive into a detailed look at this incredible process with our Behind the VFX series here:
2017’s sci-fi thriller Life follows a team of scientists aboard the International Space Station, who discover a rapidly evolving life form that caused extinction on Mars and now threatens all life on Earth.
As lead VFX partner, our talented teams crafted several of the film’s pivotal sequences, including the ship’s interior and exterior, vast intergalactic environments and the animation of the menacing alien creature, ‘Calvin’.
Learn more about our work in our VFX Breakdown here!
Our Episodic crew delivered 248 shots across 7 episodes for Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, crafting everything from meteoric FX and holographic MGFX to full-CG hero assets.
At the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, our team was on the winning ticket for ‘Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Single Episode’!
The Emmy-winning episode in question, titled ‘Su’kal’, included a full CG nebula environment created by our team through Layout, Environment, Lighting and Compositing work. Working with live action plates, we also used FX to construct ‘programmable matter’ on the ship consoles, integrating this with both holograms and plate footage.
Take a behind the scenes look at how we made it all happen in our VFX Breakdown:
As lead VFX partner on Foundation (Season 1), we delivered 1050 shots throughout the series’ 10 episodes to bring the staggering visuals of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi novel series to life on screen.
Our Episodic team’s work included the creation of the city of Trantor, the Imperial Palace and Orbital Station, the show’s ‘Sandograms’ and more, and covered all elements of the visual effects process – including Previs, Postvis, MGFX and Virtual Production asset builds!
For their incredible work on the series, our talented crew won two VES Awards: ‘Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode’ and ‘Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project’!