Case Study: Aurora Fearnley’s PULSAR from Pitch to Premiere

Aurora Fearnley directing David Gyasi (Interstellar) in PULSAR (Dir. by Aurora Fearnley)

Date: 23rd September 2018
Case Study: Aurora Fearnley’s PULSAR from pitch to premiere
Filmmaker: Aurora Fearnley

indieactivity: What is your film about?
Aurora Fearnley: Pulsar is a sci-fi short film of redemption and second chances.

The story takes inspiration from the Biblical tale of Jonah in the Belly of the Whale and was the winner of The Pitch at Pinewood.

indieactivity: Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Aurora Fearnley: There is a lot of excitement around Pulsar and I believe that is because there are so few female directors marking large-scale sci-fi films, particularly in the UK, but noticeably across the board. Pulsar is really laying down my intentions and ambition as a Director to be taken seriously in this genre.

Pulsar Trailer from Aurora Fearnley on Vimeo.

We had the Pulsar World Premiere at the London Sci-fi Film Festival in May. This was the very start of our festival journey. David Gyasi who plays the lead role of Jonah in Pulsar, was recently nominated for Best Actor at Cosmic Festival and has just won Best Actor at the Genre Celebration Festival in Japan. This week we heard that FilmQuest has selected Pulsar as one of it’s 19 sci-fi short films and we are delighted that is will be the American Premiere.

The Talent

David Gyasi was on press tour with Chris Nolan for Interstellar when we shot Pulsar and he followed my short film with Alex Garland’s sophomore feature Annihilation. Being sandwiched between these A-list talents is surreal company for a young director to be in. I feel exceptionally lucky to have such a generous and talented believe in the project and to support our journey. In 2018 alone David has played Achilles in Troy: Fall of a City and is now shooting Maleficent 2.

David Gyasi & Jessie Buckley in PULSAR (Dir. by Aurora Fearnley)

Equally exciting is seeing the breakthrough career of Jessie Buckley who plays our lead rebel Cassa in Pulsar. Since shooting Jessie has gone on to star in BBC’s War and Peace, Taboo, The Last Post, The Woman in White and has had international acclaim in her debut feature film Beast. Jessie is currently shooting HBO’s new show Chernobyl and has shot a further three feature films working with Robert Downey Jnr (The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle), Julie Walters (Wild Rose) and Renne Zellweger (Judy).

indieactivity: Dramatic Feature
– Director: Aurora Fearnley
– Producers: Jackie Sheppard, Luke Walton
– Budget: £25,000
– Financing: Winner of ‘The Pitch” competition
– Production: Reel Issues Films, Little Northern Light
– Shooting Format: ALEXA
– Screening Format: DCP, Pro-Res 422
– World Premiere: London Sci-fi Film Festival
– Website; Pulsar

indieactivity: Give the full official synopsis for your film?
Aurora Fearnley: Jonah is a peacemaker of high regard and many years of loyal service, but when his last mission is to give aid to a planet of people he believes war thirsty and beyond forgiveness, he goes AWOL. Stowed away on-board an old asteroid mining vessel Jonah barters passage with the all female crew of X-cons but he doesn’t get far before the ship hits a freak solar storm. The suspicious crew turn on each other believing one of them carries a curse causing their misfortune.

indieactivity: Development & Financing?
Aurora Fearnley: I found an interesting competition called The Pitch, which was a competition to win a 25K budget for a short film that could reinterpret Biblical stories and characters. Entrants didn’t have to be of that faith themselves and it was open to everyone to pitch ideas with a final ten selected for a showdown at Pinewood Studios.

Aurora Fearnley, Jessie Buckley, Anna Koval in BTS for PULSAR (Dir. by Aurora Fearnley)

As I took Classics at A level I was already fascinated by folklore and religious parables from around the world so I loved the challenge. There were many tales I was familiar with having grown up in a Christian country but I started to connect on a more human and adult level with these characters that went through challenge, hardship and sacrifice. The issues of our modern day were reflected in the lives and decisions of people many hundreds of years ago. In a time of terrorism, immigration, boarder disputes and segregation I found the personal arch of Jonah pertinent to our current social conflicts.

The story of Jonah partially struck me as it had so many fantastic elements while at the heart was a hero’s journey of self-sacrifice and redemption. I love the pagan history of the UK and our folk tales, so I’ve concentrated on the mariners who hold superstitious beliefs about the sea and curses. I mean a great whale that eats the main character! I personally think that deep space and deep-sea hold so many parallels and connections that it wasn’t hard to transpose one environment for the other, it felt like a natural fit.

indieactivity: Production?
Aurora Fearnley: Making a film that relied so heavily on VFX took more planning than any of my previous dramatic shorts. I found that the freedom of creating environments in a computer added huge restrictions to what I intended to shoot on-set. I was moving into new territory and knew I needed a top tier consultant to help me realise such a visually ambitious story. Step up Paddy Eason from Nvisible.

Paddy is a VFX Supervisor with 20+ years’ experience and a credit list of over 70 titles. I was incredibly lucky that Paddy took an interest in the project and he generously gave detailed advice on potential pitfalls after reading the script. This meant that I was able to make adjustments before shooting that would cut the length of many VFX shots and save us money in post without compromising dramatic scenes.

Abigail Scollay, a talented Senior Stereographic Compositor was looking specifically to further her on set experience and take a step up as VFX producer, our challenging project was the perfect fit. She brought to the film her experience having worked on huge blockbuster films (Wonder Woman and Fantastic Beasts). Abigail broke the script down into the different components where specialist individuals would be needed. This is where I identified the major differences between compositors, 3D modellers, particle creators and rotoscope artists. It became clear we were going to need a team.

Steve Askey joined the team as our VFX Supervisor and for the duration of the five-day shoot both Abigail and Steve were with us on-set. When we were shooting scenes without any VFX the artists used the ALEXA raw footage to start mocking up designs. Having both dailies and mock-ups to view in the evening was great for all our HODs ahead of the next days shoot.

VFX Demo Reel 2018 from Steve Askey on Vimeo.

The first obstacle was creating the projected images from the central control panel on our spaceship. Every time an actor crossed in front or behind this large object I was giving our VFX team a headache. I wanted to avoid dictating the actors’ movement – giving them freedom to react in the space to one another – but I also needed to get an idea of how many shots we would be creating. The film wasn’t cast at this point but I called on a team of excellent actors who I’d worked with before at Little Northern Light to workshop the scene with me.

Production Designer Belle Mundi mapped out the exact spaceship interior with floor tape. Joining us was our DOP Phil Wood who wanted to watch the action with a mind on coverage and angles. Having both the HODs present for the day’s workshop was invaluable, as we all changed our ideas of the room’s size, ceiling height and furniture placement based on the run through. Phil and I later talked through grip equipment, potential angles and lenses.

From a script point of view I was challenged throughout the day with insightful and probing questions from the actors. They were reading the story for the first time and elements that were obvious in previous drafts had since been dropped. Their feedback helped me realise that import details in my head were not being conveyed through character action.

After this rehearsal I felt confident to start storyboarding and with the expert help of Andrew Lamb we produced some very detailed boards.

Design

The film’s main action takes place on the ORKA a deep space asteroid mining vessel crewed by hardened female ex-convicts. There are two types of technology in Pulsar: the mining ship’s older functional tech and The Council’s advanced and weaponised technology. However, both had to feel more advanced than our own while still being recognisable and relatable.

We gave each technology a different colour palette, design shape and wave pattern. This helped to differentiate them from one another and place a level of status on the characters using that technology. I kept everyone on the same visual page with a constant stream of image references, mood videos and Pinterest boards. Sometimes even music playlists too.

I decided against filming a miniature model spacecraft and instead opted for all our exterior space scenes to be fully computer generated. Steve Askey tackled some of our biggest challenges on Pulsar taking the lead on the exterior shots of the ship, which included modeling the ORKA in 3D, adding textures and lighting before animating all CG scenes.

Steve worked closely with Belle Mundi on the ships’ design. Surface areas were intricately mapped out before going into production; this was important for on-set lighting and sound as the ship is under increasing duress and we needed the interior rooms to reflect the exterior bombardment. The geography of rooms related to how closely affected the lighting sources and sound design would be for that room. For example, would the actors need to shout over engines in a given part of the ship?

Aurora Fearnley directing Naomi Harvey in PULSAR (Dir. by Aurora Fearnley)

The Shoot

We’d moved the shoot dates back twice as both Belle and Phil, key HODs, kept on getting booked for feature films together. It made sense to wait for them rather than push ahead and replace two such integral members of the team. The huge benefit of using them came from the crew they brought with them; by the time we came to shoot Pulsar, our team had been working together throughout the year on various projects. It was thanks to Line Producer Rob Speranza, who brought everyone together, that we managed to secure such a positive crew of professionals the week before Christmas.

Production pushed me hard to lose the outdoor location and shoot a green screen alien landscape instead. They had good reason to do so, as our incredible black stone location was up a hill with no vehicle access. I knew it would be cold for the actors and crew, and with the weather being so changeable in late December it was an unpopular and risky decision too. However, I reasoned it would be a short day with light fading at 3pm and by cutting our shot list and taking minimal equipment I could make it as smooth and quick as possible.
Part of my role in this process was to listen to good advice and understand our limitations, but underlining that I had to make decisions based on the integrity of the story and keep consistent to my original vision. So up the hill we went. It was bloody freezing but absolutely worth it.

I love being on-set, in the belly of organised chaos. On every shoot day we had a VFX component or a SFX stunt. What made these potentially challenging elements run smoothly was the masterful leadership of 1st AD Abbe Robinson. On this shoot I had to make huge compromises on a daily basis, but that was always counterbalanced by the alchemy of these incredible actors creating completely unimagined moments together.

We also didn’t lose spontaneity, which was something I was afraid of. At one point we had to move an entire scene into a different room from the script, but the confined shape and space of the alternative room heightened the performances and is now one of my favorites dramatically.

PULSAR (Dir. by Aurora Fearnley)

It felt quite different wrapping on this film to other shorts, knowing that a VFX film is only half shot and the rest of the film still needed to be created inside a computer. We had teams and individuals over the UK, America and Poland working on shots and sequences using Frame IO. We were unlucky that so many of our team in encountered misfortune in both personal lies and with hardware that kept setting us back months.

My expectation of completing that year had to be let go, as did the following year and then in the next it was like pushing a boulder through treacle keeping momentum going on a project that kept hitting road blocks. The only way we could have worked around it was more money. We were (I was) insanely ambitious for a short film of this limited budget to demand work of such high caliber. It was heart breaking to keep going back over shots and scenes, but I owed the full crew and actors the best film possible, which meant pushing for the best.

Part of the prize of winning The Pitch competition is a trip to LA with your completed film and an industry screening with some fancy names in attendance. I made a decision to sacrifice the trip and prize and convert that award into finance that could keep our post team attached and working on Pulsar for the final duration of post-production. It seemed obvious to me that the money needed to be on screen and given to those working their evenings and weekends on VFX shots. There would be plenty of time to screen in LA if we got the film finished at it’s best potential.

Post-production took longer than I could have imagined and after three years with the whole team running on fumes and passion we are all enormously proud of what we’ve achieved.

indieactivity: Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Aurora Fearnley: Developing a strategy for Pulsar has been different to my previous films so far. I’m looking specifically at genre film festivals and not at the BAFTA list of notable festivals, but as Pulsar has great drama and star power too there is some crossover.

The first thing I did to prepare was to get some independent feedback from people who were unrelated to my career or the project for analysis. Once I had a consistent read on what the benefits of the film were and what were the potential cons, I was able to start applying to festivals that fit the profile. It is so important for a filmmaker to make savvy choices with festival spending and a process of advanced elimination is better than wide unrealistic submissions.

nerdeoTV – Interview with Aurora Fearnley from Nerdeo on Vimeo.

An important first step was a private London screening for ‘Industry Invite’ only where I could speak with potential future collaborators and distributors. This turned out to be an amazing event with the cast and crew joining and coming from around the globe to be there.

With Pulsar only out in June and five festival screenings booked so far, we think this is a pretty positive start. This is my eighth time out on the short film circuit and I’ve learnt that you never know who will pick up your film and where it will screen. Every year the landscape changes, every year the competition increases and the selections get harder for programmers. I continue to make the films I want to see, to chose material that moves me at a core level and connects to something I feel compelled to say. I am grateful to every Film Festival that screens my work and I will always attend if it’s within my fiscal capabilities.

indieactivity: The Release?
Aurora Fearnley:Our current plan is to release the film online in early 2019, but that may change if we sell the film to a distributor, it is early days.

indieactivity: Advice from the Filmmaker?
Aurora Fearnley:I recently did an interview with Nerdeo. A website specifically set up for filmmakers to advertise and hire VFX for film projects. I gave lots of advice for filmmakers in this video.

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