Our Picks: Planet Unknown by Shawn Wang
At the end of 21st century, mankind were facing global resource depletion. Space Rovers were sent out to find potential inhabitable planets. Planet Unknown is the graduation thesis film from Shawn Wang, we screened the film at our Student Showcase event in August breaking our UK University only film rule, as we were simply blown away by the level of skill and craft demonstrated in the short.
Director’s Notes
I had been working full time on Planet Unknown from July 2015 to June 2016. It was a passion project as well as my graduation thesis film at Communication University of China. This 11-month journey was very challenging, but it was a perfect learning opportunity as well.
The idea started back in 2014 when Interstellar was released. I was deeply impressed by the movie and was inspired by the two robots TARS and CASE. The idea of intellectual robots exploring space developed from there.
Other inspirations include Pixar movies like WALL-E and Toy Story, as well as CHAPPiE, NASA documentaries about Mars Rover Curiosity, and short films by individuals like Alex Roman’s The Third & The Seventh, Richard Mans’ Abiogenesis, Erik Wernquist’s Wanderers, Alf Lovvold’s Dawn of the Stuff, and so many more.
Echoic Audio, one of the UK’s leading music & sound design studios, joined this adventure with epic cinematic score and detailed sound design which catapulted the film to a new level that I had never imagined.
This project pushed me to do what I never thought I could do. However, it also keeps punching me in the face and shows me how limited my skills are. There are still tons of problems in the making that I can’t figure out even now.
