![]() NASA checked off on every aspect of the set and script. Green, the space agency’s one-time “Mars czar” and current overseer of robotic solar system exploration, also served as a consultant on The Martian. “The challenge of this film, really, for myself and those people who work with me in the art department, has been to generate what NASA does with billions of dollars of funding over several decades, with millions of dollars over several months,” Max says.įor Max, that process began with trips to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he tore apart prototype space suits and astronaut habitats with Jim Green, head of NASA’s planetary science program. Once the excitement clears from the airlock explosion, Max guides our small group of science writers around the rest of Hermes - or what hasn’t been loaded into crates.Īstronauts use the flight deck to monitor all aspects of the Hermes spacecraft during their journey to Mars. They’ve since created some of Hollywood’s greatest epics together. Then, 30 years ago, Scott asked him to help make a Coca-Cola commercial. That landed him a gig designing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon shows. Max’s first big break came working stage lights at Woodstock in the summer of 1969. He’s a native New Yorker, but his accent betrays a career spent with Brits. He’s a towering man with penetrating eyes and a face weather-lined from years of filming in desert climes and empty parking lots. Of all the characters on Scott’s regular filmmaking crew, Max is the most captivating. One crew member calls out a countdown, and I realize most everyone but me has orange earplugs buried deep in their ear canals.Īrthur Max, veteran set designer and frequent Scott collaborator, supplies a pair shortly before an explosive blast rings out and the spacecraft’s airlock erupts in flames. “We want to make the film as much science fact as science fiction,” says executive producer Mark Huffam ( World War Z, Saving Private Ryan).Īs I shuffle into a nearby soundstage, a crowd gathers behind a horde of cameras pointed at a section of the Hermes spacecraft - an ion-powered ship that ferries astronauts back and forth to Mars. The filmmakers even hired Rudi Schmidt, former project manager of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, to test all the experiments done in the movie, including turning water into rocket fuel - which I’m told works, by the way. The rockets, modules, and space suits were built - and 3-D printed - with heavy guidance from NASA. Scott is known for epics with great attention to detail, and this movie lives up to that legacy. But he gave film lovers Thelma and Louise, winner of six Academy Awards, as well as Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and the entire Alien universe. For decades, legendary director Ridley Scott has simultaneously been hailed as a cinematic genius and languished with some of Hollywood’s biggest flops. To a large extent, The Martian’s success or failure sits on the shoulders of one man. In February, Astronomy editor Eric Betz got a behind-the-scenes tour of The Martian at Korda Studios in Budapest, Hungary. Their present task, removing laboratory equipment from the astronaut habitat, or Hab, is easy in comparison to the one to come - someone has to remove all 1,200 tons of this carefully color-matched Mars dirt.įor 12 weeks, this movie set, through suburbs and past Hungarian countryside homes on the outskirts of Budapest, has seen many of Hollywood’s biggest stars and most celebrated filmmakers. And a group of young Hungarian men are stepping out of the van to start the long disassembly process. Eventually, images of blue Mars sunsets and butterscotch evening skies captured by NASA’s rovers will become a backdrop, along with shots of Wadi Rum, Jordan - a red desert stand-in for Mars.īut for now, it’s more like a surreal sandbox here at the last day of filming on set at The Martian. Green screen sheets line the stadium-sized walls. Its path winds past the scorched remains of a Mars Ascent Vehicle built to launch crew to orbit.Ībove this fictional Mars-scape, a ceiling vaults some six stories tall, placing the cavernous soundstage among the largest in the world. A small white sprinter van kicks up red dust as it slides across the “martian” sand toward a yurt-like astronaut habitat.
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