Wake up Rosetta!

[rogerg]

perzackly.

[Trapezium Artist]

Hello, chaps: I just knew that by the time I found the opportunity to pop in, you'd have found our little film 

Have just arrived back in the Netherlands on the ferry this morning, having made the daft mistake of driving over to the UK for the premiere of our mini sci-fi epic about Rosetta, saying "Oh, I'll just drive my car into central London with all the posters and other goodies to support the event". Didn't help that the British Film Institute is right under Waterloo Bridge and that the BBC, where we dropped in in the morning for some interviews and pictures with their Tardis, is near Oxford Street. London traffic is absolutely mad, both at 08:00 on a Friday morning and no less so at 20:00 on Saturday evening.

Anyway, I digress ...

Hope you've enjoyed our film: we've certainly had a blast making it over the last year or so, albeit only ramping up to full speed at the end of July when we did the live shoot in Iceland with Aidan Gillen and Aisling Franciosi, plus a crew of about 50 locals and our Polish friends. Now that we've revealed the hidden connection between the film and ESA and Rosetta, I'll stick up some cool pictures on my Flickr account.

It has been a huge amount of work, mostly carried out in secret, not helped by the fact that we know just how risky it is for a space agency to start dabbling in Hollywood and sci-fi. So, I was a cat on a hot tin roof at the premiere, since we'd invited a whole bunch of entertainment, film, and game journalists along to see "Ambition", without them knowing that it had anything to do with us. We were sitting in the front row of the National Film Theatre Screen 3 in jackets covering our ESA polo shirts ...

There was a hiccup in the room when the compere prematurely revealed the link to us: we'd desperately wanted it only to become apparent halfway through the film, but in the grand scheme of things, it was fine. The film played in full awesome quality, then we (myself and the Rosetta project scientist, Matt Taylor, along with my comms colleague, Markus Bauer) revealed ourselves and gave a bit of a background briefing on the mission with a lot of lovely pictures of the real comet and the science we're doing.

Then we had a nice video from one of our astronauts on the International Space Station doing a wee demo of landing a probe on a comet, and a contribution from Alastair Reynolds, a very well-known British sci-fi author (and fortunately, ex-ESA scientist). Finally, a panel with Al, me, the film's director, Tomek Baginski, Aisling Franciosi, and Rhidian Davis, the organiser of the BFI's sci-fi film festival.

Then wine!

All very glam, all very exciting, all very exhausting. But worth it, as the film already has something like 340,000 YouTube views split across the ESA and Ambition film channels in less than two days, plus we've turned our ESA front page (www.esa.int) into an Ambition special for the weekend.

'Tis all good and we hope it hits the spot with many people who weren't aware of / interested in Rosetta. Not you lot, of course, 'cos you're all fanboys/girls already 

And to boot, I got to take my 15-year old daughter around the BBC and to the premiere, and she got to take me to see the musical Matilda, which is just as brilliant.

Those links again (shameless hussy that I am):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H08tGjXNHO4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32vlOgN_3QQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud9ON2CzYYM
http://ambitionfilm.com

And since we're all here for the music, the sound track elements are on the website of the film's composer, Atanas Valkov, who told me that he's putting a whole album together for us:

https://soundcloud.com/atanasvalkov

[Mikey]

Hussy?

Who's going to promote it if you don't?

Nice one again

[gr8gonzo]

That is all fab, fantastique, wondreful news. I loved the film and wished it was feature length. The music was very cool, too. I'm most impressed that those effects were achieved in a relatively short time frame. The 'Making of' was also great. I especially enjoyed when they sync-wiped (is that a word?) the raw shots with the completed effects shots. Awesome stuff all around. I hope it garners all the attention it deserves.

I'll be sharing the link on FB for my film crew buddies (and other interested parties). I'm certain they will be impressed.

Best of luck with the Ambition project, and Rosetta, of course.

[sawtooth]

Absolutely stunning film Mr. T Artist! Just my cup 'o tea!

[Trapezium Artist]

That is all fab, fantastique, wondreful news. I loved the film and wished it was feature length. The music was very cool, too. I'm most impressed that those effects were achieved in a relatively short time frame. The 'Making of' was also great. I especially enjoyed when they sync-wiped (is that a word?) the raw shots with the completed effects shots. Awesome stuff all around. I hope it garners all the attention it deserves.

I'll be sharing the link on FB for my film crew buddies (and other interested parties). I'm certain they will be impressed.

Best of luck with the Ambition project, and Rosetta, of course.

Thanks, Gonzo: I know that our friends at Platige Image would love someone to come up with the €50–100M needed to turn this into a feature film, but it's unlikely to be ESA, unfortunately. They did a spectacular job in a very short time, although it damn nearly killed some of them, 7-day weeks for a couple of months, and 20 hour days on many occasions.

That said, I'll take the scientific consultant role any day Hollywood comes calling ... 

[Trapezium Artist]

Absolutely stunning film Mr. T Artist! Just my cup 'o tea!

Thank you, thank you, Sawtooth.

And to think that if a certain Mr Godfrey and I had ever got our connection sorted, he could have been the composer of the score ... I'm sure he was too busy and although we (very) briefly talked about it, it never came to pass.

Next movie, p'raps ...

[rogerg]

I was waiting to hear "Frost*" snuck in your commentary....

[johninblack]

Wonderful film. Very well done and ticking all the boxes

[catherine]

So, tomorrow's the day... fingers crossed for a safe and comfortable landing.

[Trapezium Artist]

So, tomorrow's the day... fingers crossed for a safe and comfortable landing.

Yup, and you can all keep up online at www.esa.int/rosetta, or even at ESA's home page www.esa.int

Or by following your intrepid fellow Frost*ie on Auntie Beeb on the Six O'Clock News tonight (oops, too late), the Ten O'Clock News tonight, and BBC News, Al Jazeera, BBC World, CNN, and others tomorrow (so my press schedule appears to indicate  )

All very good, but will it land successfully? Buggered if I know ... ?

[rogerg]

pretty exciting stuff!  thanks for being our connection to something truly amazing!

[DueyC]

pretty exciting stuff!  thanks for being our connection to something truly amazing!

Word!

Fingers crossed that all the things that could go wrong don't.

[catherine]

Currently waiting for confirmation of separation - a nail-biting moment...

[JimD]

Just heard TA on Radio 4!