10

Spaceman Sam

This is an image that I had to make in five minutes when we were dressing the set of the second Bell residence. We see this posh, expensive house in the background of the videophone call that Sam makes from the Rover cab towards the end of the film. The set itself was a simple three-walled set similar to a TV studio, with the fourth wall exposed for the camera to cover the interior. There was actually a front door built into one side of the set for a deleted ending where we see Sam 2 approach the front door in motorcycle gear. He drops a small present for his daughter on the step, rings the bell and leaves rather quickly. A few moments later we then see Eve open the door, look around and then crouch down to pick up the present. She opens it and it's a tiny little wooden house, which is actually an exact duplicate of the house she is currently living in. The idea was that the original Sam (who sold his DNA to Lunar Industries so they could create their clone army of drawer-sleeping space-miners) had this beautiful house in his head as his vision of his perfect future. The original Sam does the deal and consigns an army of his alternate selves to a (short) life of slavery and untimely death whilst he himself lives in the lap of luxury in his beautiful new house with a hot wife, jetpack and fully automatic tea making robot. So the clone Sam’s are haunted by the vision of this amazing house and so it has become included in the model village. Sam 2 brings this part of the model back as a present for Eve. Personally I would have gone and busted the steering wheel of one of the old 60s Moon Rovers that NASA left up there, but there you go.

The sets for the Bell residences were put together in a matter of a couple of days by Production Designer Tony Noble and his construction team, I think the total budget for these two sets was just over £1000. They were little more than painted walls with some stuff shoved up on them. The other Bell residence is intended to be a cheaper place where Sam and Tess lived together when she was pregnant with Eve, before he did the big moneymaking deal and they moved out into the space-Hamptons. I remember (due to us having no money - recurring theme this), Duncan and I grabbing things from our flat on the way into the studio to dress the set with. The round globe lamps that are lighting that scene are currently lighting my lounge and allowing my girlfriend to see the guitar keys on Beatles Rock Band. Eight quid Ikea lights come good. Can't believe they even ended up in a picture on the back of the DVD box. Mind you, at least it was just the lights and bedclothes this time. If any of you watched "Whistle" (the other short film on the DVD/Blu-Ray), the main character in that is wearing Duncans' clothes the entire way through. Quite glad we managed to talk him out of that one on Moon. Although during shooting we did spend quite a bit of time in the evenings on the sofas in the lounge wearing Selk Suits. They're great, it's like having clothes made of duvet, you can literally just fall asleep anywhere. You just stop moving and you're already in bed. If you value a bit of slobbing around at home hung over on a Sunday afternoon watching DVDs, you should seriously consider investing. http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/selkbag-the-sleeping-bag-suit

So this image is a five-minute rather badly photoshopped portrait of the amazing Sam Rockwell which was mounted on the wall in the background of the shots of the new house. As the cameras were being set up I was chatting with Duncan and he mentioned it'd be cool to have an Astronaut launch Portrait on the wall. So I rushed off back to my computer in the production office, grabbed a picture of Sam off the net that kind of worked and boshed this together in literally five earth minutes. This is why it's a pretty duff job; it was never intended to be seen up close. I'm not sure if you can even see it in the film, as the coverage in the final cut was limited to Tess' videophone messages. It was intended to be like a graduation picture, when he left on his original 3-year mining mission (to see if he had the chops for the cloning gig), they took a picture just before launch just like NASA does. I know it's a rubbish piece of art but it was cool when Sam saw it on the wall when we were setting up for filming and kept mentioning he liked it. There was so much done on the fly when we were making Moon that I didn't have time to be too proud. Finishing artwork as the camera's being set up is not my working routine of choice but when you're doing all this stuff with incredibly tight resources and zero time, you just have to run at it and hope people don't judge you too harshly. Just for the record I can actually use Photoshop. I've even got a degree in drawing pictures.