Director Wyatt Rockefeller and cinematographer Willie Nel, SASC on the indie science fiction movie Settlers

The film Settlers is a blend of science fiction and western, about
a mother, father and little girl who have created a peaceful
homestead on a desolate part of Mars until another band of
colonists invade their land and take everything. The girl, Remmy,
must grow up fast under difficult circumstances. Her only friend is
a small non-verbal robot called Steve. Wyatt Rockefeller both wrote
and directed the film, which is also his first feature. Wyatt found
the perfect place to create the Mars setting for Settlers in a
remote part of the northern cape of South Africa, in one of the
hottest places on the planet. His South African producer introduced
him to cinematographer Willie Nel, and the two immediately began
figuring out the look of the film, using some images from Mars as
references. Willie found that the dry reddish landscape of their
location naturally informed both the look of the film and how the
characters dealt with surviving in a difficult place. Wyatt and
Willie were able to spend lots of time in prep, discussing how they
wanted to shoot the film and what the story needed to be. When it
came to actually shooting, it went very smoothly since they were
each so familiar with the script and shots they'd discussed ahead
of time. But the crew couldn't foresee everything- they had to deal
with rolling power outages in South Africa due to the heat and a
crazy rainstorm that nearly ruined the set. Remmy's companion is
Steve the farming robot, which gives Settlers one of its few
science fiction visuals. Wyatt wanted Steve to exist as a practical
creature for the actors to interact with, while keeping it simple
so as not to break the budget. He also wanted Steve to seem like a
real, functional piece of equipment that Mars settlers would need
and use, so he based Steve's boxy design on the Mars Curiosity
rover, but with legs. Wyatt began working with the production
designer, the VFX team, creature builders and the lead puppeteer
William Todd-Jones in the early stages of planning and prep to
create a puppet version of Steve with visual effects used for some
of his more complex motions. Find Wyatt Rockefeller: @wrockefeller
Twitter Find Willie Nel:
https://www.willienel.com/ @willie_nel_sasc Instagram You can
watch Settlers streaming on VOD platforms and on Hulu in October.
https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/settlers Read more about the design
of Steve the robot by the Settlers team:
https://www.talkhouse.com/designing-steve/ Find out even more about
this episode, with extensive show notes and links:
http://camnoir.com/ep140/ Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras:
www.hotrodcameras.com The Cinematography Podcast website:
www.camnoir.com YouTube:
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