As part of the campaign to promote Rosetta & get people excited about its science, technology, & sheer audacity of trying to land on a comet, we used many vectors aimed at many audiences.

These included conventional web stories & infographics, social media, & press conferences, & but also extended to making a series of cartoon films featuring anthropomorphic versions of Rosetta & Philae, which became much loved & won many awards.

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But one thing we had in mind was the brilliant film that NASA had made to promote the Curiosity Mars landing in 2012, the so-called "7 Minutes of Terror".

We wanted to do something that had a similar impact, but knew that Philae's landing would take far longer & lack many of the dramatic features that made the NASA film so compelling, including the CGI work covering the atmospheric entry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s

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So, we knew we wanted to make a short film, but we rapidly converged on the idea of making it fictional, presenting Rosetta & Philae through a story-telling environment.

Science fiction seemed like a good vector, but it'd need some amazing VFX work to pull it off.

I had seen the trailer made by the BBC for its coverage of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 was was very impressed by the visuals, music, & sheer drama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b9Ji7DvsjU

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And by chance, it turned out that I happened to know the some of the people who had made it, at Platige Image in Warsaw. It had been directed by Tomek Bagiński, an Oscar-nominated film-maker.

So we thought maybe they could be the right people for our Rosetta film.

But we had to get competitive bids & there was strong competition from Pixomondo in Frankfurt: they did the dragons for Game of Thrones & much else. We had a great visit to see them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vmoqOFP_70

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But in the end, we went with Platige Image, because they had an astronomer on their team, Jan Pomierny, who really understood what we were trying to achieve both scientifically & creatively. And we landed Tomek as the director.

So, how should we approach the film?

As you can see in this film about The Making of Ambition, there were several ideas, including one about a heist, stealing the comet, before we agreed on the actual concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud9ON2CzYYM

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The idea of looking back from the deep future at the importance of the Rosetta mission gave us leeway to include lots of fantastical graphics & VFX work.

And yet we also wanted it to be grounded in real science & the real technology of the time. We also had to be careful not to presume that Philae would actually land successfully on Comet 67P/C-G: we started making the film six months in advance, so Rosetta hadn't even arrived at the comet by then.

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A lot of concept art was drawn up, the script written, & storyboards created, plus a location had been identified for shooting.

We needed a barren, dark landscape & an open cast coal mine spoil heap outside Warsaw seemed perfect.

Except Greenpeace reacted to the filming permission application with concerns about kicking up heavy metals in the dust.

At this point, ESA's involvement was secret & we couldn't risk any reputational harm, so that location got nixed.

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At very late notice then, the filming location was shifted to Iceland, using the dark lava landscape of the Reykjanes Peninsula to the west of Reykjavik, the site of the recent active volcanoes near the Blue Lagoon.

A spectacular location, although rather cold, even in July. But that's Iceland for you 🙂

The good thing was that Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" had recently finished filming there, so there were local crew familiar with sci-fi shoots, even if ours was tiny by comparison.

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We also needed two actors, one for the master role, the other for apprentice. We wanted one of each gender, but didn't care who was who – it only mattered who we cast.

For the master, we approached Benedict Cumberbatch & Cate Blanchett, among others, working with some great casting folk at Platige & DDA.

They were not available, but we did land Aidan Gillen, who was famous then for playing Petyr Baelish or Littlefinger in Game of Thrones, as well as his many other roles.

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With Aidan cast, we quickly homed in on Aisling Franciosi for the co-star role as the apprentice. She had done one film & was in the TV series "The Fall" alongside Gillian Anderson & was perfect for the part.

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The live shoot lasted just two long days & I took a load of photos of the cast & crew, which are here on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/markmccaughrean/albums/72157647105202934/

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Then over the following months, the work reverted to Warsaw, with a brilliant VFX team led by Jakub Knapik, with an original score from Atanas Valkov, all under the direction of Tomek, and the producers Jan & Anna Różalska.

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Keep in mind that this was all under the covers at this point: no-one knew that ESA was making such a film, not even most people in science communications at ESA. Secrecy was essential to avoid being second-guessed before the film even came out.

But we wanted to release the film in a big way too. Fortunately, we had the good fortune of a connection at the British Film Institute in London, who were running a sci-fi film festival in the autumn of 2014, curated by Rhidian Davis.

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Rhidian had contacted me back in the spring, after Rosetta had woken from its hibernation. He thought it might be nice to livestream the Philae landing into the BFI in London as part of the festival.

He was quite surprised when I suggested instead that they be the site where we premiered *our* science fiction film, later known as "Ambition".

Surprised but enthusiastic, so we had meetings with their management too to set it up. Took some persuading, but it worked out.

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We wanted to get an audience of people for the premiere spanning film, sci-fi, fashion, music, & more, but all without any connection to ESA or to Rosetta.

So Platige made this teaser trailer to set the scene, showing small parts of the main film, but with a lot of other material around it to give some scope & hopefully pull the desired audience in.

Here is that trailer, complete with an Inception / Zimmer rumble 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4XK_NAToRI

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On the day at the BFI then, 10 years ago exactly today, we had a load of people in the room to see a film starring Aidan Gillen & directed by Tomek Bagiński, but about which they knew little else.

It was announced with this non-specific poster by famous Polish film poster artist, Gabz Domaradzki, outside the theatre.

Several ESA people were there incognito. It was remarkably silly in retrospect, but part of the whole surprise.

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Adam Rutherford was due to do the introduction to the film, but was called away at late notice to the palace, if I recall correctly. No idea why.

Which led to an unfortunate mistake by the substitute MC (whose name shall remain hidden).

As he was introducing the main film, he gave away that it was about ESA's Rosetta mission.

Which was only supposed to be revealed as the film played.

Tomek, Jan, and I were in the front row & let out a combined silent scream of horror when it happened 🙀

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Still, the "reveal" was confined to the hundred or so people in the theatre: the rest of the world had no idea at that point.

So here it is, the almost seven minutes (thinking back to Curiosity) of "Ambition".

It's bonkers, bananas, bombastic, & ludicrous.

But for all that, I've watched & shown it a million times, & somehow it captures the moment beautifully.

And I'm still immensely proud of everyone who worked so hard to make it & with such love & dedication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H08tGjXNHO4

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Once the short film had ended, much earlier than people expecting a full Aidan Gillen film had anticipated, we took off our jackets to reveal our ESA logo polo shirts.

We then had a series of presentations & a panel to present Rosetta to a non-science audience, & to discuss why we'd made this film to promote it.

Matt Taylor, the Rosetta project scientist spoke, as did I, and we had Tomek, Aisling, Rhidian, & famed sci-fi author & ex-ESA scientist Alastair Reynolds to discuss.

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@spacegeck In this, Judy, you are most definitely not alone 🙂

Indeed, it's a little known story that he wore the same shirt at the Ambition premiere, but ...

The whole shirt thing is for another day – needless to say, it's a far more complicated story than most people know & I'm not sure that anyone came out of it well, for various reasons.

@spacegeck Yeah, it spiralled rapidly out of control beyond the original offence & became part of the culture wars for days & weeks after. There were people baying for blood on both side, public, political, & scientific, even to the point where Boris Johnson & Richard Dawkins got involved.

Quite apart from the disproportionate impact it had on Matt, I lost friends over it & had colleagues demand I be fired for letting it happen (even though it was not my responsibility).

@markmccaughrean @spacegeck It was definitely a point of discussion within New Horizons, not least because Alan was on Rosetta.

Suffice to say, that's why we are all wearing mission polos in all the official photos of the flyby. Maryland July isn't the coolest, so I'm glad the shirts were black so you couldn't see how much we were sweating through them.