The Cinematography Podcast Episode 140: Director Wyatt Rockefeller and cinematographer Willie Nel

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  @willie_nel_sasc Instagram

You can watch Settlers streaming on VOD platforms and on Hulu in October.

Read more about the design of Steve the robot by the Settlers team

Close Focus: Day and date movies may end up being the death of theatrical. The film Malignant was released day and date on HBO Max and the box office numbers haven't been great, but the decision to keep Shang-Chi strictly theatrical seems to be helping its box office.

Illya's short end: Some of NAB's biggest exhibitors have pulled out of the in-person convention: Panasonic, Sony and Canon. Several smaller exhibitors have also pulled out. UPDATE: The 2021 NAB in-person show has been canceled. It will be virtual only from Oct. 9-13 2021.

Ben's short end: Ben recently watched Sam Rami's Crimewave which was co-written by the Cohen brothers and shot by Bob Primes.

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