Passengers Mega Week

Building a starship on the Sony lot

“Passengers was a pretty amazing project that we got to work on with Sony and Discovery Channel.” That’s how John Davidson opens his breakdown of the job, and it’s easy to see why.

01The brief: Mega Week

Discovery was staging Mega Week, a week-long event built around the network’s best shows. The host was Chris Pratt, and the week tied in with his new Sony Pictures film, Passengers.

Magic Feather’s job was to shoot, direct, edit and produce twelve vignettes, and the deadline was five weeks.

02A soundstage with a history

We rented a soundstage on the Sony lot. It’s the same stage where The Wizard of Oz filmed Munchkinland, and we filled that empty space with a green-screen stage for Chris.

03Directing Chris Pratt

John directed scripts written by Jesse Rugless from Discovery. When the scripted takes were done, Chris agreed to an impromptu Q&A, “because he’s just that cool.”

I find stories of pioneers on Discovery really fascinating.Chris Pratt, unscripted, on set

Chris was unscripted in that Q&A, so having a star of his caliber say flattering things about Discovery’s programming in his own words was a big win for the network.

04Creating the universe

Discovery’s graphics request was simple to say and hard to do: “Can you make it look like the viewing deck on the film?”

That meant building the set and also the universe around it. No 3D assets from the film were available, so Magic Feather modeled the viewing deck and the space outside it from scratch, on time and on budget. “We’ll do just about anything for our clients.”

05The result

The finished package included a Mega Week promo, Discovery GO content and daily stringouts of the vignettes that aired across the week. Every piece is in the slider at the top of this page. The project was nominated for a Promax award.