Broadley Case Study: Hestia – Short Sci-Fi Film

‘HESTIA’ is a short Sci-Fi film directed by Kieran Lowley and Isobel Drane. Produced by Red Robin Films in collaboration with Sony Europe and Shahidul Khan, the film’s visual effects and additional photography were masterfully handled by the Broadley Studios team. Hestia tells the emotional story of Julia Pike (portrayed by Amber Doig-Thorne), an astronaut on a mission to Mars whose journey takes a tragic turn when an asteroid strikes her ship, sending it spiraling into deep space. As her life support systems fail and Mars drifts out of sight, Julia makes the heart-breaking decision to call her daughter for a final farewell. Hestia is a poignant narrative of a mother’s last goodbye to her child.

Hestia marks a significant milestone as it is the first production to utilise Sony’s new Burano camera, Verona CLED Wall, and the Virtual Production toolkit. The short sci-fi film also leverages the Zeiss CinCraft Scenario Tracking System within a fully hybrid Virtual Production pipeline.

With just 7 weeks of preparation before principal photography and slightly over 9 weeks for post-production, the film’s demanding schedule was managed with impressive efficiency. At the core of this visual effects-driven project was the team at Broadley Studios.

Broadley Studios provided all the networking, computing power, and technical crew necessary to bring Hestia’s VFX to life.

We developed a robust file transfer pipeline to ensure seamless file sharing and version control between us and our partner VFX vendors. These included Just Just Productions LTD, who crafted the Hestia Starship, and several independent artists specialising in animation, virtual set creation, and simulation pipelines from across the country.

Our contributions at Broadley spanned the full spectrum of VFX work, including hair simulations, 3D set reconstruction, particle simulations, compositing, and color management.

We anticipated enhancing in-camera shots with additional digital props, sparks, and other elements, necessitating the creation of a new pipeline to accommodate the Zeiss CinCraft Scenario system. We extracted tracking data from each plate via CinCraft and seamlessly transferred it between Unreal Engine, Blender3D, and Davinci Fusion. Utilising full multipass and multi-layer EXR pipelines, we crafted photorealistic composites that truly stand out.

Over the course of 9 weeks, Broadley worked on more than 70 intricate shots – a significant undertaking.

The studio’s high-powered computing capabilities were crucial to making Hestia a reality. “We were running two Quadro A6000 machines with Xeon CPUs and hundreds of gigabytes of RAM nonstop, each logging hundreds of hours of render time. Meanwhile, Broadley’s VFX team worked on RTX 4090 machines with top-tier Core i9 processors. Without the substantial investment Richard made in Broadley’s computing infrastructure, Hestia would not have been possible,” says Lowley.

One of the most challenging aspects of the VFX work involved the exterior Earth sequence, where Julia Pike reunites with her daughter, Coralie (played by Summer-Joules Saunders).

“We wanted to capture as much of this sequence in-camera as possible,” Drane explains. “But due to time constraints, we couldn’t shoot plates for our ultra-wide shots. So, Richard agreed to film these plates in Broadley’s studio space. We filmed the plates, and Broadley completely rebuilt the entire digital Earth environment from scratch. The VFX work was so seamless that some of our crew didn’t even realise we filmed these shots on a different day.”

“We all loved working on this film and with the team from Red Robin Films and are really pleased with the way it turned out” says Richard.

The film has its premiere on the 6th September and it will be doing the rounds in the Global Festival circuit after that screening. It is also to be used on Sony’s channels to show off their new Verona LED wall technology and the new Burano camera.

We have high hopes for some awards with this short sci-fi film, so watch this space…

To find out more about our studios, production services, and how we can help you and your short film, please call us on +442077255858 or email us at [email protected] today.

Broadley Studios – For People with Something to Say