Solitary is a new film following two prisoners who are left swirling around space, fighting for survival. The film is the first from director Luke Armstrong, who previously worked on a huge number of films. In an exclusive conversation with Express.co.uk, Luke explained how David Bowie’s son and his own work on Avengers Endgame inspired his new movie.
Luke is not only a director, but also worked in digital composition on some of the biggest movies of the last 10 years, including Skyfall, Avengers: Endgame, A Private War and Guardians of the Galaxy.
These have had a significant impact on his work, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe particularly playing a role in how he made the dizzying special effects in his movie Solitary work.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, he said: “In terms of compositing there were all these different projects [in the Marvel Cinematic Universe] some of them are quite photo-real and others are quite stylised.
“We kind of developed ways of, for example, the planets in Solitary have a sort of glow on them and that’s not something you would always see in real life photography.
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“It’s something which has seeped into films at the moment, especially in Star Trek, and that’s something I’ve developed at work.”
Of course, in a movie like Avengers: Endgame, as Tony Stark flew in space, these glowing planets were part of many of the shots, some of which would have served as inspiration for his work on Solitary.
Similarly, Luke also had inspiration from David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, whose crew Luke met while they worked on Duncan’s film Moon, which starred Sam Rockwell as an astronaut.
Luke said: “It was actually Duncan Jones’ film Moon which inspired it [the story of Solitary]… I met Stuart Fenegan, who was the producer of Moon and he told me if I wanted to make a film do it in a limited location for your first film, as you make the most out of your budget.
“I took his advice literally because the movies I’d written before were massive, multi-location, complicated shoots.
“So being a fan of sci-fi and what they had done inspired something and I’d been to lots of talks at Cinesite [where he worked] and I got to know the crew on that film, who did VFX and miniatures.
“We talked about how they managed to make it work on a low budget and to make the most out of it. I must have remembered that when I wrote this as it definitely inspired something.”
Solitary is a film which Luke was able to finance after another script of his was passed over, and instead he was asked to write a sci-fi movie based on his own short film.
He added: “They loved it and said, ‘Can you make a whole film like that?’ That’s how it happened, I wrote the scripts and it was in July last year and by November it was filming.
“It was quite quick once they actually said, ‘Yes,’ it was quite surreal as you’re used to people saying, ‘No,’ and then for it to suddenly happen you don’t really believe it’s real.”
Now, the movie is coming to streaming services and fans can get the chance to watch it.
Solitary will be released across multi-platforms and available in all major retailers on August 31
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