The Escapist

The Escapist, a feature film directed by Rupert Wyatt, starring Brain Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Seu George, Damian Lewis and Liam Cunningham, premiered to great acclaim at Sundance film festival in January 2008. The director, and a long term collaborator with Atomic, Rupert Wyatt (director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes) approached us very early on. From the start we worked closely with him pre-visualising scenes, for example building the entire prison location in CG so that he could test camera moves, thus saving a great amount of expensive shooting time. We then on-set supervised all the complex shots, both on location in Ireland and underneath London, and then back in the studio. The shots were transferred to digital and sent to Atomic Arts where the 3d and matte layers were created virtually. Finally all compositing was done and the finished work transferred back to film.

In total Atomic completed over 100 effects shots, including recreation of entire virtual sets, addition of fire & rain, and countless additions, replacements and fixes. The film premiered in the UK on 20th June 2008. You can see the trailer if you click here.