UNIT Studios Gets Intergalactic for BBC Science’s ‘The Search for a New Earth’

UNIT’s in-house TV & Film division, UNIT Studios, were recently commissioned to deliver intergalactic work on new BBC programme ‘The Search for a New Earth’.

The film was directed by Lucy Haken and produced by Brook Lapping, and features Professor Stephen Hawking. He predicts that within 100 years humanity will have to look for a new planet to colonise. 

Earth has been our home for 200,000 years but with an over population and limited resources the planet might not support us forever. In The Search for a New Earth, Professor Hawking takes us on a revelatory journey to find humankind a new planet on which to live.

UNIT Studios collaborated with Brook Lapping to create playful and informative graphics which illustrate how mankind would leave planet earth, what sort of aircraft it would need, how it’d feed itself on the journey, how people would reproduce, and what they’d need to do to colonise a new planet once people arrived. The studio created geometric low poly designs, chalk board drawings, projections and planetary graphics to explain the complex science behind the challenges of long distance space travel. 

UNIT Studios EP Nicola Kingham comments: “It was a pleasure to work with Lucy and Professor Hawking on a space adventure with real ground-breaking science.  We created over 80 shots for the show.  One particular challenge being working out how to create an ‘inter- stellar sailboat’ expected to carry thousands of people and all the resources they would need to search deep space for habitable planets.”