Sumit Purohit is an Independent film maker from India, who recently tweeted a lovely sketch of a still from MOON to Director Duncan Jones.
As usual we like to get the artist to tell us a bit about how they became inspired to create artwork based on Duncan’s films. So we got in touch, and Sumit has very kindly sent us a copy of the first sketch, and another one as well! Click the images for full size versions.
Growing up with a father who is an astrophysicist, the outer space at times, feels closer than mundane reality. You are always eager to hear stories, myths, legends, facts, equations set in ‘that world’. And so, everything felt right about Moon from the moment I saw its trailer online, back in 2009: Sam Rockwell, a new young director in Duncan Jones, an indie low budget sci-fi set on backdrop of Moon. For any aspiring film maker like me, it felt good to see that such a film could be made within with very limited resources.
I saw Moon in midair- literally. On a flight to Dubai. I would have loved to watch it on the cinema screen but could not resist the temptation. Am glad I did that, as Moon sadly, never got a theatrical release in India.
I have been sketching frames, inspired from frames of films that I find riveting. I try to capture the essence of the film through those and somehow choose scenes that are of pivotal nature to the plot. Terrence Malick’s films are what inspired me to start sketching like this. Malick’s films are visual poetry in the way they weave the metaphysical realm into each frame. I could pause any and sketch it.
Moon was a very obvious choice in this series: a story of a man employed to work on a lunar station, alone, for three years. I sketched one frame of the interiors of the space station and the other is on the surface of the moon, both trying to capture contrasting moods of the film. What attracted me to sketch Moon was the fact that even with a visually sparse environment, Jones manages to conjure up a visually rich experience. In parts it reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Make sure you pop over to Sumit’s site for more examples of his fantastic film still sketches 
Source Code opens in China today, one of only 20 foreign films to open on the Chinese mainland due to a quota system currently in place. Things may change in the future, with up to 1,600 new cinema screens being added per year to service a growing appetite for both local, and foreign films (1). Even GERTY has seen the potential, with actor Kevin Spacey starring in entirely locally funded feature ‘Inseparable‘, where 50% of the dialogue will be in Mandarin (2).
