G-LOC AND LOAD

STARBURST goes on location to get the lowdown on sci-fi feature G-LOC. We caught up with director TOM PATON and the cast, including CASPER VAN DIEN, to find out what to expect…

- Ed Fortune

We ventured into the wilds of deepest darkest Yorkshire to take a look at the set of G-LOC, the latest genre movie from one of STARBURST’s favourite directors, Tom Paton. This time around, it’s an actual studio, rather than an adapted forest or improvised battlefield. This is because G-LOC is a movie about space and spacecraft; a piece of classic science fiction, using the fantastic and forward-looking to tell stories about the modern-day. Set in a distant future, G-LOC is the story of Bran (True Blood’s Stephen Moyer), a man who is fleeing the dying Earth to make a new home of the distant human colony of Rhea. Alas, they are not open to the sudden rush of refugees coming to their world.

The set designer’s office is plastered with photographs taken from realworld space stations. Though G-LOC is set quite far in the future, the aesthetic is meant to be one that’s lived in. The Rheans prefer more mechanical and cruder approaches to technology, so the entire ethos behind the set design is to make the whole thing lived. The office is littered with tiny models of the set and countless rejected ideas. The set designers have spent hours poring over old archive footage of the Space Race, and are clearly inspired by the MIR and SkyLab, but more towards the end of those stations lifespan.

The set is busy; one small area is a full spaceship console, complete with switches, pilots chair and the like. It looks amazing once the lights are turned on. Another set is a generic control room, one that has been redressed more than once throughout filming. Finally, we make it to a classic sci-fi corridor. Actors Casper Van Dien and Tala Gouveia are gearing up for a day of action-heavy filming in the claustrophobic corridor that makes up much of the movie’s set.