The Martian

The Martian is the story of a team of astronauts who are midway through their mission on Mars when, during a horrific storm on the Red Plant, they are forced to abandon the mission they had been tasked with. During the chaotic flee back to the rocket, their resident botanist, Mark Watney, is struck by debris and presumed dead by the rest of the crew. The crew make the difficult call to start on their return journey to earth, leaving Watney, who was only unconscious, behind and who subsequently wake up alone with no sign of his crewmates.

The film is propelled forwards by Watney's isolated attempts to survive, as any return rescue mission is likely to take years to arrive, assuming that NASA even find out that he's still alive. Meanwhile NASA, who soon realise their horrific mistake, are left to measure out the worth of one person's life against their own reputations in a PR nightmare, tremendous expense and the risk to the lives of others that any rescue mission would mean. All of this is set to the ticking clock of starvation on the barren, vast world that Watney now inhabits

For most of the movie it is one man speaking to the camera, through the pretext of Watney leaving log recordings in case a rescue mission does not arrive in time to save him.  The film allows Damon, the actor, to directly engage with the audience on his state of mind and progress.  By allowing its lead character to address viewers in such an immediate fashion, the film pretty much gives all control to Matt Damon who plays the role of Watney.

In terms of post-production, the film has a lot of Computer Generated Images (CGI). As the film is set on Mars it is interesting to see the colour correction and green screen they implemented into the film as seen in some of the pictures below. 

Watching this reminded of a youtube video called ‘Why CG Sucks (except it doesn’t)’

Link: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24

The video talks about the use of CGI in movies and basically says that good CGI is when you don’t even notice it and it is more about the using the effects to help tell your story than using then for the effect itself. The Martian clearly uses CGL in this way to enable the story to be told and for it to appear realistic, the fact that it uses CGI to create a believable atmosphere and context for the story to unfold.