Passengers, starring Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Sheen is out now on DVD & Blu-ray. To celebrate the release, EF joined a small group of journalists for a special workshop in central London to learn about some fun robots!
Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt star in a high-stakes adventure about two passengers, Aurora and Jim, onboard a spaceship transporting them to a new life on another planet.
The trip takes a deadly turn when their hibernation pods mysteriously wake them 90 years before they reach their destination. As they try to unravel the mystery behind the malfunction, they discover that the ship itself is in grave danger. With the lives of 5,000 sleeping passengers at stake, only Jim and Aurora can save them all.
Under the guide of Dr Steve Hubbard, Chief Robot Wrangler at RobotFun, we undertook a lesson in robot programming, before tackling the RobotFun Aurora Challenge.
In Passengers, at a key point in the film, Jim (Chris Pratt) asks Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) out on a date. He does this by getting a small robot to deliver a note to her.
In order to successfully deliver the note, the robot has to be programmed to follow a path, avoiding obstacles and dangers along the way. We did a version of this having first learnt the basics of Ozobots, the little robots which we were using.
Ozobots are small, round and friendly. They are programmable using OzoBlockly, which is very similar to Scratch. By typing ozoblockly.com/editor, we opened up a very interesting and accessible world of programming that kids and adults can have great fun with.
After creating a code for our tiny robots to follow, we placed them on the screen and activated it to follow our commands. Using colours and breaks, you can code the Ozobots to follow any track you create.
RobotFun is a new concept in education and entertainment for children of all ages. Their Robotics masterclasses and activity workshops are a great idea for school lessons and after school clubs as well as robot themed kids birthday parties! You can find out more about RobotFun here.
We might still have some way to go before we get to the standard of robotics as Michael Sheen’s character Arthur in Passengers, but this workshop was a nice introduction to the world.
As for the brilliant movie, The 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray 3D, and Blu-ray, and DVD releases of Passengers brings fans all the behind-the-scenes action with three featurettes, plus ‘Outtakes from the Set’ and ‘Book Your Passage’. In ‘Casting the Passengers’ the cast and filmmakers provide insight into the joys and challenges of populating a ship built for thousands, with four key players.
Guy Hendrix Dyas, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Production Design for this film, takes audiences through the impressive sets constructed to represent The Avalon in ‘Creating The Avalon’; while fans can step onto the set for an unforgettable visit in ‘On Set with Chris Pratt’. In ‘Book Your Passage’ audiences in search of a new life can learn more about the Homestead company and see what awaits them.
The Blu-ray release of Passengers includes additional exclusive material, including deleted scenes and the featurette ‘Space on Screen: The Visual Effects of Passengers’; a deep-dive on the effects used in the zero gravity pool scene.
Check out our gallery of our workshop, and be sure to click on the Ozobot website for more information on them.
Passengers is out now on Digital, 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray 3D™, Blu-ray™ & DVD.
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