Looking Up

Looking Up is a 2019 Chinese drama co-directed by Deng Chao and Yu Baimei. Deng Chao also stars as Ma Haowen, an engineer whose faith in his son shapes the boy’s childhood in 1990s China; years later, stranded aboard a crippled spacecraft, the grown son (Bai Yu) replays what his father taught him. Ren Suxi co-stars, and the film opened in China in July 2019.

A story that swings between a boyhood on the ground and an emergency in orbit needs two very different toolsets. The space half is CG environment and hard-surface work — spacecraft and station builds, Earth seen from altitude, debris and impact simulation — with rig removal and patient compositing to sell weightlessness. The earthbound half is period reconstruction: matte painting, set extension and cleanup to strip a modern skyline back several decades, plus water and atmospheric simulation for the flood material. Terminal FX contributed visual effects and animation to Looking Up, among the film, television and commercial projects in the studio’s portfolio.