Harrow Conversations: How we made ‘Gravity’ – A report

“People should think we shot Gravity in space” - Alfonso Cuarón’s animation brief

Soho based Framestore's Max Solomon, animation supervisor of Gravity, gives us a peek into the massive work that went into the animation part of the blockbuster. Harrow Conversations, an initiative to bring lunchtime conversations of interest to staff and students alike, hosted this talk on the 25^th of September 2014 at the University of Westminster, Harrow. From film buffs to animation students, this was a golden opportunity for everyone to discover the development of those special effects that left us all spellbound.

The talk opened with a trailer showing Sandra Bullock somersaulting into space - way to get the adrenaline pumping. When the story was pitched in 2009, the entire animation team was acutely aware of the challenges of making a hyper realistic thriller with immersive long shots and zero gravity. Most movies didn’t do that. But this one did. Max walked the audience through the entire process, from pre-production nightmares to post-production labours.

Early tests showed that traditional shooting wouldn’t work. A previz (pre-visualisation) team of 25 first worked to visualize complex scenes in the movie before filming. A horde of thinking caps explored the shot structure, the visual/spatial concepts and the animation/actor relationship. This gave them a lowdown on the choreography, 3D, physical cameras and performances beforehand.

Max explained, “The long shot scenes that lasted more than 13 minutes were a real pain. We had to avoid making it seem like audience was watching it through a window. We used long lenses that gave the audience the feel of actually being there in space.” For the destruction scenes, they had to carry out various tests in order to get the material to bend more than breaking into thousands of pieces, which would be unrealistic.

The lightbox and motion control bit was revolutionary, which he opines led to an Oscar win. “In the process of making the film, we developed a new camera especially for the purpose”. Some of the material used was a 2 tonne robotic arm, a 10 feet cube (to film the epic scene where Sandra is hurtling into space), removable planes and 1.8 million LEDs! The defining feature of filming the movie was when they had to deconstruct the motion to the camera, which means the cameras and not the actors did the moving. They had to avoid cowboy shots, i.e. shots from the waist up, and instead shot confused angles of the body as seen in zero gravity.

Max modestly added that the other departments had a lot to work on, for example creating different looks of earth as seen at sunset and sunrise, modelling and texturing exterior surfaces. The NASA outfits themselves were selected after testing them for both, looks and motion. Finally, the emotional performance had to match live action for which they reanimated shots during post-production. The entire film incurred a massive R&D expenditure.

3 years and a special effects team of 400 people later, we had the spectacle called Gravity that blew our minds away. “Even when you have talent, it is sheer hard work that is more important”, Max ended solemnly while referring to the crazy hours his team had clocked in.

The talk proved to be extremely insightful for budding film makers and animators. Aravind Sundar, an audio production student at Westminster, expressed, “The talk was a ‘mind opener’. I learned a lot.”

Max Soloman addressing the crowd at Harrow

 

Interacting with a student post-talk