Case Study: Gravity (2013)

Gravity (2013)
Dir: Alfonso Cuaron
Prod: Warner Bros.
Distributed by: Warner
Bros.
Budget: $100mil
Estimated Gross:
$715mil

No previous film has depended so

heavily on computer-generated
animation that looks as if it's live
action. In each of Gravity's nervejangling space-walk sequences, only
the heads inside the helmets are real.
The spacesuits and all background
elementsincluding the Hubble, the
shuttle, and the International Space
Stationare rendered entirely in
photo-realistic CG.
"When we started, the technology
to make this film did not exist." Alfonso Cuarn,
"It forced us to invent our own set of
tools. There was an awful lot of, you
can't solve this till you solve that, and
you can't solve that till you solve
something else. You just had to start
somewhere and go around the loop a
few times till you'd sorted it out." - Tim
Webber - Visual-effects supervisor.

The entire film was essentially reverse-engineered. Cuarn and a team of animators at London's
visual-effects shop Framestore began by designing CG shots, and then a physical-shoot crew
worked backward to create live-action footage of the actors' faces (and sometimes their bodies)
that exactly matched the choreographed CG. The key to that approach was creating reliable
robotic cameramensomething that motion-control setups had never been able to do with high
consistency or ease of use.

Cuarn and his team had to invent a whole new toolbox. The technology needed to create a
convincing portrayal of zero gravity that, as Cameron suspected, simply didn't exist.
"Ninety-nine percent of the equipment we used was custom-made," says Lubezki. "This
movie could not have existed even a year ago."
Over nearly five years, Cuarn, Lubezki, and visual effects supervisor Tim Webber (an Oscar
nominee for 'The Dark Knight'), pushed film tech and CGI to new heights to bring a stunning
level of realism to the film. They commissioned an automotive robot manufacturer to make a
super-nimble bot with a specialized camera head so Cuarn could pull off dramatic, fluid long
shots (a signature of his style) that mimic the sensation of being in unmoored space.

Pre-Production - 2.5 years

Alfonso Cuarn wrote Gravitys screenplay with his son, Jonas, in three weeks, back in
2009.
Considering the visual effects needed to realize their vision, the senior Cuarn knew it
would take much longer than that to direct the film, but he had no idea he was in the
incipient stages of an undertaking that would last over four years.
It was a miscalculation, I finished the script and thought it was something
straightforward, but we realized the technology did not exist. Cuarn,
Along with his trusted cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, he began consulting
various visual effects teams in order to produce the robots, rigs, and wires it would take
to simulate Gravitys characters floating around in space for nearly the entirety of the
films 90 minutes a feat thats never before been attempted in cinema.
Alfonso describes the challenge as a confluence of the worst possible
scenario of animation and the worst possible scenario of a live-action
shoot. Between the issues around replicating microgravity and
Cuarns insistence on sustained shots and limited editing,
everything had to be preordainedevery shot, every angle, every
lighting scenario, virtually every secondbefore the camera could
begin recording. It was a circular, maddening scenario. From the
storyboards they created a digitally animated version of the film,
complete with digital versions of the characters.

 First, a complete version of the movie was made inside a computer. The animation
process called previsualization is a way that many filmmakers plan scenes, as a
step beyond illustrated storyboards.
But its unusual for an entire film to be prevised. Here, they essentially created a
Pixar-style animation of the movie containing everything but the actors.
The simulated spacecraft and tools other objects needed to look ultra-real rather
than cartoony. Rather than just serving as a reference and planning tool, detailed
imagery created in the previsualization became the movie
In some scenes in the film, the only thing on the screen thats a real camera shot
rather than something computer-generated is Sandra Bullocks face. The
spacesuits often are computer imagery. A couple of physical ship-console sets
were built, but actors also interacted with white cardboard panels just to give them
something to touch.
Even a third astronaut who appears briefly is computer generated, with an actor
providing only his voice.

Building the galaxys biggest jigsaw

One of the most difficult tasks was building everything. Just as they would be on a traditional
set, every element had to be made in CG. Building the space suits, the space shuttles, the
Hubble Telescope, the ISS and everything else was a huge challenge because people know
what they look like says Howell. The interior sets, which are all CG inside the ISS, were
phenomenally detailed too, and every bit of that had to be modelled by someone. It took over a
year to build everything. We never really stopped we were constantly adding detail.
Leading this digital construction team was Ben Lambert, who is proud of the lengths they went
to make the models as accurate as possible. With the ISS in particular its made up of around
50 modules, each sent up at a different time over the last 25 years - its the galaxys biggest
jigsaw. So we couldnt just throw a great big sci-fi kit all over it, make it look cool and put shiny
chrome aerials on there. We had to source photographs really carefully. You could probably
look at one of our interior shots and a photo of the ISS and work out what module the scene is
in, its that accurate.
Mr. Webber and his team was inspired by space photography from NASA in
creating a photoreal space environment. It had to be awe-inspiring, the way space
is, Mr. Webber said. But it also had to feel absolutely real.
They used a relatively new rendering technique to create the digital environments,
involving whats called physically-based lighting. It generates a style of
illumination that behaves the way light does in the real world.

 High-end digital products like Maya allowed Lubezki to set bounce and key light, which he
says were essential to lock-in up front.
Whether the ISS was seen in direct sunlight or in darkness, he adds, it wouldnt look like it
was in an environment apart from the astronauts or another craft. We spend the whole
movie looking back at Earth and the spacecraft against a starfield, which might not allow for
much variety. Being able to go from one lighting scenario to another helped make the movie
feel more like a journey, to convey the idea that were traveling from one point to another.

 The exterior scenes -- which mostly were CG -- were rendered in stereo in the computer at
lead VFX house Framestore.
In conjunction with Framestore and visual effects supervisor Tim Webber, Parks used a
"virtual rig" and was able to manipulate the amount of depth per shot in similar manner to
operating the interaxial distance between native stereo cameras.
Parks -- who is supervising the 3D on Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow -- likens native
and postconverted stereo to the creative choice between special (in-camera) and visual
(produced in the computer) effects.
"In some ways, post can never achieve what you can get from native or stereo-rendered
3D, particularly when it comes to shooting close-ups of human faces, but you will often get
the best results and the best audience experience by putting both into play," he says.
"3D films have quite rightly received a lot of bad press," Parks adds. "There are very few
worth seeing in 3D. The majority of 3D is not good since it doesn't add anything to the
experience. The main thing I hope the audience will take away from Gravity is that good
3D can definitely enhance the experience.
"What is so vital to achieving that goal is that everybody involved in production needs to
be onboard with 3D. Everyone has to be prepared to accommodate and achieve the
ambition of creating fantastic 3D. That approach stems from the director. If the director's
ambition is to create a great 3D experience, then everything from pre-viz to DI [digital
intermediate] will be integrated to that make that happen."

"Previs" (short for ''pre-visualization,'' a process in which shots are rendered on a

computer ahead of time)
We had to do the whole film as an animation first. We edited that animation, even with
sound, just to make sure the timing worked with the sound effects and music. And once
we were happy with it, we had to do the lighting in the animation as well. Then all that
animation translated to actual camera moves and positions for the lighting and actors. We
did a whole exploration of the screenplay, every single moment; we made judgments
about everything. Once we began shooting, we were constrained by the limitations of that
programming.
We animated for two, maybe two and a half years before we started shooting the actors. Then
we shot the filmand then the poor animators had to start from scratch because they had to
base their final animations on what was shot. Someone suggested we just call Gravity
animation, but I dont think we can because theres a fair amount of live action. And it was
really hard work for the animators. After all, you learn how to draw based on two main
elements: horizons and weight.
Clearly, shooting in this way was going to mean that Gravity would be unlike any other film
before it. That was something we were aware of as we were working on it, recalls Webber. It
was clear because whenever a new person came to join in any department, not just in visual
effects, it would kind of take two weeks before they could understand the process and the way
the film worked. It was so different to any previous method of making a film, really. It took that
long for people just to understand what we were talking about.

3D
The 3-D work on Gravity was designed and supervised by Chris Parks and created at the
design houses Framestore and Prime Focus.
Bristowe related that roughly 70 percent of the 3D in the film was created in the computer
by VFX house Framestore, as a large portion of these shots are CG.
The portions that were lensed in the capsule were lensed in 2D and converted to 3D at
Prime Focus.
"We started working on the project in 2010," Bristowe said, noting that the shots in the film are
all carefully choreographed by five-time Oscar nominated director of photography Emmanuel
Lubezki. "There were limitations to shooting in stereo, so they shot a 3D test, and gave us
footage from one eye to convert. [Cuaron] was happy with the conversion. [Creatively] it
gave him more freedom in filming."
Gravity was designed for 3-D from Day 1, and in the four and a half years of making the
film, about three and a half was for 3-D work, he says.
I had my misgivings about 3-D in terms of the blacks, whites, and color, he says. I
understand the bad rap that 3-D is getting because because the conversions are crappy and
because the films arent designed for 3-D. Its a completely different medium. The length of
the shots need to be longer, and then theres the parallax. If youre constantly cutting and
switching your parallax, its an exhausting experience for the audience in 3-D.

Make a note of this website for your

revision!

https://www.fxguide.com/featured/gravity/

In groups prepare a presentation for each of

the following production areas for Gravity...
1.
2.
3.
4.

Camera
Lightbox
Robots
Rigs

Thurs 1

Production - 6 Months

On set was very different to a normal set. Walking onto the set, particularly the light box,
was a very strange contraption, says Webber. On days when the team were filming just
Sandra Bullock for her space floating sequences, the entire sound stage was a light box
with a run of rails and a robotic arm on Bot&Dollys IRIS rig holding an ARRI Alexa. There
was no need for extra grip or gaffer trucks, stand by props or complex wardrobe. Just the
actress, a light box, the creatives and a row of extremely talented technicians with their
laptops.

Camera
The plan was to shoot the movie with a 3D camera rig. Says Parks: "I ran some tests with
[director of photography] Emmanuel Lubezki using Arri Alexas on 3Ality rigs at
Leavesden Studios to give Alfonso a taste for how 3D could enhance the feeling of
weightlessness and how stereo could work with camera movement and lighting."
But to capture the fluidity of movement that Cuaron and Lubezki wanted, it eventually was
decided to use robotic camera arms, for which the bulk and weight of the dual cameras on
a 3D rig were unsuitable.
"There were several scenes that I would have loved to shoot natively, but at the end of the
day, it was impossible to get the rigs into the confined shooting spaces or to support them
on the robotic arms needed to get the zero-gravity feel," says Parks.
Instead, 25 minutes of the film, notably shots in the two capsules and the film's final shot,
were lensed in 2D and went through a 2D-to-3D conversion at Prime Focus under Parks'
supervision.
"Prime took the geometry of the escape pods from the scene, which gave us a pretty
accurate foundation within which to put the characters," he says. "I also shot stereo
reference plates of a moving model with different focal length lenses and different
distances to demonstrate the sort of feel that I wanted to help me communicate with the
conversion artists. From a 2D image alone, it can be surprisingly hard to create an
accurate looking human. But with 3D shots for reference the team was able to judge, for
example, how far the ears lie back from the forehead or the depth of an eye socket."

The groundbreaking workflow began with the camera original fed to a Filmlight
Truelight color processing box on-set, which then applied Lubekzis choice of looks.
Truelight let him apply printer lights like normal dailies and gave many more options than
just a base look, Eggleton continues. Chivos decisions were used in the render pipeline
going to Avid editorial and to Framestore, with the final step in Digilabs color pipeline
involving application of a virtual film stock, developed by Lubezki and a colorist brought in
during prep, that provided a film-style rolloff curve, with all data stored on LTO tape.

We love film and prefer to shoot on film, but the grain would have been a problem, given
that we were going to release in 3D, Lubezki explains. Capturing on Alexa [with Zeiss
Master Primes] gave us the latitude I needed, especially with very harsh, hard highlights
that I didnt want to look digital, and all the scenes in near-total darkness. The duo did
manage to incorporate a shot-on-film sequence into the movie. We are back down on Earth
at the end, so to give that a different dimension and gravity, we shot it in 65 millimeter, which
has its own kind of hyper-reality. You can almost breathe the wind as you watch that scene.

Arri Alexas w/ Prime Lenses - 700 p/d

The toughest thing was the phenomena called gravity, he says, because throughout
the whole film, youre fighting gravity.
Cuarn and Lubezki explored several options to capture the disorienting effect. Green
screens, wire rigs, underwater tanks, and even the Vomit Cometa high-altitude jet
were tested, but nothing clicked.

And then came The Lightbox...

The Lightbox

 The Light Box stood over 20-feet tall and 10-feet across
With a sliding door on one side that allowed access to the interior, and a gantry
hanging overhead that tethered the box to a team of VFX technicians at a
computer control center.
The interior of the box was comprised of 196 panels, each measuring
approximately two feet by two feet, and fitted with 4,096 LED bulbs that could
cast whatever light or colors were needed and alter them at any speed.
Images could also be projected onto the walls, including the planet Earth, the
International Space Station (ISS), or the distant stars giving the actor the
perspective of what their character was seeing, Webber says It was primarily
so we could reflect the appropriate light on them, but it had the double benefit
of being a visual reference for them, too.
To get accurate lighting, the actors were photographed inside a light box, a device created
specially for the shoot. The box resembled a hollow cube and was upwards of 20 feet tall
and 10 feet wide. The interior was made up of panels that contained 2 million LED lights
that let the crew use any kind of illumination and make it appear as if the lights were
moving around the actors.
Its like a giant TV on the inside of the box, Mr. Webber said. So that gave the actors a
sense of the environment around them. If the scene involved Earth as the source of light,
the actors would see a representation of the Earth inside the box.

 The lights could be programmed to project moving images of Earth and space. When the
actors were locked up inside, computer-controlled robotic cameras captured close-ups
under just the right lighting conditions even for the scenes where Bullock looks as if
she's spinning out of control. In reality, it's the light patterns that are spinning around her.
The Light Box was the brainchild of "Gravity" cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and
visual-effects supervisor Tim Webber. "When the Light Box came together, I knew it was
not only going to be the way I could light 'Gravity,' but would impact the way I light
movies for years to come," Lubezki said.
Webber said the contraption also showed the actors what their characters were seeing
during the scene being shot. "It was primarily so we could reflect the appropriate light on
them, but it had the double benefit of being a visual reference for them, too," he said.
The use of LEDS allowed Chivo to light the actors which much greater flexibility than
traditional film lights the different colours reflecting off the Earth, moonlight, sunlight and
starlight could all be replicated.
Bullock would be strapped to a rig in the centre of the box as the camera moved around her,
achieving the illusion that it is her that moves. The camera could zoom in and out from any
position and it would race towards her and stop dead, just centimetres from her face. It was a
highly unusual, VFX-led filming process.
When I was on set with the lightbox and the robots I thought Ive never seen a set-up like
this says Framestore VFX Supervisor, Rich McBride. Id just never heard of anyone doing
anything like it. I knew this film was going to be groundbreaking.

 We were providing motion control moves for the rigs, but also generating a full immersive
digital environment on-set using LED screens explains CG Supervisor Chris Lawrence.

Having to control that in real time was an interesting challenge! I dont think theres great
precedent of that being done before on a movie. At the time we did it I dont think
anyone had done it the way we had with a box that completely surrounds an actor
and having to bring live CG elements in.

Cuarn himself has said that he sees the technique as the next step in cinematography
because of the amazing complexity of colour that LED lights can give, so we may see the
it become more common.

Also within the cube was a large TV monitor, which displayed animation from the previs.
This was wonderful in a couple of different ways, Lubezki continues. The actor sees the
environment and how objects are moving in that environment, and at the same time we
can see the interaction of that light on the actor. We capture true reflections of the
environment in the actors eyes, which makes the face sit that much better within the
animation.

Robots
Bot & Dollys IRIS is a motion-control system that was used extensively in the filming of
Alfonso Cuarns upcoming zero-gravity thriller Gravity. Filmmakers are able to program
IRIS movements using Autodesk Maya, a standard modeling and animation toolset, IRIS is
special in that it can perform these customized movements with a high level of precision.

IRIS doesnt get tired, doesnt complain, and can be tweaked to a users need.
IRIS can be fitted with cameras, lights, and avarietyof sensors
It cant be done. This is what Alfonso Cuarn heard when speaking of his
vision of weightlessness for the film Gravity. While these words discourage
some, they kindle others. The making of Cuarns Gravity was a formative
project for Bot & Dolly. The film pushed us to evolve our robot platform to
the specific needs of cinematographers and visual effects artists. By
leveraging our IRIS platform, including four robots and Bot & Dollys
engineering team, we were able to make that impossible vision a reality.

 Our work on Gravity began mid-2011 after the Head of Visual Effects at
Warner Brothers heard about IRIS and reached out to Bot & Dolly. He and his
team were looking for the technology needed to bring Cuarns ambitious film
to life, and after an initial test shoot in San Francisco our robots boarded a
cargo plane headed to London.
Bot & Dolly provided Cuarn and Framestore with the tools necessary to execute complex
cinematography based on computer previsualizations, in live action with industrial robots
and other onset hardware. Because our tools integrate tightly with industry standard
software Maya, Framestore was given control of camera, lighting and other set elements
from within their established animation environment. Through the use of BDMove and our
four IRIS robots, we were able to reproduce the zero-gravity motion created by
Framestores team of animators.
Beyond camera control, we were responsible for driving LED graphics, cueing actors and
technicians, real-time compositing, and implementing an interactive playback system. Each
day, the challenges on set inspired us to expand the functionality of our tools and bring new
levels of a technology to film production.
Cuaron comments, "The robot camera gave us unparalleled accuracy and consistency. Once
the shot was programmed into the computer, the camera would hit the same spot on every
take."
Then they designed a race track outside The Cage where a car-manufacturing robot
with a camera installed inside would race around it and pop its arm inside various
openings, to recreate the effect of floating and spinning around in space. The
background, meanwhile, was added in post-production.

Rigs
Webber designed an improved "puppeteering" rig a system of 12 wires that
suspended and manipulated Bullock so she could "float" through a space station.
The process wasn't foolproof: With Bullock's computer-generated suit off, her arms
and legs exposed, "you could see the strain in her muscles caused by holding a leg up
in gravity," Webber says. "Little things like the angle of her foot would give something
away, and we'd have to cut it and rotate it slightly in postproduction.")
On why traditional wiring and cutting techniques proved ineffective in the long run.
Alfonso Cuaron: "We had the [effects] conversation, then we finished the screenplay, and
then we tried to apply the whole thing. [Tim] came to me with the idea 'let's do it mainly CG,'
and I went 'no way... that's going to suck. We're going to do as much practical as we can.' So
we tried the conventional rigs and stuff. We tried cables and twisted arms and stuff, and I
think it was 3 hours into the first day that it was so obvious that it wasn't going to work."
TW: "I think there are two reasons that it would work for a period of time but not the whole
movie, because you can see it on the wire, you can sense it on a traditional wiring certainly,
but even on a heavily developed one you can just tell what's going on. There are certain
moves you just can't do on a wire rig, the wire's just get in the way. But also because Alfonso
has the very long shots. It couldn't get you a long shot, it would just be impossible to
manipulate."
AC: "And there's another thing. Wires give you this axis when you're rolling, and we needed
several axises, so the wires weren't going to do it. And on top of that, if the camera's spinning
around the wires it just wouldn't work... There has been a wisdom with films in space, and
that has been to have the mothership with the gravitational pull, and there's a reason for that
(laughs)."

 The mobility of the lights and cameras did not mean the actors could remain stationary while
everything revolved around them. In the floor of the Light Box the special effects team installed a
turntable on which they could assemble an assortment of rigs that twisted, turned and lifted the
actors, depending on the needs of the scene.
"It was very versatile," Manex Efrem says. "We had one configuration that was relatively gentle,
called the 'heart-to-heart' rig, which allowed Sandra and George to interact face to face while
turning through space. Then there was the 'tilt-plus' rig, which was like putting them in a
gyroscope."
The tilt-plus rig resembled a cone of concentric metal rings encircling the body from the waist
down. Once the actor was secured, the rig lived up to its name, turning and tilting them at extreme
angles and at different speeds. However, it had to stop short of completely inverting the person
since "it would put an obvious strain on the body that would ruin the appearance of
weightlessness," Efrem explains.

 Conventional wires were not an option because they did not give the impression of floating that the
filmmakers were after. To accomplish that, special effects supervisor Neil Corbould developed a
breakthrough 12-wire system that could either be operated manually or remotely controlled by way of a
computerized miniature replica of the 12-wire mechanism.
The dozen individual wires triangulated down from a complex pulley system called the head, with each
of the wires having its own motor and capstan, which is a kind of spool. The wires were strung down and
attached to an ultra-thin carbon fiber harness that had been molded to Bullock's body and could be
invisibly worn under even a tank top and shorts. Three wires on each side were fastened at her shoulders
and three on each side were fastened at her hips, all to suspend her in air with no pendulum effect.

 Sandra Bullock would be hanging on a rig dubbed the 12 wire rig for some shots
and be puppeteered.
She was attached by four different points and each point had three different wires
going to it, explains Webber.
So it was essentially a case of triangulating that point of her attachment, meaning we
could control the position of that point in 3D space exactly without any swinging or
swaying. We could literally puppeteer her and we had a crew of puppeteers that had
worked on War Horse. They were literally manipulating Sandra."
"They had a metal block that represented her and if they lifted it or twisted it or tipped it
up or down, she would twist or move up or down. We also had the ability to move that
whole rig in X and Y up and down the stage and in height as well. That would preprogrammed, computer-controlled, or puppeteered. All of this could be a preprogrammed move or puppeteered live at the time.
The team would have to co-ordinate either the two puppeteers controlling the different
parts of the rig, or the one puppeteer in the computer with movements in the camera,
with movements in the lights, with Sandras actions so that, even though there was
no ISS there, it looked as though she was pushing off against the handle of the ISS
and starting to move down the corridors.
So all of those actions together worked in such a way that it looked as though
something else was happening, that you couldnt necessarily see on the set, says
Webber.

 Ten months in the making, the intricate 12-wire system was equipped with separate
servos that could propel Bullock in any direction or angle her up or down. It could also
move at quite a clip -- up to 75 meters per second -- although, in the interest of safety,
the drives were programmed automatically to shut down if it started to go too fast or put
too much torque on the body.
The 12-wire apparatus resembled a marionette -- albeit a very high-tech one -- so the
production brought in some of the best puppeteers in the business to man the controls.
Robin Guiver, Avye Leventis and Mikey Brett had been among the artists who brought to
life the title character in the award-winning play "War Horse." On the "Gravity" set, they
helped Bullock fly.
Guiver notes, "It's very counterintuitive for human beings to be weightless, but in the
world of puppets, we are able to break the laws of physics in graceful and expressive
ways. We were applying the same skills to this task -- finding a freedom of movement
that would not otherwise be possible."
Bullock says she and the puppeteering team cultivated both trust and an instinctive
connection over the course of filming. "We got into a nice sync where they could tell the
instant I turned my head which direction I wanted to go. They are true masters of the art."
Lubezki remembers many days on the shoot being scary, because some of the bits of gear
simply wouldnt work sometimes. Adds Cuaron, You dont know if its just a simple cable or if
its something that has to do with software.
Lubezki often worried that the gear would break down and shooting would have to stop for
days or weeks.
Hes always scared to death, says Cuaron with a laugh, but the director concedes his
cinematographer had a legitimate concern. The day-cost for the shoot was on par with a
typical tentpole, around $150,000, but that didnt include planning and programming costs.

That goal is perhaps best reflected in a shot of Ryan in the airlock of the ISS. The sequence was one
of the most intricate to film, requiring the synchronization of three robots: one with a revolving
camera; a second holding the main light source, representing the sunlight streaming in; and a third
that caused the air lock porthole to circle around the back wall, adding to the perception of rotation.
Amidst the cutting-edge mechanics, there was also a very human element to the making of the
scene. Under Cuaron's direction, Bullock -- who was secured by only one leg to a special bicycle
seat rig -- had to time her movements perfectly while smoothly transitioning her upper body and
free leg without the aid of wires or puppeteers.

 The pins sticking out of Clooney's helmet were motion-tracking devices that enabled the
VFX team to monitor the movements of the actors' heads in order to match them to the CGI
background and spacesuits later.
The filmmakers relied heavily on ''pre-viz'' , meaning that the actors often had to act while
precisely matching their movements to the computer rendering. ''Basically everything was
done in a pre-viz before you do it because they had so many pieces and moving parts that
you had to try to do everything naturally while you were matching everything that was
preordained a year earlier,'' says Clooney. ''So there was no improvisation, which was fine
for me. Even in your actions there was no improvisation. You really had to match what you
didwhen you first read it and made videotapes.'' In some cases, the actors heads were
the only live-action elements in a shot. Explains Webber, ''We only filmed the faces for
huge amounts of the movie, and everything else was created in the computer.''

Even the Visors Were CG

In the end, about 80 percent of the film is photo-realistic CG: For the scenes set in
space, only the actors' faces come from live-action photography. Everything else -the environment, the space suits, even the visors -- was CG.

Now read 'The Credits' interview with Emmanuel Lubezki

Post-Production - 1.5 years

Putting it all together
The computer-generated animations and the live-action clips were blended together in postproduction. All traces of wires, rigs and harnesses were digitally removed, and more special effects
were added in. The result is so seamless that you see Bullock's panic-stricken face loom through a
computer-generated helmet visor as she slingshots from the computer-generated depths of space to
an extreme closeup.
In the production notes, Webber said one of the biggest challenges was rendering the mist from the
characters' breath on those helmet visors. "In reality, you wouldn't see as much breath on the visor
because the systems in the suits keep the air very dry, but for us it was a visual indication of their
tension," he said.
One sequence that had people tearing their hair out is ironically one of the films most
calming, when we see Bullocks character Ryan curled up in the foetal position, floating
in the relative safety of the ISS. It was filmed with one of Bullocks legs strapped to a
stool, with three robots, one for the camera, one to control a spotlight behind the ISS
porthole and the other to move the porthole all revolving around her. In the finished shot
it is her that spins around, both legs free, removing a space suit which never really
existed.
It was one of the hardest shots says Rigging Supervisor Nico Scapel. Wed already
built the suit, but now we had to take it off. We were really worried about it for a while.
Entire sections of her had to be made in CG, including the leg that had been strapped
to the seat on set, and there are countless techniques used at every point.
Its always difficult when you have interaction with a live actor and CG dynamics
because you need to match the movement with something that has been shot says
Simulation Supervisor Sylvain Degrotte. Id like to see what the audience thinks is CG
and what is life.

Rendering
Alfonso Cuarns characteristic longs shots made the whole process more difficult. A common
remark from the VFX team is that there was nowhere to hide, no quick ways of establishing a
shot everything they created was on full display, maybe for ten minutes at a time. Their work
had to stand up to intense scrutiny. The amount of planning and additional work that came
about because of the long shots was enormous, it shouldnt be underestimated. says Chris
Lawrence. After hitting a button the team would often have to wait more than two days to see if
a particular simulation had worked.

It wasnt just the long shots, the whole process took a very long time and an awful lot of
computer power. To render Gravity on a single core machine with a single processor in it and
be ready for 2013 you would need to start before the dawn of Egyptian civilisation. Renders
rarely look right the first time and comments need to be given and addressed - typing into a
program called Shotgun, Gravitys VFX Co-ordinators wrote the equivalent of four copies of
War and Peace while taking notes during feedback.

Sound
The other big element was sound design. Since theres no atmosphere to transmit
sound in outer space, there is no sound present unless objects are interacting with each
otherlike Bullocks medical engineer drilling in screws or shrapnel crashing into their
doomed shuttle. Cuarn and his sound team wanted to be as literal as possible about it,
approaching music as an immersive tool with real surround sound, which has garnered
praise from real-life astronauts.

Distribution

Read article on handout

Trailers
Teaser Trailer

Trailer 1: Detached

Trailer 2: Drifting

Trailer 3: I've Got You

Main Trailer
Gravity:Trailers became smarterthis year. One need look no further than the
compellingGravitytrailers, which drove excited audiences into the theaters during the
films record-breaking opening weekend. It earned an October-record$55.6 million. The
now famousGravity Detached trailer, which is roughly a minute long, is an incredibly
dramatic single shot of getting lost in space, torn from the social fabric.Drifting, the
second released trailer, is equally as engaging and terrifying in its lonely weightlessness.
Both viral trailers were made to be consumed in bite-sized, easily digestible media chunks
and, of course, to be communicated across the social media ecosystem. In a sense, a trailer
is now a failure (at least to a degree) in this new social era if it fails to go viral. Its goal
should at least be shareability.

Teaser Poster

Main Poster

List as many examples of technological

convergence/new technology as you
can for the following, give an example
of a case study to relate;
Production
Distribution
Exhibition/Exchange
Practice question
How has technological convergence
impacted institutions and audiences?

Jay Leno Show - September 2013

What is effective about this interview as a

marketing tool?

San Diego Comic-Con - July 2013

What is effective about doing a panel at

Comic-Con?

Again, features like these are all part of the

film's marketing

The Ellen DeGeneres Show is produced by a

company called 'Telepictures'.
Any thoughts on who its parent company might
be?

Cast Interviews

Why publish an interview like this?

Forbes Magazine's Scott Medelstein

For general audiences who dont see every genre release week in and week out, those kind of
reviews were exactly what was needed to get them into the theater this weekend. The reviews,
such as mine, not only emphasized the films sheer quality, but also the absolute necessity of
seeing it in theaters and yes, in 3D and IMAX if possible.
A chorus of critics telling audiences that not only was Gravity a masterpiece but absolutely
demanded a big-screen viewing experience was essential in not just getting general
moviegoers out of their house but also in encouraging them to pay that 3D and/or IMAX upcharge, which led to a stunning ticket count of 80% 3D and 21% IMAX for the films $55.8
million debut weekend. In this case, critics darn-well mattered.

With Gravity, Alfonso Cuarn has gone and upset my apple cart by using 3D in a way Ive
never seen before. Yes, we get the Ooh, look! Space debris whizzing past my face! effect. But
he also harnesses the process to draw the audience directly into the plight of Sandra Bullock
and George Clooney, so we experience what theyre experiencing, see what theyre seeing,
feel the emptiness and awe-inspiring vastness of space itself and all of this filmed so
seamlessly you catch yourself thinking it must surely have been shot on location.
Its immersive film-making at its finest, and the nearest well ever get to actually going up there,
so take a deep breath (youll need the oxygen), choose the biggest screen you can find (Imax
if possible) and watch it in 3D. You wont regret it.

Exhibition
Experiencing this film in 2-D is only getting about 20 percent of the experience of
Gravity, says Cuarn.

The IMAX release of Gravity will be digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of
An IMAX 3D Experience with proprietary IMAX DMR (Digital Re-mastering) technology.
The crystal-clear images coupled with IMAX's customized theatre geometry and powerful
digital audio create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the
movie.
It's also the first truly 3-D movie. Every other example of the form thus far, even Avatar, is really
an ordinary movie maximized by the use of technology. Even in the hands of a master like
Scorsese, in Hugo, the format has basically been a way of upping the entertainment value and,
perhaps more important, forcing people to actually go into theaters (and pay a premium when
they do). But while any of those films could have been made in 2-D without suffering any real
harm, Gravity is the first that could not. - Esquire

Exhibition - Sound

Gravity was originally mixed in 7.1, but Freemantle is quite clear that the ultimate version
of the film's sound is the Dolby Atmos mix. Launched last year, Dolbys latest platform is
an impressive leap beyond traditional surround sound on a number of fronts. With 5.1,
audiences had those three LCR channels behind the screen, with two additional banks of
speakers powered by the left surround and right surround channels. 7.1 split those
surround channels up; filmmakers could target the left side or the left rear groups
discretely, for example.
Atmos adds speakers to a theaters ceiling for overhead effects, but more importantly, it
does away with the concept of fixed channels almost entirely. Instead, it allows sound
designers to place sound elements in extremely specific locations within a theater, down to
the individual speaker. It offers the ability to do things like pin Clooneys voice to a specific
point on the theater wall, and then have it travel speaker-by-speaker towards the screen,
rather than mushily pushing it towards the entire left bank as in traditional setups.
GF: I remember saying to Dolby, Look, theres this film Im doing, and it would be the film
for Dolby Atmos. Its got Dolby Atmos written all over it, you know? Because all of a sudden
the theater is space, around you. Youre in the world! And also, because were not going to
slam it forward, millions of things all the time were going to be very specific, even in our
approach of how we use the sound. I mean very, very detailed, but very clear, and accurate
with everything.

Home Distribution

To Recap...

Write a paragraph for 3 of the new

technologies developed/utilised by Gravity

Discuss;
It's purpose
Why it needed to be developed
What technology preceded it
It's possible future in filmmaking

So... What made Gravity such a success?

Think about the following;
The experience it offered
The technologies it utilised
How it attracted audiences (marketing techs)
What about the marketing would have/did
attract you?

 Star Power
The buzz from other filmmakers inc. James
Cameron on how amazing the visual effects
were.
Strong presence on Social Media
The trailer campaign - slowly revealing more
and more about film and its grandeur, through
teaser trailers up until main trailer.
Early press screenings to build buzz.
Anticipation of new technology

How did Warner Brothers make the

most of technological convergence
in the distribution and exhibition of
the film.

The way in which promotion is targeted is traditionally split into two types - above the line and
below the line.
Above the line promotion
This is paid for communication in the independent media e.g. advertising on TV or in the
newspapers. Though it can be targeted, it can also be seen by anyone outside the target
audience.
The main aims of above-the-line promotion are to inform customers, raise awareness and build
brand positioning. Above-the-line tends to have a higher cost since the promotional methods
used are less precise.

Below the line promotion

This concerns promotional activities where the business has direct control over the target or
intended audience. There are many methods of below-the-line, including sales promotions,
direct marketing, personal selling and sponsorship.