They are filming on the Flight Deck now- as I type they are doing a scene with Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Troy Garity and Benedict Wong.
The Flight Deck is the most ‘tecchy’ of all the sets. There are monitors, wires, dials and switches everywhere. The ceilings are low, the space is cramped… but, oh, the captain’s chair is comfortable.
Every single time I go on set I’m struck by the detail. The tiniest little things that surely won’t show up on camera are everywhere. Little inspection stickers on panels as if they had gone through stress tests before being sent up into space. Instructions on how to open the airlocks and who to ask for help. Warning labels in English and Chinese. It makes me feel like I’m actually on a spaceship.
Oxygen production is vital for manned long-term space flight. Machines can break down, as the crew of the International Space Station knows too well, which could be absolutely devastating to a mission lasting several years and travelling millions of kilometres away from Earth. Ideally, a long-term mission should have a natural, unmechanical way of replenishing its oxygen supplies.
NASA has already started doing research into space gardens and the Biosphere 2 experiment, conducted in the early 90s, sought to discover whether a completely closed environment could be created to sustain several people for many years.
In the film, the Icraus spaceship has the Oxygen Garden for their O2 replenishment. The set has only just been finished and they’ve done one day of filming on it. Michelle Yeoh will definitely be doing more filming there as her character, Corazon, is the biologist in charge of the Oxygen Garden.
It’s one of the most interesting sets here as the cold, clean ’spaceshipness’ is juxtaposed with the wild, dirty nature- this is the only set where there is anything ‘green’. All of the plants you see on the set are real, there’s not one plastic fern in there at all. When you walk in you are immediately struck by how the set smells.
It smells alive.
Today, they’re getting the last few close-up shots from the spacewalk with Hiroyuki Sanada. As I arrived I saw Hiro sitting outside getting ready to film. Every time I see him he is loosening-up, stretching, preparing to film. You can almost feel the intense energy coming from him. He’s remarkable to watch.
This morning I arrived on set when they were still setting up the lights. Danny asked me not to take pictures of Hiro as he’s not feeling particularly well today. Instead, I got Danny talking to Alwin Kuchler, the Director of Photography, bathed in ’sunlight’.
The “helmet cam” is located inside the characters’ spacesuits. Along with getting the actors’ close-ups, it’s getting everything that each character can see outside during a spacewalk. And there’s a lot going on. For more than a week they’ve been filming very technical shots with stunt doubles on wires who have certain cues to hit whilst ‘floating’ in space and several major scenes which are very physically and emotionally draining on the actors. And throughout it, of course, there is the ever-present Sun.
The other day they created the most amazing Sun-plasma effect just using orange lights, reflective material and a fan. Of course, visual effects will probably re-do it in the final shot, but it created the correct reflections on the actors’ faces and, I would guess, helped them with their performances.
I was watching a monitor as Cillian Murphy was doing one of the big scenes during which this effect was used and by the end of it I noticed I was biting my lower lip extremely hard and my forehead was all tensed up. Very harrowing stuff. And that was only about 10 seconds of the film.
Everything seems to be going rather well and the tension from last week has cleared. Just after lunch, Danny Boyle was talking with a couple of the runners about the cricket- it’s looking like England is going to win the Ashes- before he went off to get ready to start again.
Several weeks ago I arrived at the DNA production offices for a meeting with Andrew Macdonald. I was told he was running late, but I was welcome to go into his office to wait. I walked in and there was a guy sitting at a computer.
He said, ‘Hi, I’m Alex.’
‘Oh, hi!’ He looked like he might be an Assistant Script-Typer or something.
‘Are you Brian’s wife?’
‘Yep.’
‘I met him the other week.’ My husband, Dr. Brian Cox, is one of the Science Advisors on the film. He met everyone here way before I did.
‘Oh yea?’
‘Yea, we went out for dinner and had a great time.’
Brian went out for dinner with Andrew Macdonald, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland… wait, this is Alex Garland?
He was not at all what I imagined. I was expecting a pale, skinny, guy, perhaps a bit of a hippy (the whole ‘The Beach’ thing), definitely a bit nerdy. In fact, he’s rather attractive, if I can be girly for a moment here *ahem*.
I’ve had several conversations with him over the past few weeks and really like him a lot. He’s intellectually confrontational in a way that I’ve only ever seen in my husband and other high-energy particle physicists I know. He is extremely intelligent and seems like the kind of person who will never stop pushing himself to know more about the world, the universe and his place in it.
Apparently, though, he hates having his photo taken and hates being filmed even more. He basically values his privacy. Any time I’ve had a video or stills camera around him, he’s run off, but I grabbed this shot of him and when he sees it here he’ll probably come in and demand that it be taken down… but until then, here is the seriously cool Alex Garland.
Edited 16/09/05 11:23am:
Ha! He just emailed me and asked me to take the photo down… Don’t worry, I’ll try and sneak another one up when he’s not looking.
Things have certainly turned around here. I arrived and everyone was milling around, chatting. I got to the bottom of the steps which lead to the set and saw Danny at the top on his way down.
‘Hi, Gia! How are you today?’
‘Fine, Danny. How are you doing?’
‘Good. Good.’
It’s going to be a good day.
Last Friday the decision was made to re-shoot all of the Zero G stuff that had already been shot. Danny wasn’t happy with how it looked. So the shoot is now behind schedule by a few days and that’s how it will stay. They won’t ‘catch up’.
On Monday I definitely sensed ‘tension’ on set. Several people I spoke to were stressed out. They were in a relatively small studio, it was hot, there were loads of people crammed in there and they were having to re-shoot what they’d already shot. No one was smiling very much.
I’m learning how to judge how things are going. If Danny says, ‘Hi, Gia! How are you today?’ I know things are going well. He hasn’t said ‘hi’ for a couple days now.
Update from 2014- The photo and video were not in the original post.
Since Wednesday they’ve been filming ‘zero G’ stuff with the stunt doubles in space suits connected to wires. I went down to the studio just before lunchtime to have a look at what they were filming. Right as I arrived Danny Boyle ran off to another set for a few minutes.
When I first met Danny a couple months ago I recognised him the first second I saw him. While we were talking with Andrew Macdonald, I couldn’t stop trying to think of all the directors I know by sight. They were asking me serious questions about the web and I had ‘Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, Hitchcock, Houston, Cronenberg, Lee, Herzog, Tarantino, Allen, Boyle…’ running through my head.
Oh. Apparently, they’ve just now decided to re-shoot everything they’ve shot with the space suits over the past couple days. They’ve said they want to make it look better.
No one here is going to make do with ‘good enough’, everything has got to be amazing.
Earlier today I was adding some songs to my ‘Sunshine Playlist’. I’ve decided to only listen to music that is about the Sun while I’m working.
I noticed a new thing in my iTunes window. It said ‘Cillian’s Playlist’. Cillian Murphy had started broadcasting from his laptop. I couldn’t resist, I had to have a look.
We had lots of the same music- Air, Beach Boys, Beatles, Aretha Franklin are a few I remember. He also had some MP3s of two of my favourite comedians, Bill Hicks and Chris Morris. He also had some Captain Beefheart, who as a Frank Zappa fan I should have, but don’t.
I decided to click on one of the tracks and a window popped-up asking for a password. Fine. I couldn’t listen to his music… but then I noticed that the window had his email address on it.
We are based at a studio where several other things are being filmed besides this. I didn’t think he’d want to be broadcasting his email address to just anyone.
I jumped up immediately and started to search for Cillian.
I found Carlos Fidel the 2nd AD, told him what was happening. As we were walking towards Cillian’s dressing room, Cliff Curtis walked past us on his way to make-up and I heard some wild whoops coming from one of the rooms. ‘Table tennis,’ said Carlos just before he knocked on Cillian’s door.
Cillian was asleep on the sofa, listening to music. As he rubbed his eyes and sat up, I introduced myself and told him what happened. He said he didn’t mind broadcasting his music, but agreed that perhaps his email address being available wasn’t exactly ideal. I went into his iTunes and de-selected ‘Share My Music’.
Now, how am I going to get those Captain Beefheart songs he had?
