Category Archives: Images
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Craft Services
Mike and Andy from Natural Addiction are the heart and soul of this shoot. Everyone from Andrew the Producer to Phil the Floor Runner has praised them. The other day I was talking to Benedict Wong who singled out Craft Services above everyone and everything else for their complete and utter brilliance.
Not only are they always ready with a joke, but they never seem too busy to make you that much needed cappuccino. They specialise in the dreamiest fresh fruit smoothies which is exactly what you need when your blood sugar starts to dip at about 4pm. People are always milling around their van, having a chat, drinking a coffee, answering their ridiculous daily questions. Last night they even had a barbeque right outside the Flight Deck set.
Everyone loves Andy and Mike.
Space Cadet
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.
Detail
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.
The Oxygen Garden
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.
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Sunlight
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’.
Helmet Cam
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.