We watched the movie Gravity at home tonight in full Blu-Ray 3D on our 65″ TV. It’s such an amazing movie to experience – the home experience is slightly less immersive as compared to when you can view it in something like the Chinese Theater IMAX (which is where we saw it the first time last year). So after watching the still-amazing movie at home with part of me suddenly wanting an even bigger TV (I know, I know – it’ll never be enough with me), we watched the special features on the making of Gravity, as you know it had to be amazing. Mind. Blown.
The “Light Box” shown here is the completely designed-from-scratch device that was used to be able to capture the actors and the appropriate lighting – it’s INSANE watching the behind-the-scenes documentary and seeing how it was used. As we learned, the entire movie is effectively 95% CGI – mind-blowingly AWESOME CGI to be sure, and basically so good there’s little way to tell that it was all faked. But to get the actors, they still had to film them, so they built this LED box and a ridiculous array of robot- and computer-controlled cameras to film them. I don’t even do it justice in my description. It’s revolutionary. It’s magical. And if you see in the upper picture, the actor is fastened in that little cage/bowl and the camera swerves all around them. It’s fascinating. Not to say that that was it, as we saw that Sandra Bullock ended up getting into ridiculous shape as they did have lots of other shots to get with her suspended like a puppet.
Just watch the special features – you’ll seriously appreciate the movie on a whole different level and affirm that Gravity deserved the many many Academy Awards it received, not just for special effects and technical mastery, but especially Alfonso Cuaron for his directorial skills. I think I still agree with the decision to award 12 Years a Slave the Best Picture win, but if that movie hadn’t been in contention, Gravity would have been the easy win there too.