Gravity
Don't let go.
Gravity (2013)
Production
Budget
$105 000 000
Revenue
$723 192 705
Director
Scenario
Composer
Producer
Actors
Sandra Bullock
Ryan Stone
George Clooney
Matt Kowalski
Ed Harris
Mission Control (voice)
Orto Ignatiussen
Aningaaq (voice)
Phaldut Sharma
Shariff (voice)
Amy Warren
Explorer Captain (voice)
Basher Savage
Russian Space Station Captain (voice)
Short description
Gravity follows Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her first spaceflight, and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, who is on his last mission before retirement. During what should be a routine spacewalk, debris from a destroyed satellite strikes their shuttle, leaving the two stranded in orbit. Cut off from Earth and with their oxygen dwindling, they must work together to find a way home.
Alfonso Cuarón directed and co-wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás Cuarón. The film sits between Children of Men (2006) and Roma (2018) in Cuarón's filmography and was produced by David Heyman and Cuarón. Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, with George Clooney as Matt Kowalski and Ed Harris providing the voice of Mission Control. A large supporting voice cast includes Orto Ignatiussen, Phaldut Sharma and Amy Warren, and 434 crew members are credited.
Made for about 105 million USD, Gravity earned roughly 723 million USD worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.7/10 from around 897,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.2/10 from over 16,000 votes. A film critics' rating of 9/10 from 362 reviews places it clearly above both audience scores. The film runs 91 minutes and was released on October 3, 2013.
What's left behind the scenes
- Natalie Portman was first on the list of candidates for the lead role after Angelina Jolie turned it down twice. Portman later declined the role shortly before announcing her pregnancy.
- Filming took place from May to July 2011 at Shepperton Studios, Surrey, England, and at Lake Powell, Arizona, USA.
- Ryan Stone's hair doesn't float freely as it should in zero gravity, but is neatly styled.
- George Clooney's character jokes that he is striving to break the record for the total duration of work in open space, which belongs to the real cosmonaut Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyov.
- Astronaut Cady Coleman arranged a phone call about life in space between Sandra Bullock and the International Space Station.
- To visualize the scenes with graphics, the studio's programmers wrote 71,000 lines of code.
- In "Apollo 13" (1995), Ed Harris played Gene Kranz, the lead flight director during the Apollo 13 mission. In "Gravity," Harris voiced the mission control director in Houston.
- In the scene where Sandra Bullock talks to the imaginary George Clooney aboard the 'Soyuz', a backpack with the inscription 'POST-FLIGHT SUIT' hangs between them.
- In the shots where Stone and Kowalski approached the ISS and became entangled in the parachute lines, George's character is inexplicably repelled with great force from Sandra's character, even though he couldn't exert pressure on her without using jet propulsion.
- The Hubble Space Telescope orbits at an altitude of 559 km and is located near the equator. The ISS orbits at an altitude of 418.3 km and is positioned over Russia. It would take a huge amount of energy to travel from one object to the other, and even space shuttles wouldn't have enough fuel to do so. Yet, the heroes in the film manage it with just a jetpack.
- Angelina Jolie, Marion Cotillard, Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, Abbie Cornish, Carey Mulligan, Sienna Miller, Rebecca Hall, Olivia Wilde, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, and Natalie Portman were considered for the lead female role.
- Universal Pictures, with whom Alfonso Cuarón had collaborated on 'Children of Men' (2006), was initially interested in the script. Universal hoped Angelina Jolie would star, but ultimately deemed the film too expensive and passed on the project. Warner Bros. Pictures picked it up, and Cuarón cast Bullock and Robert Downey Jr. in the lead roles at the end of 2010. Downey later left the project, and George Clooney took his place.
- Sandra Bullock spent six months preparing physically before filming. Together with Alfonso Cuarón, they worked through the script in meticulous detail, discussing every scene she was in. Cuarón and Bullock agreed that the most important aspect of her performance was Stone's breathing and how it would convey her emotions. James Cameron, a close friend of Cuarón, noted that the work Bullock did impressed him more than the technology used during filming.
- The film was in development for four years because the film’s ambitions in terms of cinematography, visual effects, and a realistic sense of space were too difficult to achieve. Cuarón was forced to wait for technology to become more advanced in order to fully realize his vision for the film. It wasn't until after the release of “Avatar” (2009) that he realized the time had come.
- The name of Sandra Bullock's character—Ryan Stone—sounds like "rhinestone," which translates to "fake diamond."
- Stone's tears behave like drinking water flowing out of a straw from a container in zero gravity. It is physically impossible to cry in outer space. Tears will not flow from the eyes in the literal sense, but will remain inside in the form of liquid balls that burn the eyes and interfere with vision.
- Before filming, Cuarón rewatched a lot of space movies, but deliberately avoided Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). He feared that if he did, he wouldn't only not undertake “Gravity,” but would be forced to leave the profession altogether.
- Astronaut spacesuit visors for spacewalks have ultraviolet filters, which is why they appear mirrored. In the film, all the visors are completely transparent, which in reality would cause corneal burns and instant blindness.
- Alfonso Cuarón, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and visual effects supervisor Tim Webber decided that they could not film the movie using traditional methods. Therefore, it was decided to film only the actors' faces for the open space scenes, and create everything else using computer technology. To do this, the faces had to be lit in full accordance with the digital environment they were placed in. Since the characters were moving in space, the lighting of the faces had to perfectly match the Earth, the Sun, or the stars in the background. This whole idea could have failed if the lighting hadn't changed at the right speed, if the position of the light source had been chosen incorrectly, or if the contrast or concentration of lighting on the faces had been improperly selected. Lubezki suggested placing an LED screen in a box, and placing the actor inside it. Thus, instead of moving Sandra Bullock or George Clooney with fixed lighting fixtures, the projected image could move while they remained stationary. This light box became the key to the open space scenes. The only downside was that it was only a three-meter cube, large enough for one actor, but too small to fit the film crew inside.
- In 2013, James Cameron named “Gravity” the best space film in the history of cinema.
- In the film, Sandra Bullock’s character wears a spacesuit belonging to the fictional cosmonaut Demidov. The spacesuit has a patch for “Expedition 42.” In Douglas Adams’s novel “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,” 42 is the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” The spacesuit itself is a combination of the “Sokol” rescue spacesuit, not designed for spacewalks, with a helmet from the “Orlan” spacesuit; however, the helmet of a real “Orlan” spacesuit is non-removable.
- Executive producer Christopher DeFaria revealed that the film begins with a 17-minute scene without a single edit.
- Practically all the scenes in the film were prepared using a computer, and then the actors' faces were integrated into them. Rendering was done using the Arnold program.
- Current spacesuits for cosmonauts weigh 120 kg. The suit Stone lands in certainly doesn't weigh 120 kg. It's a Sokol suit, which isn't designed for spacewalks; its purpose is to save the crew in the event of depressurization, and it weighs around 10 kg. Cosmonauts put it on while still on Earth and walk around in it without difficulty.
- Although the film itself is scientifically accurate, and maintains the fact that sounds are not audible in space, sound effects were still added to the trailers to make them more exciting.
- Framestore, the British company responsible for the film's special effects, stated on its website that the film would be comparable in ambition to "Avatar" (2009). Specifically, approximately 60% of the events on screen would be created using computer graphics.
- During launch from the cosmodrome, landing, and spacewalks, cosmonauts wear special diapers. Stone, removing his spacesuit, is revealed to be wearing ordinary shorts.
- When Ryan Stone reached the ISS, a fire had begun. In the film, the flames were only slightly altered, but they mostly resemble earthly fire. In zero gravity, fire spreads spherically from the point of combustion. That is, a candle flame would look like a small glowing sphere.
- Almost all satellites in low Earth orbit move from west to east. However, in the film, the satellite debris moves from east to west.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
