After a lifetime of loving and appreciating movies and over a decade-and-a-half of professionally writing about them, I'm still utterly wowed by their magic. In order to achieve a proper effect or look, filmmakers come up with some weird and ingenious solutions, and I'll never stop being dazzled when I learn about the ways that ideas are brought to life on the big screen. This story about how a wave of Astrophage is depicted in the new blockbuster Project Hail Mary is an absolutely perfect example.
The official IMAX Instagram account has posted a video of directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller commenting on a particularly stunning moment in their latest big screen feature, and their description of how it all came together is amazing. The scene in question is when Ryan Gosling's Ryland Grace is doing an EVA while the Hail Mary is in the middle of a Petrova Line, and we see Astrophage represented as swirling, pink points of light all around him. It's a cinematic image that drops your jaw… and Miller's description of how the effect was created is utterly delightful. Said the filmmaker,
On these closeups what we did was we built a chicken wire cage filled with tiny infrared blinking lights, like Christmas lights that to the naked eye looked like nothing. And then had Ryan in the middle standing there in his space suit, looking at his hands and looking around, and it looked like nothing to the naked eye, but with the camera, with the IR filter off, it was this beautiful blinking pink boca all around him.
When watching Project Hail Mary, the film entrances you with its spectacle, and your brain in the moment is willing to believe the sight of Ryan Gosling floating in a vacuum surrounded by alien life. But knowing that it's just a mix of a tweaked camera, some stringed lights and chicken wire is mind-bogglingly cool.
Article continues belowAnd that's not even the end of the awesomeness. While removing the infrared filter and setting up the blinking lights set up the basic appearance for the effect, the movie's cinematographer took the look one step further by performing a special trick with water as well. Miller added:
Also our cinematographer, Greg Frazier, had built this thing where he had two panes of glass and water in a funnel that that his assistant was pouring above it. And he was holding a handheld camera to give it a smear, wet feeling on top of that.
The filmmakers could have easily left the moment in the hands of the talented visual effects artists that were employed by the production, but I love the fact that they opted to create the look in camera, and it's beautiful.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller added that the set-up looked rather ridiculous on set, but one can't argue with the results:
- Chris Miller: It was one of these movie magic things where you're like, to the naked eye, it looked like a guy in a spacesuit standing around looking at his hands,
- Phil Lord: A bunch of psychos like pouring water onto a camera.
- Chris Miller: But when you look at what the camera with an infrared filter out looked like, it was just beautiful.
It's stunning, and a must for the big screen. Project Hail Mary is now playing in theaters everywhere (having just dominated the box office for the second weekend in a row), and if you haven't experienced it for yourself yet, you are very much missing out.
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