Gravity

Gravity (2013)

Timing: 1:31 (91 min)

7.168/10
16228

7.448/10
287065

7.7/10
897000

All about film

Video 56

Photo 112

Actors and characters

Release date

2013-10-03

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Production

Warner Bros. Pictures, Heyday Films, Esperanto Filmoj

Genre

Science Fiction, Thriller, Drama

Budget

$105 000 000

Revenue

$723 192 705

Website

http://gravitymovie.warnerbros.com

Director

Alfonso Cuarón

Actors

Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris, Orto Ignatiussen, Phaldut Sharma, Amy Warren, Basher Savage
All actors and roles (7)

Scenario

Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón

Producer

David Heyman, Alfonso Cuarón, Christopher DeFaria, Stephen Jones, Nikki Penny

Operator

Emmanuel Lubezki

Composer

Steven Price

Artist

Audition

Lucinda Syson, David Rubin, Richard Hicks

Editing

Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger
All team (434)

• 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.
• Filming took place from May to July 2011 at Shepperton Studios, Surrey, England, and at Lake Powell, Arizona, USA.
• 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.
• Executive producer Christopher DeFaria revealed that the film begins with a 17-minute scene without a single edit.
• 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.
• 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.
• Astronaut Cady Coleman arranged a phone call about life in space between Sandra Bullock and the International Space Station.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 challenging to realize. Cuarón had to wait for technology to become more advanced in order to fully realize his vision. It wasn't until after the release of 'Avatar' (2009) that he felt the time was right.
• 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 "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.
• The name of Sandra Bullock's character—Ryan Stone—sounds like "rhinestone," which translates to "fake diamond."
• To visualize the scenes with graphics, the studio's programmers wrote 71,000 lines of code.
• 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.
• 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.
• Before filming, Cuarón rewatched a lot of films about space, but deliberately avoided Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). He was afraid that then he would not only not take on "Gravity", but would be forced to leave the profession altogether.
• In the film, Sandra Bullock's character dresses in a spacesuit belonging to the fictional cosmonaut Demidov. The spacesuit has a patch that says "Expedition 42". In Douglas Adams' 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, which is not designed for spacewalks, with a helmet from the "Orlan" spacesuit; however, the helmet of the real "Orlan" spacesuit is non-removable.
• 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.
• 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.
• Ryan Stone's hair doesn't float freely as it should in zero gravity, but is neatly styled.
• Almost all satellites in low Earth orbit move from west to east. However, in the film, the satellite debris moves from east to west.
• 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.
• 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.
• During launch from the cosmodrome, landing, and spacewalks, cosmonauts wear special diapers. Stone, removing his spacesuit, is revealed to be wearing ordinary shorts.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• In 2013, James Cameron named “Gravity” the best space film in the history of cinema.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.