It has always been said that art imitates reality and few cases are as clear as the creation of this “3D space adventure” – a subtitle that Alfonso and his son, Jonás Cuarón, had in the script from the moment of their conception-. Gravity tells the story of Dr. Ryan Stone, a rookie astronaut, who is left adrift in space.
“I think the coolest thing about ‘El Chivo’ (Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer), my dad and Tim Bowman (VFX) was that the more difficult the production got, the more they enjoyed it. The challenge, the obstacle that moved them… it’s just a film that talks about that. The more difficult the adversity, the more one grows,” explains Jonás, whose film Desertwas the trigger that inspired this film odyssey.
Adventures in unknown terrain
The objective was always clear: to create a roller coaster full of adrenaline, where the suspense did not stop and that, through the action, we got to know the character, his motivations and his emotional journey in depth. Oh, and for it to happen in space… However, how that would be achieved was another story. “The interesting thing was that I wrote without thinking anything technical. I didn’t worry about how it was going to be done… then that headache came,” Jonás tells us.
Essentially, the process was like this: an initial outline was written. Then each aspect that would involve making it in space was investigated in detail, because as the scriptwriter himself explains, “if it had been the story of a character adrift in the ocean, well, one understands: you swallow water, etc… when you are in space you are talking about a totally different universe. The laws of zero gravity are very confusing and we wanted the highest degree of realism possible.”
Initially, the proposal was the same one that has been used for several years in films that take place in this setting: the now famous “vomit comet”; a plane that provides the sensation of zero gravity for just 20 seconds. However, given the director’s penchant for uncut long takes, this solution was not viable.
“No one could explain to me how the film would be made in the beginning,” says Sandra Bullock, who carries practically all the histrionic weight, “but I admired Alfonso’s work so much that it was exciting to jump into that unknown abyss.”
And then the good thing began…
From paper to the technological revolution
“Alfonso had so much to deal with that I am still shocked by the magnitude. There was not a single person who could tell you how to do it, he had to trust hundreds of people and put the pieces of the puzzle together,” adds Bullock about the work of discovery and creation that the director did to make this work possible. Jonás adds: “It wasn’t at all how I imagined a set. I think it’s because a movie like this hasn’t been made before. That is always the variable when my dad and El Chivo are together: they seek to stretch the league as much as possible, to do something that has not been done before.”
The technique used ended up being a combination of animations, robotics, LEDs, computerized cable systems and everything perfectly programmed and calculated according to the specifications of the script. For this careful pre-production to work, the writers had to be extremely specific: lay out everything action by action, because once they saw how to do it technically, it was very complicated to make changes to it.
“When filming everything was already written in stone and Sandra had very little freedom to move. We had to know how everything was going to work beforehand. Even in post-production she was involved and she told the animators if she would do something different,” Alfonso reveals.
For the Oscar-winning actress, as for Dr. Ryan, the journey was one of obstacles and challenges to overcome. “There were so many levels going on that at first I fought against it, because I had never worked like that. Isolation was a very relevant part: I was very supported by music and sounds through my hearing aid (their only contact with the director or anyone). But I had the light at the end of the tunnel, which was to see my son. My character doesn’t have that gift,” confesses Bullock, who also told us that when she was having a difficult day, she would hear someone say, “Bring the boy,” and she would appreciate the face of her little son in her line of sight.
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“However, when El Chivo is there it is as if there was another organic element in the film,” he continues. “The way they work together is impressive, it gives you instructions that you have to move your head three centimeters to the left because otherwise the emotional tone was not exactly correct. And I had to trust his dancing.”
For his part, although George Clooney’s scenes are brief, the actor was a key part of the making of Gravity, according to Alfonso tells us. “This cliché about him being Mr. Cool is totally true, so he sure has a dark secret like a basement full of corpses somewhere,” he jokes. Then, he explains the true support he gave to the production: “He cared a lot about helping Sandy and me in scenes in which she didn’t even appear. He had already left London and still sent us dialogue rewrites. And they were very good.”
And what was the final result? We are left with Jonás’ opinion when we see the finished product: “What was incredible is that for three months I disconnected and when I went to the performance, even I held on to my seat a little and I did have an emotional journey. The hypothesis was there from the beginning: to create an adventure full of adrenaline, but also emotions. But it was just a hypothesis… And what gave me great pleasure was verifying that the theory was correct.”
A version of this article was originally published in Cine PREMIERE No. 229, in October 2013.
Mary Carmen Albarran She’s always been a nerd…even before it was considered cool. She was editor of Cine PREMIERE for 5 years and then sought new horizons in a small company called Google where she is now Communications Manager for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.