Oscar-winning DoP Greig Fraser knows a thing or two about working on challenging movies, from Dune to The Batman, Rogue One to Zero Dark Thirty.

At Deadline’s Contenders London event today, the in-demand cinematographer revealed that none were as challenging as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s space hit Project Hail Mary: “This was the most complicated film I’ve shot,” the Australian native disclosed.

“Every day was the most complicated day,” he explained. “How do you capture a puppet without a face in a rolling circle with no gravity. Then there are stairs and steps to factor in. Everything was a challenge, but an awesome challenge.”

In the film, Ryan Gosling plays science teacher Ryland Grace “who wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction…on the journey, an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.”

Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub co-star in the Amazon MGM crowd-pleaser, which took $684.5M at the global box office.

Fraser and the film’s production designer Charles Wood, also known for his work on blockbusters including Spider-Man: Brand New Day and the Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy franchise, talked about how the film was grounded in authenticity and not overly saturated in VFX.

Wood explained: “A lot of the sets were eight to 10 foot in diameter. So the camera was on everything. Greg’s camera was on everything. I needed to make sure that whatever was in front of the camera really gave the audience a feeling that you were really in this ship with this man going to eternity.”

Fraser added: “There was an authenticity to the rationale of how things operated. There wasn’t anything created for the sake of visual pleasure. It started in a place of honesty from a science perspective, which is how the book’s written.”

That desire for authenticity included the puppetry work behind the film’s memorable alien character Rocky.

Wood commented: “I didn’t realize coming onto the film that this would all be essentially live action. Working with a team of puppeteers on a set of a certain diameter was a real challenge. I wasn’t even sure how it was all going to play out, but it’s extraordinary how the puppet team did their work. It shines through in the film. You feel this creature really did exist.”

Fraser said he recognized the film’s comparison with E.T., another film celebrated for for relying on practical effects and animatronics rather than computer-generated imagery (CGI).

“The times there are VFX, they’re stunningly, authentically appropriate for that particular part of the film. I think that the the directors have found that same through-line with this film. They’re used for an absolutely good reason.”

As part of their research Wood described how the team met NASA astronauts and heard about their experiences, including how one was so overwhelmed by seeing the earth from space that he would cry but his tears wouldn’t fall due to gravity, meaning he often had a blurred vision of the planet from his ship.

Fraser and Wood were both asked about the potential for a sequel or follow-on movie given that the book’s writer Andy Weir has spoken about writing another novel connected to the story. “That’s the first I’m hearing about it”, Fraser said.

The movie is produced by Amy Pascal, Gosling, Lord, Miller, Weir, Aditya Sood and Rachel O’Connor.

Florian Zeller and Penélope Cruz stepped into Deadline’s Contenders event in London where the duo discussed their upcoming psychological thriller, Bunker. The film, which Zeller wrote, produced and directed, sees Cruz star as the wife of her real-life husband Javier Bardem as their characters face emotional and moral challenges in an increasingly uncertain world.

Bardem plays Miguel, a successful London architect, who considers a prestigious offer to build a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. The project causes his wife Sofia (Cruz) to question their relationship of 17 years as they are drawn deeper into a life of extreme wealth, paranoia and fear. The intrusion of an unsettling neighbor becomes another source of anxiety.

Zeller says that it was “a dream” of his to work with Bardem and Cruz. “I was interested in working with them together because I thought it would be an opportunity to explore something unique as a couple in life and also, to question what it is to be together and to explore love, to explore forgiveness in a long-term relationship through these extraordinary talents.”

Cruz admitted that making the step to play a fictional couple in a feature film was a big one for her and Bardem, as the pair had made the decision “not to work together very often.”

“We thought about it a little bit because, of course, the temptation was huge because we both love Florian,” said Cruz. “We love his work so much, but we always said we were not going to work together very often because it is a way to protect the relationship. I think it would be too risky to work together to often. But when we read it, and when we spoke to him, we looked at each other and really didn’t see any reason to say no. We both wanted to do it, and we knew that Florian was never going to manipulate anything or try to force anything from our real relationship into the movie.”

Cruz added that a week before their “big fight” scene in the film, which was shot across three days, “things started to happen and I started to feel weird.”

“Of course, it was because that scene was coming,” she said. “But I always said to myself, ‘that’s not possible, it cannot be because that scene is coming.’ We are old enough to not let that affect us, but it did affect us.”

Cruz added: “But it’s just a natural process to find some truth.”

Zeller noted that the fight scene, which is an almost 11-minute scene, is somewhat “the core of the film.”

“It encapsulates thematically and emotionally everything the film is about. For a long period of time during the film, Penelope’s character is going through a crisis, but you don’t really know exactly what it is. Something is missing but she cannot exactly know what it is until that moment comes when she starts to become very vocal about it. So that’s a moment that is very key emotionally in the film.”

Additional cast in Bunker include Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger. The French-Spanish co-production is produced by Federica Sainte-Rose and Zeller for Blue Morning Pictures, Fernando Bovaria and Simon de Santiago of MOD Producciones and Alice Dawson. Pathé’s Ardavan Safaee and Mediawan’s Pierre-Antoine Capton serve as co-producers.

Check back on Monday for the panel video.