Ryan Gosling in “Project Hail Mary” (Credits: View Conference)
How do you make Ryan Gosling float in space without actually leaving Earth? The VFX team behind “Project Hail Mary” just broke down their secrets — and it turns out convincing zero gravity was their biggest battle of all.
Oscar-winning VFX supervisor Paul Lambert and co-supervisor Mag Sarnowska drilled into the film’s effects at the View Conference in Turin, Italy, covering everything from ESA star maps to Greig Fraser’s cinematography and puppetry work.
Zero-G Was the Biggest Concern
“Zero-G was probably my personal biggest concern going into the movie,” Lambert admitted. The team “tried very hard to convince the production to use the vomit comet” — the aircraft maneuvers that generate brief weightlessness. But the spacecraft sets were simply too elaborate to recreate onboard.
Instead, Gosling performed on wire rigs, including a rotating harness, selling the illusion of floating through the ship with his body constantly drifting and rotating.
Real Science, Real Stars
The supervisors also revealed that ESA star maps helped build the film’s cosmos, grounding Andy Weir’s space epic in real astronomical data. Combined with Fraser’s cinematography and practical puppetry, the film aims to feel as physically real as it does visually spectacular.
“Project Hail Mary,” directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and adapted from Weir’s bestselling novel, follows Ryland Grace, a man who wakes up alone on a spaceship on a mission to save the sun — and the Earth along with it.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
