THE INVISIBLE VFX: GRAVITY

Neha Hooda: Assistant Professor

Centre for Post Production Skills

A film typically runs through three stages before it is sent to distributors who make the film available for public viewing. The three stages are pre-production (planning), production (actual shooting) & post production (structuring all the work shot). Though post production is the last stage, it is also the most important stage of all. It is here that all the footage that is shot is edited and the story takes a visual form, sound effects are added and a new element of interest is added to make the story world believable. Images are enhanced for colour, look & feel. Visual elements are also created in a digital environment that are added to the story in the form of VFX shots. By definition, Visual Effects refers to the effects that are added digitally because they could not be shot at the time of shooting. This generally happens post the shooting stage. However, VFX crews often get involved with productions at the start of the process i:e at the time of pre-production. This involvement is ancillary at this stage. However, there are always exceptions to this involvement. One such exception is Gravity (2013) by Alfonso Cuarón which was made digitally and not so much in post.

The film stars Sandra Bullock as Dr Ryan Stone & George Clooney as Matt Kowalski. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone - tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness. (ReF:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/plotsummary)

The VFX crew formed the key component of the shooting. The actors were shot in a light box and the environment, assets of all kinds were computer generated. Right from the suits of the astronauts to the debris of the space crafts, from earth to the Hubble telescope, all of it was VFX. The only real footage was the faces of the actors for most part. 

The complexity of the beauty in visuals is invisible. The story is about the human spirit of never giving up, finding somewhere a spec of light in the most trying times and giving one more shot to oneself when every-thing has failed. This is everyday life. It is a choice of life. The visual metaphors are used to show how an individual fights inertia in their willpower. Extremely long shots that take us through the journey of the actors. The film creates a world that does not exist. The work is functional, real and invisible. The story leads and the technology follows, never overpowering the essence of the story. Good VFX is when the effects added are invisible and they let the focus remain on the story.

The film has won Academy Awards for best direction, cinematography, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing and more importantly VFX which we understand to be unreal only because we know we cannot actually shoot in space.

In the majority of shots the only elements captured with a camera are the faces. The vastness of space, the Earth, the stars (all 30 million of them), the space shuttles, Hubble Telescope, the International Space Station (ISS), the copious and equally villainous fragments of debris, even the space suits: they were all made by visual effects artists at Framestore. (https://www.framestore.com/work/gravity)

'...seeing is what it's mostly about here, seeing space as if the film was actually shot there. It's a wonderful cinematic jolt to watch this film for the first time, as it looks as if it had been filmed, as it were, on location.'HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Let us understand how the process of creating such a believable world unfolds.VFX crews often get involved with productions at the start of the process i:e at the time of pre-production. The story is written and the director sets his creative vision. This vision is shared with the crew. The team decides on the parts that will be shot and those that would have to be created digitally. On the VFX studios’ front, the script is shared with the VFX Supervisor and the Producer. The supervisor understands the creative mandate as shared by the director. The producer sits and does a VFX breakdown of the script. This breakdown spells out the VFX related requirement of the script ranging from highlighting the VFX shots, the need for reference materials, the need for shooting clean plates (shots with the background). Once the script is broken down, tentative number of shots are marked out and bifurcated as per the requirement into 2D, 3D.2D shots would involve processes like rotoscopy, paint, digital matte painting, compositing. This is more about adding elements and accentuating an already existing image.

The 3D world takes an entirely new form. The common processes are modelling, rigging, matchmoving, texturing, rendering. This could also involve work in Dynamics and Simulation where things like fur, water, fire are created.

Along with the creative supervisor, the producer bids for the show. This process involves estimating the human effort required and the costs involved to work on the project. Shots are divided across different departments and each task in these departments is given a certain manday which has a monetary value to it. Once the client accepts and approves the budget, production begins.

Work happens in parallel across the creative and production team. The starting point is generally a selection of photos and video references. Depending on the requirement, the creative team may begin with concept art, story boarding, previsualising. This gives the film’s direction team an idea of things that can be achieved in visual effects. Right from the stage of pre-production, VFX crews can be involved with location recce. Often the crew will take photographs that will help them understand how they can create visuals digitally.

On the creative side, the team is usually let by a creative director, who will have different VFX supervisors working with him. The supervisors work with departmental leads and it is the lead’s job to work with the fellow artists to complete the job.

On the production side, the team is led by an executive producer who would generally be involved with the business aspects. This role is often taken care of by the Head of Production. The HOP will also organise, manage the delivery aspects of the shows on the production floor and in pipeline through his/her team of producers. The producers work with production managers & departmental managers to understand the availability of artists per show and ensure timely completion of the assigned work. The producer will be assisted by line producers who are further assisted by production co-ordinators to ensure that everyday timelines are met, production is running smoothly, there are no bottle necks. The producer and line-producer liaison with the client’s production team to ensure the availability of footage, reference materials, director’s brief reach the VFX crew. The production team sits with the client’s direction team to make notes about the work to be done on each of the shots. Once the brief from the client is received, the supervisor sits for a spotting session with the leads and other key crew members of the VFX team. In this session, the footage received from the client is reviewed and information of the work to be done is shared with the team.

Simultaneously a production schedule is chalked out and shared with the supervisors, leads & production / departmental managers. Artists are allocated to the show and production begins.

The production team ensures that the work is done as per the agreed brief and organises Dailies. Dailies are a feedback session where the work done through the day is reviewed shot by shot in detail. The feedback notes are shared with the artists who address the notes. Once the supervisor OK’s a shot, it can be sent to the direction team for approval. It is a possibility that even the direction team may have some feedback notes as such the shot goes back into production. The shot is worked on until the status of the shot changes to APPROVED.

A shot goes through different stages during a production. It starts with SCHEDULED, WORK IN PROGRESS, KICKBACK and finally APPROVED.

In case of Gravity, let us begin with a very small section, the first shot of the film, for instance, is 13 minutes long, with no cuts. The camera moves across fluidly from one place to another, seamlessly leading the audience to different things happening. The team at Framestore ( the VFX Studio that worked on Gravity and was led by Tim Webber) set up a Lightbox , a 10*10 feet space where the actors were strapped up and the focus being the performance & expression. Instead of the actors moving and throwing themselves around in space, the cameras moved around them in all sorts of direction. The box was covered with over 4000 LED light bulbs and from the outside of the box, the effects team could play any computer-generated image of sun, planets or other celestial structures to get the right light on the actors. A major portion of the film was shot with in this light box.

Close to an year was spent only on pre visualising what the shots would look like in terms of lighting and other details even before the actual shooting began with the actors. The film is also credited with devising new methods to work on zero gravity unlike the films of the past. With little over 4 years that the film took to be made, the visual spectacle that unfolds feels photo real and believable. VFX looks invisible except when the sense of logic pours in. Some of the studios that worked on the film are Framestore, The Third Floor, Rising Sun Pictures and Prime Focus which is an Indian VFX Studio with global presence.

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Assistant Professor – Having worked with studios like FutureWorks, Prime Focus  to name a few; Neha’s expertise lies in post production. She has handled digital intermediate, editing, sound, VFX, stereoscopy for various international and domestic feature films. Some of the films she has worked on are ‘John Carter’ (2012), ‘Titanic 3D’ (2012), ‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ (2013), ‘Cloud Atlas’ (2012), ‘Pixels’ (2015), ‘Rakhta Charitra’ (2010), Tamas (Restoration), ‘Ek Villain’ (2014), ‘Phantom’ (2015), ‘Yaan’ (2014) to name a few.