Gravity is a critical and box office success, registering high marks on both the art and commerce barometers. Similarly it's a film that is both high action/adventure and at times meditative, meshing different ends of the adrenaline/emotional continuum to great effect as it tracks the unforgettable journey of two wayward astronauts–portrayed by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney– who are cast adrift in outer space.
The film, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and written by him and his oldest son Jonas, is indeed a artful blend of contrasts. And integral in telling a story that has attained hit status creatively and financially as well as heart-stopping and introspective moments are the tour de force visual effects which were presided over by VFX supervisor Tim Webber. The film was many years in the making as technology in some respects had to catch up with the vision of the two Cuaróns.
Making the task all the more daunting was director Cuarón's creative choice and affinity for lengthy shots. Nearly 60 percent of the movie consists of a dozen long, seamless takes.
Gravity has emerged as a strong Oscar contender on varied fronts, including visual effects which do far more than merely enhance the story. The visual effects are indeed central to the story, its drama and emotional resonance.
Webber, VFX supervisor at effects house Framestore, is no stranger to the Oscar derby. He was part of a team nominated for a Best Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar in 2009 for The Dark Knight. Webber has also been twice nominated for the coveted BAFTA Film Award for Special Visual Effects–in 2006 for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and in 2007 for the Alfonso Cuarón-directed Children of Men.
Children of Men additionally netted Webber a pair of Visual Effects Society (VES) Award nominations, with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (directed by Mike Newell) garnering yet another.
On the television front, Webber was part of the VES Award-winning Framestore team on Dinotopia, which also accounted for one of his three primetime Emmy Awards as well as a BAFTA Television Award nomination.
Hallmark Entertainment's TV event Dinotopia actually won four VES Awards in 2003–for Best Visual Effects, Best Character Animation, Best Compositing and Best Matte Painting.
Webber's other two Emmy Awards came in 1998 for Merlin which topped the category of Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries or a Movie, and in 2000 for The 10th Kingdom, the winner for Outstanding Main Title Design.
Webber's credits at Framestore over the years span assorted commercials, TV shows and features.
In the latter arena, he has served as a visual effects supervisor on Avatar, Where the Wild Things Are, Lassie, The Libertine, Enduring Love, Love Actually, Mansfield Park and Notting Hill.
Framestore did the lion's share of visual effects for Gravity. Among the other contributors were Rising Sun Pictures which turned out two-and-a-half minutes of footage for the movie's climactic end scene, and studios Prime Focus (which helped with the movie's stereo conversion, although a great deal of the digital footage was rendered in stereo), and The Third Floor.
Gravity was yet another collaboration between director Cuaron and his long-time cinemaographer, Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, ASC, AMC (Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Great Expectations, A Little Princess). Lubezki has been nominated for five Best Cinematography Oscars, including two for Cuarón-directed films–Children of Men and A Little Princess. The other three Oscar noms were for The Tree of Life, The New World (both directed by Terrence Malick), and Sleepy Hollow (directed by Tim Burton). Lubezki is additionally handled by production house Park Pictures as a director for commercials and branded content.
Webber took some time out from a busy schedule to reflect on Gravity, the creative challenges it posed to him and his effects compatriots, his and Framestore's collaborative relationship with Alfonso Cuarón over the years, and lessons learned from the the hit motion picture and how they might be applied to other varied projects and disciplines, including commercials and branded entertainment
Here are some of his recollections and observations in response to questions from SHOOT:.
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SHOOT: What were the biggest creative challenges posed to you and the Framestore team by Gravity?
Webber: The initial plan was to suspend the actors on wires in spacesuits against partial sets, with them working on bits of the Hubble or whatever spacecraft they were interacting with, but it became clear to me pretty quickly that wasn't going to work. Zero Gravity is very hard to simulate–until you start to work on it and realize just how far its effects go you don't realize how tricky it is. Everything we do is affected by Gravity, so whatever we do down on Earth is not the same as would happen up in space. For example you hold something and let go it falls to the floor, it doesn't just float there. If you lift your arm up there is a strain in you muscle as you are having to lift it up against Gravity. If you hold your arm for a few seconds there you can see the strain on your arm. If you're upside down all the blood goes to your face and is visible which it wouldn't if you are upside down in zero Gravity.
The other big challenge was Alfonso's filmmaking style of shooting with the very long exploratory roaming developing shots that go from a wide-shot to a mid-shot to a close-up, then to a close-up of another actor who could well be upside down. A two-minute shot of intense dialogue will go to an action sequence for a few minutes. And all of this happening within the one shot.
As well as having to craft shots that are that long, you have to find solutions to the zero Gravity that will work in all those styles of shots and over an extended period of time.
So whatever technique it is has to work for all the different types but also has to hold up to the examination that it would be under when there are no cuts, no changes of angles. Whatever it is you are looking at you can be looking at for minutes on end. That was tricky. Finally, it was not a massive budget for the film, it's a slightly esoteric concept for a movie and it's largely about one person marooned in space and back then no one realized how popular it would be, or no one was sure it would be this popular.
SHOOT: We assume your track record with Alfonso Cuarón helped you to land the plum assignment of Gravity. Provide some backstory on your relationship with Alfonso Cuarón, how you work with him and your history together.
Webber: Framestore had worked with Alfonso on Harry Potter [and the Prisoner of Azkaban] and I had worked with him on Children of Men. Alfonso came to see us when he first had the idea of Gravity in his head; he hadn't actually written the script at the time. He came in and told me the story and spent about 45 minutes just describing the story verbally and I remember at the time coming out of that blown away by the intensity of the story and excited by how different the movie was going to be. What I didn't realize back then was just how challenging it was going to be to make. It was obviously going to be tricky but the amplitude of how tricky was not clear. Initially the obvious challenge was that it's set in space and you can't go and film there, so it was clear that all of the environments were going to have to be created in visual effects.
SHOOT: Would you provide a breakdown of Framestore's contributions to Gravity as well as other visual effects houses involved and what they contributed (Prime Focus, Rising Sun Pictures).
And provide some context for The Third Floor and its contributions (is this a Framestore company?).
Webber: We basically came up with the concept of doing a huge part of the film in CG and a lot of the time just filming the faces, or occasionally the whole body (when Sandra Bullock wasn't in her space suit) and occasionally some more traditional live action bits with visual effects done over the top. Around 80 percent of the film was created in the computer and the other 20 percent contains a significant amount of effects work and that was pretty much all done by Framestore. The whole concept, the design, solving the problems, the methodology, all of that was done by myself and the team here. I was then the overall supervisor as well, supervising Rising Sun who did a very tricky sequence, although it was less than two percent of the screen time of the movie, the rest was done by Framestore.
Prime Focus did the dimensionalization of some sequences, those that were more live action-orientated, and Framestore did the dimensionalization of the more CG-orientated sequences. For the CG ones it wasn't so much dimensionalization because when it was generated in the computer it was done as if it was native 3D (as if it was filmed in 3D) and so with the dimensionalization it made sense for Framestore to dimensionalize the live action parts in those too.
The Third Floor is not a Framestore company, but The Third Floor London is a joint venture between Framestore and The Third Floor who are based in LA. They supplied three very good artists to help for a certain length of time with the pre-vis. The Framestore team was significantly bigger and did most of the pre-vis, but the Third Floor guys were great and provided some really useful help. The pre-vis for the movie was a very critical part of the process. It had to be intensely planned in very great detail for many reasons: the complexity of the long shots needed very careful choreography and the complexity of the techniques used to shoot it needed to be extremely well planned when we were shooting.
SHOOT: Did Framestore's work and expertise in commercials at all inform your approach to Gravity? Were lessons learned from the advertising sector that were applied to Gravity?
Webber: Yes. I think one of the big advantages at Framestore is the commercials department, the film department and various other departments, the digital, etc. There is some crossover and some ability to learn and use techniques developed in another department. Everything we do is informed by stuff going on elsewhere in the company and I think Gravity was such a different and groundbreaking film, which needed many new techniques developed for it, that those techniques will be used in commercials. The tools we developed, the rendering that made it photo-real, and the light box that was a very interactive, clever way of being able to light people or whatever you want to film, really could be useful. So it will work both ways.
