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00:11I wish you could see this rock.
00:14Rocky can see. Boring.
00:18What? This is not boring.
00:21Name of planet Tau Ceti E is same name as star plus E. Boring.
00:28I guess it could be a little more evocative.
00:34Astrophage sampler in position. Question?
00:37Yep. Trays are live, looking both ways.
00:41It is time go.
00:44It's time go.
00:57It's time go.
00:58It's time go.
01:07It's time go.
01:17It's time go.
01:26What is Grace doing?
01:28Question?
01:29I'm having a moment.
02:00I just watched this for the fourth time the other day
02:02and it does not get old, I have to say.
02:05It's beautiful.
02:06The first time I saw it, I remember walking away going,
02:09I feel like I've just seen the kind of great movie
02:11I used to see as a kid.
02:13And I think part of that is because so much of it
02:16was built practically and it feels very authentic
02:21visually and it's kind of a sensual experience too.
02:24Can you both talk about why the practicality
02:28of the aspects of the set was so important to you?
02:32Yeah, I mean, listen, the point that you just raised
02:36about watching a film that you probably saw as a kid
02:39is exactly where we all came at it from.
02:43You know, the ability to touch and for things on set
02:47to be practical.
02:48But it's not just necessarily the fact that you could
02:50touch things on set.
02:51I think there was an authenticism to the rationale
02:54how things operated, which obviously Charlie could talk
02:57to shortly.
02:58But, you know, there wasn't anything created for the sake
03:02of visual pleasure.
03:04It started in a place of honesty from a science perspective,
03:08which is how the book's written, if you guys have read
03:10the book.
03:11You know, everything's written, actually, it probably could occur
03:14in a lot of cases.
03:15Like, a lot of the science is real, real science.
03:17And so, from my perspective, you know, I needed to follow through.
03:22I couldn't be the department that suddenly put lights in places
03:24that didn't deserve lights because I couldn't be the inauthentic
03:27part of the group.
03:30You know, I sort of drew inspiration on Charlie's designs
03:33and the fantastic writing of Drew Goddard and, you know,
03:37and the directors who said constantly, you know, this has to be,
03:43I mean, no pun intended, but it has to be grounded.
03:45You know, there has to be a grounding in reality that takes place.
03:49Now, the area to kind of talk about is kind of how it goes from sort of
03:56reality to fantasy and how it sort of blurs that line.
04:00And, you know, there are films that I saw in my childhood,
04:02like E.T., for example, where you go, I mean, it's a great comparison
04:07for E.T., but there's very few VFX in E.T.
04:10And the times there are VFX, they're stunningly, authentically appropriate
04:15for that particular part of the film.
04:17And so I think that the directors have found that same through line
04:23with this film, that when there does...
04:25When we do entertain VFX, it's for an absolutely good reason
04:30and not just because we couldn't either be bothered doing it
04:33or couldn't figure it out, because we did.
04:35We figured it out well in advance.
04:37And, Charlie, can you speak to that a little bit about how the practicality
04:41of the film affected your choices and why it was important to you?
04:46Yeah, certainly.
04:46I mean, I suppose where we started on the film was we went to JPL in California
04:53and we went to a lot of meetings with NASA, you know, about all of this.
04:59That's fascinating, though.
05:00I just want to know what's NASA like.
05:02I've never spoken to any astronauts before, you know.
05:05I actually spoke to this, an astronaut who told me, you know,
05:09an elderly man who sort of... I spoke to him one morning
05:11and I said to him, sort of, what have you done?
05:13And he said, I've done a few launches.
05:15Launches. I said, launches.
05:17And he said, yeah, you know, he'd sort of...
05:19I think he'd been a pilot for, like, three shuttle missions.
05:23And he actually told me the most...
05:24Sorry, I'm off track here slightly, but...
05:26No, please, it's fascinating.
05:27He told me a lovely story when he said to me...
05:29Because we were talking about the cupola in the movie
05:31and we, you know, for authenticity's sake,
05:34I wanted to understand, like, what a pressure window was
05:37and how a pressure window was built
05:39and how the radiation shields work.
05:41Because this is, you know, this is all the stuff we sort of went through.
05:44And I remember he said to me, oh, yeah, he said,
05:46I used to sit in a cupola.
05:47And he said to me, there was a problem when I looked at Earth
05:51and I said, how was Earth?
05:52And he said, oh, it's so beautiful.
05:54But, you know, I couldn't see it because my vision was always blurry.
05:58And I said, why was that?
05:59And he said, because I was crying.
06:01Because the image was so beautiful, he said.
06:04And because I didn't, you know, didn't think about it,
06:06but in space, if you cry, the water won't leave your eyes.
06:10And I thought that was a really fascinating thing.
06:14And, you know, just on that topic alone.
06:18And so, yeah, we spoke about the cupola
06:19and it became a very animated conversation
06:21about how you couldn't touch the glass
06:23and all of this sort of stuff.
06:25So, yeah, with Greg and...
06:27I mean, certainly working with Greg,
06:29I think that the thing was with this film,
06:31we were so up and close with everything, you know.
06:34Most of our sets, well, a lot of the sets
06:36were sort of eight to ten foot in diameter.
06:38So the camera was on everything.
06:40Greg's camera was on everything, right?
06:42So we just, I needed to make sure
06:44that whatever was in front of the camera,
06:47camera, should I say,
06:48really gave the audience a feeling
06:50that you were really in this ship with this man
06:53going to, well, eternity, I suppose.
06:56So that was our...
06:57I think the NASA thing was something
07:00that I've only really just remembered
07:03based on what Charlie said
07:04because it's very true.
07:05Like, we had a lot of interactions
07:07with people from NASA.
07:08Like, I became really good friends
07:09with a guy named Don Pettit
07:10who is an astronaut who's been to space a few times.
07:14And when he was training for his last mission,
07:17he was in Kyrgyzstan or whatever
07:19and we were FaceTiming.
07:20And he came to us with a problem.
07:22He said, well, you know,
07:25I want to take a photo of space.
07:27It's too bright outside
07:28and I can't get an exposure outside and inside.
07:30And so we actually sent him a video of our cupola,
07:33which we did an ND job on.
07:35We figured out how to ND it with the right ND.
07:38And I think we ended up either sending him some ND
07:40to take up to the space station
07:42and then he put NDs in the window.
07:43So I'm like, when he was telling me this
07:45when he got back, I was like, oh, wow.
07:47This is ridiculous.
07:48This is life imitating art, imitating life.
07:51But that's what this film was in my mind.
07:54Even though he was in a solar system
07:56that we couldn't get to
07:58and all these things happened
07:59that we've never experienced before as humans,
08:02it's not insurmountable that it could have happened.
08:04You know, there are some fantasy space movies
08:07which we did look at as inspiration,
08:10sometimes how not to do things
08:12because that was so outlandishly unbelievable.
08:16Are you willing to name those movies?
08:17No, not at all.
08:18No, because they're all fantastic films.
08:20It's not about that.
08:20It's just about the fact
08:22that we needed to have a sense of reality.
08:23Like, we need to be one step removed,
08:26only one small step removed
08:27from this being a reality.
08:29And that took its place
08:31across every single department
08:33from costume to design to lighting.
08:37This film is so much sort of warmer
08:39and more humanistic than most space films.
08:44You know, it has that...
08:46Well, I don't want to, you know,
08:47reference E.T. so much
08:49because it's not E.T. in any sense,
08:51but that feeling that you get watching it is the same.
08:54And for both of you,
08:56what were some of the ways that you brought that?
08:58I mean, I would say, Charlie,
08:59I think that the space that Grace lives in
09:01is very kind of full of his stuff.
09:04So we get to get a kind of feeling of who he is
09:07and it feels like a living room in a way.
09:09Can you talk about building that?
09:12Certainly.
09:14I think the main thing was,
09:15I mean, certainly with the ship as well,
09:17because I think there was, I don't know,
09:1912 capsules in or something.
09:21The first thing that sort of,
09:22I spoke about with Phil and Chris
09:23and what they really wanted to try and achieve,
09:26and with Greg,
09:27was trying to,
09:28as he sort of journeys through this world
09:31he now has to live in,
09:32but its sort of personality would change.
09:35So the idea behind that was
09:38that every capsule was built by a different nation,
09:41so it had a sort of an international aspect to it,
09:44which was a lovely thing to do.
09:46But also things like, I suppose, the dormitory.
09:49We worked, like, for one thing,
09:50we worked with a lot of fabric,
09:52and I'd never really done that before.
09:54A lot of, not all science solutions,
09:55but it can often be very hard surfaced.
09:58And we looked,
09:58and this was sort of actually going to JPL
10:00and looking in capsules
10:02and sort of studying some of the space missions.
10:06Fabric is actually a very important thing,
10:08so we used a lot of soft fabric.
10:11So, for instance, the dormitories,
10:12we tried to make it very embryonic, you know?
10:15And then sort of as he journeys up through the ship,
10:17it changes and it changes and it changes.
10:21So, that was sort of one of our sort of aspects to it,
10:24I suppose, yeah.
10:25I mean, to that point of the softness,
10:27I think that was very much an inspiration
10:29for how I wanted to light the film, too,
10:33because you're right,
10:35a lot of space movies are quite cold,
10:37and they're intrinsically so.
10:39They're lit by cold strip lights, fluorescent LEDs,
10:42whatever it is,
10:43technically how they're lit and how they feel.
10:45But the reality was that, you know,
10:49Charlie was building a world that was populated by humans
10:52and built by humans for humans
10:54to survive for an extended period of time.
10:57And then our logic, my logics, kicked in and going,
11:00well, if I was designing any of you guys
11:02to go potentially, well, to your death,
11:05but to save our planet,
11:07I wouldn't be painting everything white
11:10and putting strip lights in
11:11and making things horrible.
11:13You'd go out of your mind,
11:14literally go out of your mind after a period of time.
11:17So what I tried to do from a lighting standpoint is,
11:21you know, I did a lot of study
11:22of circadian rhythm lighting,
11:24which occurs, and also, you know,
11:26during my photography studies early, early on in my days,
11:30we studied a lot about sort of wavelengths
11:32and what wavelength does to human psychology.
11:35You know, like, we all know about this now
11:37with red light therapy.
11:38Like, this is a relatively new thing,
11:40but what red light does to skin
11:42and to the psyche and to the circadian rhythms
11:45and what blue light does with ultraviolet and cleaning
11:47and, you know, and what circadian rhythm does
11:51and what lights do now to create a circadian rhythm
11:54so your body knows when to wake up,
11:55when to work, when to relax and when to sleep.
11:58And so it was really important that in a space film
12:00that traditionally could have, in theory,
12:02been lit with strip lights,
12:03that it was never lit with strip lights.
12:06I think that was the intention,
12:07was that we kind of said,
12:09let's never put a strip light in this place.
12:11And I think we might have succeeded
12:13because we tried to find solutions for lighting
12:15that weren't that, that had a level of warmth,
12:19but not necessarily a colour warmth,
12:20but a human touch.
12:23Like, there was a team of people back on Earth
12:25thinking about how these astronauts felt
12:29and worked to do their job the best way.
12:31And so, in that sense,
12:33you couldn't put plush couches and lamps
12:36and stuff like that because we're in space.
12:37But we tried to do the equivalent of what that was.
12:42You know, one of the things I really love about this movie
12:45is how emotional we feel about a puppet with no face.
12:51I mean, it's quite an achievement.
12:54Can you both maybe tell us a story
12:57about how it was to work with and around the puppet of Rocky
13:00and with Ryan Gosling?
13:04Complex.
13:05Not Ryan Gosling.
13:06Not Ryan Gosling, no.
13:08Complex and amazing.
13:09Look, it was all amazing.
13:10But I think, I mean, I had no,
13:12I didn't realise coming onto the film
13:13that this would all be essentially live action.
13:16I mean, and it really was done that way.
13:18So, you know, just working with a team of puppeteers
13:22on a set that's eight foot in diameter
13:25that has to be horizontal and vertical,
13:28you know, all of that sort of stuff.
13:30Was a real challenge, actually.
13:33And I wasn't even sure how it was all going to play out
13:35in the end, but it was extraordinary
13:38how certainly the puppet team did their work, you know.
13:43And I think it shines through in the film
13:45because, again, when you talk about sort of authenticity,
13:49you know, certainly watching it and stuff,
13:51you feel this creature really did exist
13:53because it has so much human connotation,
13:56so much human, you know, movement to it.
13:58So in design, I've never, maybe I'll never do it again,
14:01but this was definitely a new one for me
14:03and wonderful to be part of, yeah.
14:07I mean, we could talk for hours about Ryan, particularly.
14:10I don't know if we don't have hours,
14:11but the way that he was able to obviously bring the film to light
14:16is obvious.
14:18The puppet itself, you know, the challenging part,
14:21like you said, how do we fall in love with a rock with no face
14:24that looks like a spider,
14:25and we're all designed as humans to not like spiders
14:27or things with multiple legs.
14:29It's like, logically, when you read it on the page,
14:32you kind of go, oh, yeah, isn't he great?
14:33But then you think about it and say, he's a rock.
14:36And I'm designed, I like faces.
14:38I don't like rocks.
14:39So I had to learn how to light a rock like it was,
14:42had an emotion.
14:44And, but, again, it comes back to puppetry.
14:46It comes back to Jay Mortese and his team.
14:49You know, it comes back to them being able to do things
14:52that were, you know, it's not just,
14:54if it was just a puppet here on the table in front of,
14:56you know, in gravity,
14:58then it's relatively easy to do a puppet.
15:00We've all seen Sesame Street.
15:02We've all seen it relatively easy.
15:03But you try putting it with no gravity.
15:06You try putting it in a tunnel with no light coming from it.
15:11It can't see light with no face.
15:14It was very complicated.
15:16But you know what?
15:17This is where I think the team of people
15:19who we have working together,
15:21and we're all working at the same, for the same goal,
15:24which is because of the directors, clearly, right?
15:27We all were working to the same goal of knowing
15:30that we had to push Rocky into become a lovable character.
15:33And that came from lighting.
15:35It came from design.
15:36Obviously, from character, from James and Ryan.
15:40So, yeah, it was a challenge.
15:41And that was, to be frank,
15:43and I won't get into that,
15:44but probably the least of our challenges on this film.
15:46This is the most complicated film I've ever shot
15:48with the most amount of...
15:51We said that every day.
15:52Every day was, like, the most complicated day.
15:55Yeah.
15:56It was a problem wrapped in a...
15:57Like, you know, puppets in a rolling circle.
16:00I mean, how do you do that?
16:01Then you do it with no gravity,
16:02and then how do you do it, like, coming out of that ball?
16:06Like...
16:07I have to say it paid off.
16:08Then you go upstairs.
16:09What about steps?
16:10I mean, how do you do that?
16:11But that's the thing.
16:12Like, everything was a challenge,
16:13but an awesome challenge.
16:17And also trying to do it in camera, wasn't it?
16:19I mean, I think sort of the thing
16:21at the beginning of this whole project was
16:23I just had no idea that we were going to try and, you know,
16:27pull it off as much as we could in that way.
16:29So, I mean, that was, you know,
16:31it threw up a lot of challenges,
16:32which normally you wouldn't basically have to face, you know, so...
16:36We had a great...
16:37Because we had Paul Lambert, our visual effects supervisor,
16:41working on it.
16:41I mean, he is all about doing as much in camera as well.
16:44Like, he doesn't generally like it
16:46when he has to do something from scratch.
16:48So, he'll always push us,
16:50and this is why, as a great team effort,
16:52push us to create as much as we physically could.
16:56You know, obviously we can't build this ship
16:58at Shepparton Studios because the ship's too big,
17:01but we can build the biggest part of it that we could.
17:03And he was fully pushing that,
17:07and, you know, everybody was pushing in that way.
17:09So, it felt like a really good mix
17:11of, you know, fantastic practical sets,
17:15as much shooting in camera as we can get,
17:18and then fantastic VFX to just bring it all together.
17:23I really love this film, as you can tell,
17:25because of the four times watching it in a row.
17:27But, and I am out of time,
17:28but before I let you go,
17:30I'm just going to throw out one last question.
17:32I had heard that the novelist, Andy Weir,
17:36was working on another one.
17:38The references, it's not a sequel, he said,
17:41but it references Grace and Rocky a little bit.
17:44Have you heard about this?
17:46Any thoughts?
17:47I just heard about it now.
17:49Same here.
17:50Well, watch this space, I guess.
17:52I hope there's more where that came from.
17:54Thank you both so much.
17:56Congratulations.
17:58Congratulations.
17:58Thank you both so much.