PRODUCTION PROJECT HAIL MARY
example, we wouldn’t place it outside the ship’s window 25m away. That was really important for me because it helped to ground the film in some form of reality, even though it’s fantasy.” Fraser points to the Astrophage sequence as an example of when he let the fantasy element take over. “I love the sequence when Grace is flying through all of the beautiful Astrophage. That was one of the only times we felt like we had earned the right to become fantasy for a minute. It meant we could cut loose and allow the audience a breath of the fantastical.” There was a significant amount of preparation involved, particularly for the ship’s cockpit scenes. Grace first encounters it in one configuration. Later, he operates it in a horizontal rotation. And finally, when flying above Adrian, it shifts to an angled orientation with a different configuration altogether. “With so many buttons and light sources inside the cockpit, I had to be very careful, as it was such a beautifully designed space,” says Fraser. “Charles Wood, the production designer, did an incredible job creating it. When all of the lights were activated, the cockpit became very colourful and visually dense, so it was always about striking the right balance for each scene. Even subtle adjustments to the colour palette helped signal that we were entering a new scene or journey, despite being in the same environment. Our fear was that returning to the same space repeatedly, with the same visual language, might become tiring for the audience. So we needed to refresh it each time to give it new energy.” ACROSS THE UNIVERSE Paul Lambert served as VFX supervisor on the film, having previously collaborated with Fraser on the Dune franchise. “While working on Dune , we bonded over our disdain for green and blue screens,” says Fraser. “We’ve both been burnt by them in the past. With green screen, lighting is impacted and – visually speaking – you end up compromising significantly. “We decided not to use it on this film, which was fantastic. We were completely aligned on that approach, and I know the directors were also very happy not to have it on-set.”
MAKING SPACE COUNT A lot of the film’s runtime takes place in the spaceship so DOP Fraser, along with directors Lord and Miller (top), had to work hard to keep its look varied
Fraser utilised blackouts for the film’s space environments and a grey screen for the planet Adrian sequence. “Adrian was the only environment with a greenish tinge to it. We introduced a green-blue aqua colour that we bounced into the space to create the desired reflective effect. For the ‘don’t go crazy’ room, we also incorporated LED screens.” Fraser worked alongside Framestore and ILM to capture the spaceship work. In one scene, Rocky’s ship pulls up beside Grace’s, who tries to escape, gets away and then stops before Rocky’s ship pulls up again. “That may sound simple, but it’s actually very difficult to pull off,” explains Fraser. “It was a relatively inconsequential chase and felt very much like a cartoon sequence – very Tom and Jerry like. We spent a great deal of time in Unreal designing the sequences.” Then, when Grace ejects the four Beetle probes, there is a shot of them coming up in shadow. “The last one
comes up, takes off and then you see the four shadows. That was a shot I found through manoeuvring in 3D, seeing the animation and looking at the shadows. “Traditionally, I would do my prep, pre-light the sets, shoot the film and then wave goodbye to everybody at the end of the shoot,” says Fraser. “I’d come back to grade the film and then Paul and the directors would be left to design all of the computer graphics for the spaceship sequences. I was a lot more involved in post for this project and I’m looking forward to doing more of that in the future. I hope more filmmakers lean on their cinematographers to be more involved in the visuals in post.” Making Project Hail Mary required solving a range of technical complexities. “There were all these beautiful problems,” concludes Fraser. “Charles Wood coined the term a ‘solution opportunity’, and I thought that was a fantastic way of explaining it.’
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