The Warner Brothers/Legendary Panel continues with Gravity, a film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. We learned a little about this film on Thursday, when Alfonso Cuaron was on the “Visionaries” directors panel. We learn a lot more today though. Chris Hardwick continues to moderate this panel. Let’s get right into it!
Chris Hardwick gets right into the panel, bringing out Alfonso Cuaron, director of Gravity. Chris Hardwick asks Cuaron about the movie, and Alfonso talks about it, and says, “there is no other cast” other than Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. He describes it as “tense” and “immersive”. He says the action is “ongoing”.
Funny enough, Alfonso talks about the making of the teaser trailer, and that the studio basically made him add in sound for explosions and such, which as most sci-fi nerds know, sound doesn’t travel in space. Alfonso Cuaron begins introducing the film clip we are about to see, and says that the film will be true to the science in terms of the lack of sound that would not be there, from things such as explosions.
The clip is then rolled, which is a long continuous scene, that has George Clooney and Sandra Bullock working on the space station we have seen in the teaser trailer. Everything seems fine, but Clooney is informed from the ground that there will be some space debris coming through. The debris begins to hit, and the scene has both Clooney and Bullock trying to get to safety. All in all, this film looks to be intense.
After the clip, producer David Heyman is brought out, and then Sandra Bullock! (Seems like there are a lot more “big name” celebrities this year at Comic-Con).
This is Sandra Bullock’s first time to Comic-Con. Hardwick asks Sandra Bullock how it was having such few actors on the film. She discusses that the scariest part of the film was working with the new technology, that had never been used before. She is referring to the machines that they were strapped into that Alfonso Cuaron talked about in the Visionaries Panel.
Hardwick asks about working in the space suits for a long period of time. Cuaron talks about Bullock being locked in a cubed room that was 9 foot by 9 foot, and her being stuck in there for hours and hours.
Hardwick asks David Heyman about pitching the film. He gets into discussing the need to figure out how to stop gravity from appearing in a space film. He brings up Sandra Bullock dealing with a robot that would speed towards her nose, and have to stop “on a dime”. Sandra jumps in saying that she really had no way of getting out of the way of these robots, because she was strapped into her get-up.
Hardwick then asks Sandra Bullock about the fears of being in this type of film. She talks about the “silver lining” of the film, where Cuaron tells her that to mimic the weightlessness of space, they would have to use the “vomit comet”–a plane that dives in order to mimic lack of gravity. She says she is “deathly afraid of flying”. But when Cuaron revealed she wasn’t going to be in the vomit comet, she didn’t really care about what she would be doing, as anything would be better than that.
Hardwick then moves on to audience questions. The audience member asks Sandra Bullock what her workout regiment was for the film. She talks about her 6 month workout routine before film, and then working out during the film. She said it was primarily core workouts, “almost every single day”.
The next question asks if there was pressure from the studio to take the easier way or safer way in filming. Alfonso says there was always an easier way, but, “that is no fun” according to him. Alfonso says that the studio was “really supportive”, but did try to make some suggestions, that Alfonso didn’t really want to go with. David Heyman praises Alfonso for his persistence in the film, when trying to problem-solve the issues that would come up, as their film required a lot of thinking outside of the box.
Alfonso then discusses films that inspired him, such as Duel by Spielberg, and Vanishing Point.
The final audience question asks the difficulty in shooting the long sequenced scenes. Alfonso says that it is, “not difficult for me, it is difficult for everyone around me”, and he talks about the great crew and actors he has, as they are what make it work. He says that “collaboration” is what is important.
This final question wraps up the Gravity panel, which is due in theaters October 4, 2013. Here is a trailer from YouTube if you haven’t seen it yet:
The next film in the very long Warner Brothers panel is The Lego Movie.
