By Gavin Boyle
PROJECT HAIL MARY co-director Christopher Miller revealed that the movie was made without the use of any green or blue screens so the visuals would feel much more authentic.
“Whats fun about the movie is there is no green screen in the movie whatsoever. Not a single green or blue screen was used,” Miller told Comic Book. “The whole ship was built as a set from the inside. We had a huge section of the exterior of the shop on the outside that we built. [The alien character] Rocky was really with us at all times.”
“That’s what makes it feel real and makes it feel natural…and the way that [cinematographer] Greig [Fraser’s] team lit with a lot of practical lights allowed him to move the camera wherever and find those moments because we could see this thing that Rocky was doing and then move over to [Ryan Gosling’s character] Grace and see his reaction to what was really happening, and you weren’t just guessing and point out where Rocky might be some day. And that’s what makes it feel like it was captured in the moment.”
PROJECT HAIL MARY follows the storyline of the book of the same name by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian. In the movie, Ryan Gosling plays a character who has been sent on a mission to deep space to save our sun, and consequently, the fate of humanity rests in his hands.
While the movie refrained from the use of any green screens, it still includes VFX, largely when featuring massive areas of space.
“What’s really interesting about this movie,” Miller said, “is that it is so massive in its scale and the epic visuals, but the story is so intimate. It’s so big and so small at the same time, and that’s what’s really compelling about the story. That’s why I think it makes the movie extra engaging because it’s not just big grandeur and epic battle scenes. It has this massive scale, and I can’t wait for you guys to see some of the other cinematography in the movie. That’s really gorgeous. But, at the end of the day, it’s very, very intimate, this movie.”
PROJECT HAIL MARY has enjoyed enormous buzz from reporters who were invited to a prescreening event where they were shown 30 minutes of clips from the movie. It has received comparisons to multiple sci-fi masterpieces including GRAVITY, INTERSTELLAR and THE MARTIAN.
PROJECT HAIL MARY will hit theaters on March 20.
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