10 Ridiculous Ways You Won't Believe Films Accomplished Shots

4. Ron Howard Flew His Cast Into Real Zero G For Apollo 13 (1995)

If you want to know how difficult it is to recreate a zero gravity environment for film, just give Alfonso Cuaron a call. Once he's done screaming in terror over flashbacks of what must've been one of the most tortuous shoots ever embarked upon, he'll tell you that Gravity took years of pre- and post-production, the use and even invention of cutting edge technologies, and hours of laborious shooting to incredibly specific instructions. Why do you think there aren't more movies set in space?

For Apollo 13, Ron Howard took one look at the logistical worries of doin' a reconstruction of space on Earth and declared that ain't nobody got time for that. And so, rather than shooting Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon into orbit, thus endangering the lives of Hollywood's most wholesome trio, Howard instead sent his boys on a trip in a Boeing KC-135, a reduced gravity aircraft - also known as the 'Vomit Comet' - that recreates the sensation of zero gravity.

By flying high then plummeting suddenly back to Earth, the Vomit Comet offers a 25-second window in which its passengers really are drifting in zero gravity. Howard simply set up his camera inside the aircraft and set Hanks and co. to 'float'.