Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón Gravity made a killing at the box office due only in part to the ad campaign and the big names attached to it - the reputation it gained in the field of visual effects was enough to spur droves of filmgoers to buy tickets. Cuarón had not directed a film since the excellent Children of Men, so expectations were high for the young director. And he delivered. Gravity is not the kind of filmmaking that is intuitive, and by that I mean it doesn't just happen - little room for ad libbing, little room to stray from a carefully planned procedure. It sounds like a cold way to make a movie, but I only bring it up to show that Cuarón and Co. really had to go after it with an incredible amount of hard work. This included Sandra Bullock filming the majority of her scenes in a large metal rig that required limited motion for up to ten straight hours. The most impressive effect in Gravity - and the one that leads to the film being possibly the most accurate depiction of space in cinematic history - is the unfiltered light of the sun bouncing off of the Earth. One-point-eight million individually controlled lights on a massive series of panels simulated the lighting of the astronauts. That's one-point-eight million, sometimes known as "almost two million" or "a lot of lights." Thankfully, they did the trick, and Gravity might even win a Best Picture Oscar. Influenced: We'll see. Christopher Nolan's upcoming Interstellar will likely also have an important way of looking to the stars, and between the two films the bar is set high for future space movies. Like this article? Let us know in the comments section below.
