feature · 20131h 31mGB
Gravity
Dr Ryan Stone, an engineer on her first space mission, and Matt Kowalski, an astronaut on his final expedition, have to survive in space after they are hit by debris while spacewalking.
At a glance
- Director
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Cinematography
- Emmanuel Lubezki
- Editor
- Mark Sanger
- Music
- Steven Price
- Costume
- Jany Temime
- Primary camera
- ARRI ALEXA Mini
- Format
- 2.39:1 · ARRIRAW ALEXATheatrical
- Photographed
- Sep 2011 – Mar 2012
Production
Studios
- Esperanto Filmojproduction company
- Heyday Filmsproduction company
- Warner Bros. Picturesdistributor
Department
Camera
- Emmanuel LubezkiDirector of Photographyprimary
- Alf TramontinSteadicam Operatorprimary
- Jamie HarcourtCamera Operatorprimary
- Olly TellettFirst Assistant Cameraprimary
- Peter MarsdenDigital Imaging Technicianprimary
- Tom WadeSecond Assistant Cameraprimary
- Dora KrolikowskaSecond Assistant Camera
- Peter TaylorCamera Operator
Post-Production
Visual Effects
600 total VFX shots
Locations
Shooting locations
Lake Powell
Sun plannerArizona · United States · 36.934, -111.484
Sole practical-exterior location. The ending shore-walk was the final scene shot — golden-hour sun-only lighting + a 4×8 reflector. Four-day exterior block at the very end of the schedule.
- Civil dawn
- 11:40 UTC
- Sunrise
- 12:10 UTC
- Magic-hour AM
- 12:10 UTC → 12:49 UTC
- Magic-hour PM
- 02:12 UTC → 02:50 UTC
- Sunset
- 02:50 UTC
- Civil dusk
- 03:21 UTC
Pinewood Studios
StudioBuckinghamshire · United Kingdom · 51.549, -0.538
Secondary cover stages + Framestore VFX dailies infrastructure. Some technical-rehearsal pre-light work for the Light Box was prototyped at Pinewood before installation at Shepperton.
Lighting
Per-scene setups · 4 across 4 scenes
Per-scene lighting plots: fixture role (key / fill / back / practical), color temperature, diffusion stack, and motivation notes from cited supervisor interviews.
Opening 17-minute spacewalk long-take
The fundamental Gravity invention: a 20-foot × 10-foot cube of 196 LED panels (4,096 individually-addressable LEDs total) inside which Sandra Bullock was suspended on a 12-axis rig. The LED panels played back pre-rendered space photography (Earth surface, sun, stars, debris strikes) so that the on-set capture already carried the final-frame lighting characteristics. No traditional movie lighting — the Light Box IS the lighting plot.
Lubezki conceived the Light Box after attending a Peter Gabriel concert with an extravagant light show. Tim Webber + Framestore engineered it at Shepperton Studios. The rotation of the LED imagery was timecode-locked to Bullock's rig motion + the camera operator's motion-control track — when Stone was tumbling, the Light Box was projecting tumbling Earth, with all three motion vectors (rig + camera + Light Box) phased into a single edited motion plate.
Soyuz capsule fire — Stone's solo escape
Practical fire-bar SFX inside the Light Box capsule mock-up; the Light Box played back the orange rotating-Earth ambient + the practical fire bar threw the hot key on Bullock's face. The fire was a controlled gas-bar fed at 35 psi for repeatable-take consistency.
The capsule interior was a partial-fascia mock-up wedged against the Light Box wall; Bullock's coverage came from a single Light-Box-mounted ARRI ALEXA on a 6-axis remote head. SFX coordinator Neil Corbould (later Best VFX Oscar winner) supervised the fire gag.
Color
Pipeline
Camera color science → IDT → working space → ODT → deliverable. Production-wide default first; scenes that diverge below.
- Camera logLogC
- Camera gamutARRI Wide Gamut
- IDTACES IDT.ARRI.LogC.EI800
- Working spaceACEScct
Stunts
Curated set-pieces · 2
Sequence-level rigging detail — pole-cats, decelerators, picture-car modifications, named coordinators, and the SAG-AFTRA / BSR safety bulletins observed on set. Click through for the full breakdown.
Spacewalk — 12-axis rig suspension performance
25.0 minDetail →Sandra Bullock spent the bulk of principal photography suspended on a 12-axis rig inside the Light Box. The rig's motion-control was timecode-locked to the camera move and the LED panel imagery — when Stone tumbled, all three motion vectors phased together as a single edited motion plate. Bullock performed extreme positional + rotational arcs over 80+ shoot days while wearing the prop NASA EMU suit. Riggers + stunt coordinator Steven Pope supervised every take.
RiggingMotion-ControlWireworkExtended-SuspensionSoyuz capsule fire — practical pyro inside Light Box
2.0 minDetail →Practical fire-bar SFX inside the Light Box capsule mock-up. Bullock performed at close proximity to a controlled gas-bar fed at 35 psi. SFX coordinator Neil Corbould (later Best VFX Oscar winner) supervised the gag with full medical + fire suppression on standby.
Stunts
2 crew
The stunt department on this production: credited crew, actor-double pairings, and the companies whose members brought them onto the show. Click any name to jump to their full filmography + doubling history.
Post-production
Lab & finishing
- Company 3di — Stephen Nakamura colorist on Autodesk Lustre. The DI integrated the Light-Box-driven on-set illumination — Lubezki and Webber pre-visualised every shot's lighting plot in CG and played it back through the LED panels during photography.
- Company 3color grading — Nakamura graded for Rec.709 theatrical, Dolby Vision HDR, Rec.2020 PQ for IMAX, and the Stereo D 3D conversion deliverable.
- Skywalker Soundsound mix — Skip Lievsay + Niv Adiri + Christopher Benstead + Chris Munro — won the Best Sound Mixing Oscar. Glenn Freemantle won Best Sound Editing.
- IMAX DMRimax remaster — IMAX 1.90 + IMAX 3D expansion DMR remaster.
Score
Composer & cues
Won Academy Award for Best Original Score (2014). Notable for using music as the primary sonic content in space scenes where dialogue and effects are intentionally absent.
Score
Scoring stage
- Abbey Road Studio OneAbbey Road Studios· London, GB
Production
Videos
BlueShift / Steve J McLeod Visual Effects BreakDown Demo Reel 2013
VFX BreakdownSteve J McLeod / 2:17
Re-making Sound Design and voice-overing of a Gravity sequence : A Safe Place
SoundAurélien Thome / 2:08
Manhattan Edit Workshop presents: Sight, Sound & Story - Gravity World's Yuval Levy on Tower Heist
OtherManhattan Edit Workshop / 2:50
Production
Scenes & Equipment
Related
Similar productions
Ranked by overlap of director, cinematographer, genre, and decade.
Related
Thematically similar
By embedding cosine-similarity — surfaces films with comparable subject matter and tone, regardless of whether crew credits overlap.
Provenance
Sources
- [1]Lubezki, Cuarón and the Long Take: Shooting GravityprimaryAmerican Cinematographer · 2013-11-01
