Is a Tom Cruise film technically still a Tom Cruise film if there are no explosions? What if you get rid of the fight scenes? And is it still a Tom Cruise movie when Tom Cruise not running?
In early May, NASA confirmed that it would work with SpaceX to make a film Mr. Top Gun himself on the international space station. Details are sparse: we know it won’t be part of the Mission: Impossible franchise, but we know that Edge of tomorrow director Doug Liman is tied to directing. Still, the world breathed a collective breath of news, knowing that the new space race would finally bring us what we really wanted – a science fiction blockbuster filmed in real space.
But while this new blockbuster will undoubtedly be the biggest film made in space, it won’t be the first.
It’s an honor that belongs to video game developer and space tourist Richard Garriott.
In 2008 Garriott (who is also the son of NASA’s Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott) paid $ 30 million for a Soyuz ticket to spend two weeks as a private on the International Space Station. Between controlling the power supply systems on the Soyuz and adapting to life on the ISS, he shot and edited the 5-minute short film Apogee of Fear in space.
A storyboard map from Richard Garriott’s short film Apogee of Fear. Garriott planned the entire film before it arrived on the International Space Station.
Courtesy of Richard Garriott
Garriott’s main takeaway? Shooting in space is much more difficult (and slower) than you think.
“When you think of a film, pre-production is really critical,” he says of a zoom call. “You plan every shot. So if you have a large, expensive crew on site, you can take it in as efficiently as possible. In space it gets a lot worse. Not only is every moment of the crew much more expensive.” , but every shot is much harder to get. “
Garriott provided the film with a storyboard and prepared his full recording list on Earth to find out which astronaut co-stars he would need and when. He designed the dialogue and movement and even included translations for the Russian cosmonauts on board the ISS.
Despite this careful planning, the room still has a fair share of curve balls: movement is difficult to plan, your props don’t stay in place, and dealing with noise is a nightmare. (The fans that circulate air on the ISS provide terrible audio.)
And then there are the difficulties Garriott had as a first-time visitor to get around the ISS.
“If you try to leave the floor on the space station by pressing your toes to bring something to another surface … in an accident you will press so hard that your head is really hard on the other side hit, “he says.
“Everything on the space station is generally held to the wall with a small piece of Velcro, so if you move through the space station and bend your legs against the sides that you are as a beginner, loosen screwdrivers, film cans, lens caps, and when You arrive at the other end, look around and there is a cloud of debris. ”
Astronauts Michael Fincke (left) and Gregory Chamitoff (right) in a scene with Richard Garriott (center) from the short film Apogee of Fear.
Courtesy of Richard Garriott
As he got used to life in weightlessness, Garriott quickly learned that space is not the place to move quickly. His advice for a blockbuster in space? Think less of Armageddon action and more of 2001: a space odyssey.
“Everything in space that real Stuff in space, no action film is fast, it’s slow and deliberate, “he says.
“The reality of filming in space may mean that you will either find that filming many of these action scenes on Earth, where it is more controllable, has been easier, or that you will have to adjust what you mean by an action film in 2001, where it’s more psychological than a knife fight. “
Whether more films will be made in space after Tom Cruise’s planned debut, the rise of private space travel and ships like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon could make it easier (and cheaper to get into space. But it could be easier to do what Hollywood has always done: turn on a sound stage and fix it in the mail.
Look at that:
Making films in space is much more difficult than you think
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