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Made in Britain: Framestore's Oscar-winning Gravity VFX team


Amid Gravity's incredible awards season run - which culminated this Sunday with 7 Oscar wins at the Academy Awards - director Alfonso Cuarón weighed into the debate surrounding the film's status as a British film.

"You cannot tell from my accent, but I consider myself part of the British film industry," he said as he collected his BAFTA for Best Director earlier this year. "I have lived in London for 13 years and done almost half of my movies here. I make a very good case for curbing immigration."

Just an hour previously, Gravity triumphed in the Best British Film category igniting a mini-social media storm questioning its national identity.

Cuarón's film may not be a kitchen sink drama about working class grind, but look past the Hollywood stars and Warner Bros backing and there's no question that this is a film that - like the Harry Potter series before it (the two share a British producer in David Heyman) - deserves its 'Made in Britain' tag, even if its 'British' status is still up for debate.

Framestore, Europe's largest visual effects company

© Getty Images / John Phillips/UK Press

"I want to share this with all the artists that live downstairs," Cuarón said in the BAFTA speech, referring to London-based visual effects company Framestore, the driving force behind the film's incredible spectacle.

Cuarón sought out VFX supervisor Tim Webber to help make his rollercoaster space epic a reality, and Digital Spy was fortunate enough to spend time with some of Framestore's "artists downstairs" to lift the lid on one of 2013's biggest blockbusters.

Stuart Penn, a CG sequence supervisor who's currently helping shape Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, spent six months on the film's Shepperton Studios set, but explained that Framestore's work began "before we even had a finished script".

The film was entirely pre-visualized and pre-programmed with robotic camera movements so that once stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney stepped into the 'lightbox' for the first time - the custom-built cube filled with LED bulbs that the VFX team could map their effects onto - they were hitting specific marks to complete the digital puzzle.

Paul Beilby, CG lighting supervisor, said of the process: "We did something that was almost like an animated feature of Gravity before they even started shooting.

"So everything had to follow the plan, because obviously it was so necessary in terms of the lighting we had done, we had actually planned the lighting before they started shooting. We had this big animated feature that was a plan [based] on what we thought was going to happen.

"When we went on set, we know we are going to do this, so we had more time back at the studio to plan for what was coming. But they did stick to this plan. So it was a very highly-planned show, and I think that is one of the reasons why it's been a success."

Sylvain Degrotte, CG simulation supervisor, said that Gravity stood out from the previous films he's worked on because Framestore had direct access to Cuarón and his filmmaking team, including director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki.

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"There was a lot of opinion in the background with the VFX supervisor, lots of views," he said of Cuarón. "And then once you are ready, you are able to get your feedback directly from him. That was a big, big change."

Penn admitted that the actors, Bullock in particular, had to go through an "adjustment phase" while working on the film.

"She had done a lot of physical training before coming to set, she was very fit," he explained. "We could just hang her upside down or spin her around - the first time we put her into the lightbox with a rig that spun around.

"I think we gave her quite a violent move to start and it was spinning her backwards and forwards, and she came out laughing at the end of it and said, 'Can we do that again?'."

Mark Bakowski, compositing supervisor, added that Bullock eventually became so good in the lightbox she was better than her stuntwoman.

Behind the scenes on the set of Gravity

© Warner Bros. Pictures

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Despite the surge in popularity of CGI-driven blockbusters, the team at Framestore don't believe Gravity lessens the importance of having actors or physical sets.

"We still have people on wires; if you can get things shot in camera then we are happy to do that," Penn said. "It's still easier to get an actor to act than getting twenty people to team together to make a virtual human," Beilby added.

Gravity was a "bring everybody moment" for Framestore, with most of the team working all-out to get the film completed for its Venice Film Festival world premiere. So how did the VFX team feel when they sat down and saw the movie finished for the first time?

"I came out shaking," Penn said. "I'm not sure if that was just the film or the three years working on it all coming back!"

Beilby confessed that he was still gripped with anxiety at the film's unveiling. Gravity's extended opening shot - presented in Cuarón's signature single-take style - was causing issues with the team late on in the process.

"When I watched the first shot, I still remember the fear," he said. "The first shot is 15 minutes, and we did it pretty much all again at the end of the movie because they decided that they wanted to flip it the other way up. Because it all flows together, we had to redo the beginning, but it does look much better and it was the right decision."

Sandra Bullock in Gravity

© Warner Bros.

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Degrotte confessed that being so integral to a movie's production means he finds it more difficult to experience as an audience member would.

"I think for a movie like this that's a rollercoaster of tension, when you work [on] it for so long and you know the movie because you've worked on all sequences, unfortunately you don't enjoy the story as much," he observed.

As for Gravity's status as a 'British Film', the Framestore team believe the UK is right to take credit for film and its success.

"The entire film was shot here and most of the crew were British, the producers were British," Penn said.

"They see the two American stars and they don't see that behind that there was a British crew creating all these images and working on it for two and a half years," added Beilby.

Framestore may be home to the "artists downstairs", but Gravity has given these talented British-based VFX wizards the recognition they rightly deserve.

Gravity is available on DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D and download now.

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