Life: How The Sci-Fi Horror Movie Faked Zero-Gravity Effects
The cast of the sci-fi horror film, Life, went through challenges to simulate being astronauts aboard the zero-gravity International Space Station.
For the entirety of the sci-fi horror movie, Life, the cast had to fake zero-gravity effects. The movie, directed by Daniel Espinosa and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, was released in U.S. theaters in March 2017 by Columbia Pictures. Interestingly, pop culture fans have been persistently trying to connect the flick to the Marvel universe's Venom.
Life centers on a six-member crew of the International Space Station (ISS) who uncover the first evidence of life on Mars. In fact, the six members of the team—played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Baker, and Olga Dihovichnaya—make up nearly the entire casting bill of the movie. At the start of the movie, the team receive a soil sample from a space probe and revive a dormant cell from it. Of course, it grows into a multi-celled organism and eventually wreaks havoc on the ISS.
One of the challenges the cast had to face was faking zero-gravity movement. As basically the entirety of the movie takes place in a space ship; in reality, the characters would be floating around. As Space.com reported, “The actors had to fake a weightless appearance using harnesses, wires, and a lot of practice”.
Indeed, a lot of training and practice went into simulating a zero-gravity atmosphere. The cast worked with a movement coach to make sure that they resembled real astronauts floating around the ISS, and not people dangling from wires and harnesses. “We were straining and engaging and trying to look like we were at ease”, Gyllenhaal said.
The Spider-Man: Far From Home actor almost cost the movie $250,000 during filming, according to Cinema Blend. Apparently, Gyllenhaal wasn’t drinking a water bottle correctly, because if he was really in zero gravity, it would be floating. Mistakes like this had to be caught fast. Ferguson, for one, mastered the art of simulating zero gravity; she said that she always made sure her hands were up, because on the real ISS, an astronaut’s hands would always be floating upwards.
Another relatively recent movie in the space horror genre that also simulated zero gravity includes 2011's Apollo 18. As Space.com reported, the movie, like Life, had actors wear harnesses hooked to wires, and for scenes on the moon, trained actors to try to simulate the one-sixth gravity feel and take big strides. Tom Cruise made headlines—as he often does for his stunt work—for performing an entire scene in actual zero gravity for the 2017 reboot of classic horror film, The Mummy. An actual no-gravity set wasn't an option for Life.
Moving away from Life, movies outside of the horror genre have long worked on simulating zero gravity. Take 2013's Gravity, for one. According to NBC, the movie’s weightless scenes were filmed underwater, and there was also a 12-wire suspension system in addition to animated effects. In 1995's Apollo 13, according to The Guardian, NASA allowed the cast and crew to film scenes on a reduced-gravity aircraft known as the Vomit Comet. While space has been explored in many different genres of film, there are certainly more outstanding examples of zero-gravity effects and others that fall drastically short.