Gravity production designer Andrew Nicholson was at the ADG and USC this week and we discussed the special synergy between the art department and VFX.

“It was a huge pleasure to work on something that’s going to change technically how this kind of film is going to be done in the future, with visual effects working so closely with an art department and a construction department,” explains Nicholson.  ”We all had to be part of that jigsaw puzzle.”

Indeed, the only way to put this cinematic jigsaw puzzle together was through a unique process of reverse engineering between designers and VFX and complete previs. In other words, Framestore made a low-res animated version of the movie prior to shooting Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in simulated zero-g with the use of robotic cameras by Bot & Dolly and special wire rigs. Otherwise, Alfonso Cuaron’s visceral thrill-ride and meditation on adversity and rebirth couldn’t have been pulled off with such verisimilitude.

So while cinematographer Emmanuel (“Chivo”) Lubezki and VFX supervisor Tim Webber came up with synchronized lighting, LED backgrounds, and precise actor poses, the art department provided the high-res 3D models of all the sets and props that were eventually built and animated by Framestore.

“There was the technical research for the geography and the architecture of the interior of the structures and the exterior of the ISS,” Nicholson adds, “But along with that it was surfaces, materials, textures — getting hold of physical samples of things to give the guys who were modeling it.”