As Janice tugged on Franco Clotho's arm while leaving the theater, both their eyes were red and puffy.
Along the way, plenty of people asked them how the movie was.
This time, Franco Clotho stayed silent.
Janice, buzzing with excitement, said, "It was amazing, absolutely amazing. You have to see the 3D version—it won't disappoint."
When a film can win over the heart of a viewer who was once skeptical about it, its box office success is all but guaranteed.
Over the first weekend's three days, the film's earnings were $33.63 million, $46.72 million, and $34.28 million respectively, totaling $114 million.
Though it didn't break any records, the figure was enough to strike fear into competitors, especially those with films slated for release around the same time.
Meanwhile, the roadshow promotions for Gravity kicked off.
Leonardo was a guest star, so originally the roadshows had nothing to do with him. But after the first weekend's box office numbers came in, Martin sent him a massive red envelope—yeah, a really big one.
So he volunteered to join the promotional tour.
Even Martin himself tagged along with the main cast for a few appearances.
"...To capture zero-gravity in space while filming under normal Earth gravity, my team and I tried nearly every traditional method—shooting underwater, using wire rigs, even the 'Vomit Comet' (that plane that simulates brief weightlessness with parabolic dives)... But each one felt like it was missing something."
"I have to admit, I was a bit naive back then, thinking creating something like this would be easier than it turned out. It wasn't until we experimented with conventional techniques that I realized we'd need to invent entirely new tools to achieve the effect I wanted."
"Yeah, after endless trials, my expert team and I designed a special 12-wire system, connecting 12 electromagnetic wires to 12 points on the lead actors' bodies. We even brought in the world's top puppeteers—yes, puppeteers—to operate it, turning the leads into marionettes. In the end, we used those 12 wires to create a magnetic field that suspended Jessica and Leonardo in mid-air..."
Martin spoke candidly, recounting the myriad challenges they faced during production.
Some of it was true, some embellished.
Martin knew people loved these stories—the tales of overcoming insurmountable odds to achieve success were the ones that truly resonated.
Jessica picked up where Martin left off: "It was truly an unprecedented experience. You have to completely abandon your usual habits and methods—it's like reading from a script verbatim. The machinery dictates how every tiny finger and body part must move, but your head, your mind, your heart, and your emotions are blank. So my body had to perform mechanically. They'd ask if I wanted water, and I'd slowly reach out without even thinking. You end up forced into a state where the body comes first, emotions second."
Leonardo chimed in: "To nail this role, I practiced yoga for ages. Oh, and during the zero-gravity training in Houston, I threw up—Jessica handled it better than me. But later, I found a trick: listening to classical music. Yeah, classical music helps relax my body, and combined with yoga's control, it got me to peak condition."
Then Martin shifted to the topic of 3D: "With 3D technology becoming widespread, more and more films are hitting the market in 3D, even if some are better off in 2D. Gravity is a 3D film, but I didn't make it that way just to have things fly at the audience's faces... We wanted viewers to subtly feel like they were part of the journey."
"In fact, all the tech serves the film itself. For the actors and filmmakers, the most important thing is the characters' inner worlds. For instance, Jessica's astronaut character carries a lot of my metaphors."
"There's a consistent visual motif in the film—Earth as this beautiful, habitable haven for humanity, while floating above is a woman severed from any connection to it. We explore the deeper implications of our heroine, adrift in the void, victim to inertia, far from the Earth humans rely on for survival, struggling to stay alive in space."
"Beyond depicting that 'weightless' state, capturing 'space light' was another major challenge during filming. Even though 60% of Gravity used CG for backgrounds, there were still plenty of practical shots. So creating lighting that seamlessly matched the CG space scenes demanded extreme precision."
"In the end, my team and I invented a one-of-a-kind lighting rig—a 6.7-meter-tall, 3.3-meter-wide light box. It's made of 196 panels, each about 70 cm long, fitted with 4,096 LED bulbs that can emit any needed light or color. The magic of this box is that it can simulate sunrises and sunsets, day-to-night transitions, varying environmental lighting—even the Northern Lights in the Arctic sky."
"To film freely inside this light box, we also developed a robot that could shoot from any angle. The camera mounted on it syncs with the computer and platform lights in real-time, letting us move the actors through their 'space' environment on the fly, creating the visual effect of the leads drifting in orbit."
"For example, when shooting Jessica's approach to the space station, she could see it getting closer inside the light box. I'd cue her to look at something on a screen or reach for a handle, even though it wasn't there on set—but at least she could see it on the monitor."
"Of course, the images on the light box walls were still rough. I could see the actors blending with the space backgrounds on the monitors, but during post-production rendering, all the backgrounds get overlaid with CG, making what viewers see far more realistic, like it's actually in space or inside a spacecraft."
---
[GodOfReader: The author try to sneak some chinese elements, but i deleted it lol.]