Axiom space (who currently is building an independent space station temporarily attached to the ISS) has been contracted to build a orbiting film studio, the S.E.E. The S.E.E.'s first use will be for Tom Cruise’s recently announced space film. It is presumed that it will remain in orbit after shooting Cruise’s film for other studios that want to have space settings for their film’s as well.
In Hollywood there has always been a dynamic tension between the creative visionaries and the money folks, affectionately termed “bean counters”. I can’t personally see the cost benefit. Also worth mentioning, over the last few decades there have been amazing advances in CGI. So, do we NEED to go to space to portray it in a movie/TV show?
It will be interesting to see if this ends up being a going concern or a one-off ego trip.
No offense to accountants and other money folks who do serve an important function, but I’m pretty sure “bean counters” is not a term of affection.
Well, they can be pretty annoying.
What’s going to be in this studio? Actors, sets, props? All of those (especially actors) are really expensive to put into orbit.
Does this mean we should expect a new variation on the old moon hoax claims?
I love the idea of filming a movie in space. CGI might be able to recreate the scenes, but there’s a difference if the audience knows the actors are really in space.
Tom Cruise’s signature is to do stuff for real that other movies would shoot on a green screen or CGI. And it shows in the movies he does. Knowing that Cruise is actually doing the crazy things you see him doing on screen is a big part of the attraction of his movies.
Plus, anything that brings more private money into the space industry is a good thing.
I’m not sure why they need a studio. I’m guessing they need sets that aren’t part of ISS, so they’ll have some space where they can configure and reconfigure a set. For example, if you wanted to show a piece of ISS equipment severely damaged, you’d no doubt want a fake version. Or if you need to film a zero-g fight or throw something in a way that wouldn’t be allowed on the actual ISS, you’d need a dedicated set.
Yeah, the moon landings were faked in low Earth orbit.
How long before some high profile celeb dies in transit and puts a damper on this kind of thing?
My first thought too.
Do you think there can actually be a cost benefit to filming an actor doing things in real zero G and then CGI the scene around that?
I find the current high quality zero G CGI effects to be sufficient.
They already do CGI in all the stuff around them.
Seems an overall waste of effort/money/resources to do something that most folks won’t notice.
In the unlikely event this does become a functional shooting location, I wonder how long it will be until (a) some enterprising porn studio makes a substantial offer to shoot the first zero-G sex movie there, and (b) the station’s owners are sufficiently hard up for cash that they accept.
Actually, you don’t have to go into space to shoot “zero g” films, including sex films.
Although you only have very limited time, the parabolic trajectories of airplanes like the “vomit comet” give you what is effectively zero-gee at a fraction of the effort and expense (although it still costs quite a bit – I understand the plane needs a big overhaul after the abuse it takes). Some zero0gee scenes have already been filmed in this way.
I also heard from someone involved in one such production that there was some sexy footage that couldn’t be released, although how much and how serious wasn’t elaborated on.
Actually, it’s already been done by people who definitely wanted to release the film:
OK, fine. “The first zero-G sex movie with shots longer than 20 seconds,” then.
(quietly goes off to google)
I’d expect the “studio” will consist of as large a space as they can arrange, a camera, some lights, and a green screen. It would make no sense to bring up anything like a “set,” when, as others have pointed out, you can do that with CGI. They might bring some small props, but ISTM that nothing even as large as a desk would make sense, in terms of cost to orbit, unless you could make it out of very light materials that could look convincingly substantial.
Being able to do shots of three or four people in zero-G for more than 20 seconds would be useful and less obviously fake than CGI zero-G. Enough to make it worth the expense after the novelty of the first one or two movies wears off? Who knows?
After a little bit of … judicious research, I discovered that pop-sci author Mary Beard asserts the claimed zero-G (technically, free-fall) shot in The Uranus Experiment was faked. Her evidence, apparently, is that it looks wrong. Not sure how much, er, weight that carries.
With a wee bit of morphing. and training your actors to hold very still during the climb-out portions of the flight, longer zero-g scenes can be filmed. Check out this 3-minute music video.
There was a thread here about the video; plenty of evidence was presented that the video was not faked with green-screen.
As with the Moon landing, “looking wrong” is actually evidence that it’s real. 1 g is what we’re used to. Of course a different gravity is going to look wrong.
Back to the station, I suspect that what’s happening here is just that Tom Cruise wants the adventure of going to space, and he’s rich enough to make it happen. Sure, he’s going to film a movie while he’s up there, and he hopes that the hype of “Filmed in space!!!” will be enough to make the movie a success, and maybe some other studios will even pay to use the facility for other movies… but if he goes up, makes his movie, it’s a total flop, and the facility is never used again, I think he’d probably still chalk it up as an overall success.
CalMeacham … looking over that Wikipedia article, I found the picture below. Never realized jut how much of a boss Stephen Hawking was.
I remember seeing some documentary that covered sex in zero-G. A couple tried top have sex on the Vomit Comet. It turned out to be really difficult. So they wound up making a two person body suit. The suit would hold them together in zero-G so they could do there thing.
And the couple involved were actually married engineers. Rather than porn actors.