CMU School of Drama


Thursday, February 05, 2015

How They Made the Emergency Docking Scene in 'Interstellar'

Thompson on Hollywood: There is no greater showcase of "Interstellar's" VFX and sonic excellence than in the "emergency docking" scene. The Oscar-nominated VFX involves both full CG and practical, as well as a combination of the two, while the Oscar-contending sound editing and mixing immerse us in the action in a most visceral way.

5 comments:

Katie Pyne said...

After seeing Interstellar twice, I can honestly say that this was the best part of the movie. The skill this must have took is incredible and I found myself gasping at the beauty of it even after I knew it was coming. The other sonically beautiful of this movie is when Matt Damon's character opens an airlock too soon, causing his ship to explode after an extremely tense scene, causing the situation that Matthew Mcconaughey's character is in in this scene. Reading the article, I couldn't believe how many different elements went into making this one scene. In my opinion, the most successful part about the mix of this scene was the combination of music, dialogue (both human and robotic), and creaky spaces-ship noises. With all of these sounds taking control of your ears, you can't help but hold your breath. Will they crash and explode, like Matt Damon? Will they make it? While there's so much going on aurally, it never feels muddy or "too much". I hope this wins the Oscar.

Kimberly McSweeney said...

THIS SCENE WAS SO INTENSE. When I saw Interstellar about two weeks ago, I was on the edge of my seat. The soundtrack is beautiful and tugs at the most visceral emotions a person can have, giving the special effects room to be as crazy as possible. I had no idea how many tiers of effects could be used in a scene like this, and it just seems so outrageously real that I would often forget they couldn’t actually have filmed it at full-scale. Running all of the projections at the right time and syncing up within milliseconds of motion must have been a crazy thing to coordinate within the production. Obviously all of these filming sites were in different locations, which means each time they filmed the scene, everything would have to be reset and calibrated all over again. The care and time put into just this one ken really shows the overall quality of filmmaking and integrity.

Unknown said...

I think this scene was done perfectly. I absolutely loved the movie and I felt like I was right there with them the entire time. The visuals were incredible and the fact that they did a lot of that in-camera is amazing. I am sure that scene was very difficult to shoot since it needed to look like it was spinning very fast. The sound effects and music were absolutely perfect and it sounded very realistic and the music was very dramatic to create a great deal of suspense. There were so many elements into creating this scene and it was also not all done in full scale because the size of a spaceship is huge and it would be very difficult to spin that while shooting it at the same time. I was very in the moment during this scene and was genuinely scared that they would miss it and explode just like Matt Damon’s character. It was such a relief when everything worked out and they were able to dock onto the Endurance.

Alex Fasciolo said...

This was one of the most thrilling scenes in the movie, an over all thrilling movie, and when you look at the care that the creators of this movie put in to their craft, it is not surprising why. The direction on this sequence is incredible, the cohesion of all of these different components being rock solid. The scene is very consistent in that regard, with no aspect of the movie drawing too much attention but all aspects incredible to experience. The thought that was put in to the cinematography, the composition, and the final audio mix definitely payed off in this case. I think a big part of this success comes from the fact that those in charge of creating this scene used the methods they thought would be most successful Examples that come to mind are the combination of CGI and more traditional VFX, the careful balance of sound effects to music, and the minimal use of dialogue in the scene all make this very believable.

Unknown said...

I have still yet to see Interstellar, as great a movie as I’ve heard it to be, but time is an issue, and it’s also no longer in theatres. However, as these pages keep popping up here and there on the blog, it keeps me wanting to come back for more, for now we get a glimpse as to the process of how this particular scene was created. To build a scaled down model of what the piece would look like, instead of creating it through CGI in my opinion, enhances the experience. The amount of visual effects you see in films nowadays is sometimes underused or overused, depending on the film that was being worked on, but the amount of time and effort that was put into this production, gives this film a stronger value to its entirety. By putting it together the way they did, it definitely creates interest for various degrees of creativity on how to get things done.