Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.
From Phil Lord and Chris Miller comes an epic sci-fi adventure with jaw dropping visuals that were created with the help of renowned Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser, who’s credits include Dune and Dune: Part Two, The Batman and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. As the film prepares to take off into Australian cinemas on March 19, Nick L’Barrow spoke with Greig Fraser about what attracted him to the project, and the things he learnt on his early projects that he was able to bring to this epic scale productions.
Nick: I loved reading the book, and I loved the film as well. And I’m sure a really great story is something that attracts you to projects. But what were the elements that really drew you into telling this story?
Greig Fraser: Yeah, I hadn’t read the book. But I can tell you who had read the book – my son had. And obviously, I’m not going to take on a project because my 11-year-old son tells me to take it. I mean, he definitely has opinions. But to be frank, I didn’t even tell him that I was talking to the team about doing this, just in case it didn’t happen.
But, what appealed to me was that I read the script and thought it was a great, great story. I spoke to the directors [Phil Lord and Chris Miller] at length. I’ve known them for going on 10 years, and I’ve loved their work. Every time they do something, whether it’s producing or directing, it’s interesting. It’s got an edge to it. They don’t seem to follow the traditional film rules. They come from animation, and because their worldview is not necessarily to “stick a camera in there”, they think of some really out of the box ideas that may not even be feasible.
So more often than not, and this is more of an aside, they would come onto set kind of having a plan, but they might go, “Let’s try X-Y-Z instead of A-B-C”. And it felt so left field, like things I never would have thought of. Then you and the crew can work together to figure out how you’re going to do it. And I love that, because what they did for me was ignite a fire in me about how to do things differently. They love to literally throw their box of toys out and put it all back together again.
Nick: I’m a big collector of physical media. I own many of the films you’ve worked on. But two that I want to highlight in particular are Killing Them Softly and the short film Crossbow – which is a special feature on the Animal Kingdom blu-ray. I’m curious to know if there were things you learnt on those smaller projects that you were able to use and transfer over to something that is the size and scale of Project Hail Mary?
Greig Fraser: It’s a great question, and I can tell you – everything thing I do on these projects is what I formed on those projects. Everything. It’s really funny because going from Crossbow, which you mentioned, there was eight of us on that, doing a test shoot for what would become Animal Kingdom. What’s great about doing films like that, and Killing Them Softly – which was not a high budget movie – is that every choice that I make on a film, I ask myself the question of, “Is this the simplest way to do something? Is this the best and simplest way to solve the problem?”
Because when you’re making a small movie, you don’t go, “I want this high shot. Bring in the biggest crane or ladder possible.” The philosophy becomes how can I use the resources I have to get better results. And throughout my career, I have seen such an allergic reaction to big, expensive machines. It’s not because I pay for them or it’s my money, but it’s just seeing that it’s not the best, most cost effective way to achieve that goal. And that comes exactly from those films you mentioned.
It wasn’t much different on [Project] Hail Mary, to be frank with you. Quite a number of the tools we used were kind of low budget. We didn’t use many techno cranes. We used a lot of simple sliders. In fact, we used the slider from an Australian company called Hudson, which is a slider from Australian cinematographer Tim Hudson who has a thing called the Hudson slider. It’s a small, little slider. It goes back to that Australian ingenuity – creating a bit of kit that’s smart, simple and effective.
Nick: I find cinematography so fascinating because it’s the unique blend of science and technicality with artistic creativity. Do you remember the first time you discovered that blend of science and art?
Greig Fraser: You know, it’s a good question because I’m not necessarily a science or a maths guy on the surface. But I like getting into the technical weeds of things. I love it when I can understand certain technical solutions, but I never let it guide my aesthetic choices, right?
I’m also attracted to directors to help me do that, because if I’m getting too technical with something, or there’s too logical a solution to something, I love it when a director kind of comes in and goes, “No, I don’t think that’s the best idea”.
So, the balance for me about cinematography is what’s great about this movie as well. You need a level of technical understanding of what you’re doing, but ultimately at its core, you are appealing to people’s most innate kind of lizard brain sense. It’s happy, sad, love, hate. And real visuals have to appeal at the most common level to people. You need to be in tune with how that makes you feel when you’re lighting and shooting. Then you have to know how to achieve that technically. So, there is definitely some similarities between the process of cinematography and this film.
Thank you so much to Greig for his time, and to Sony Pictures for organising the interview. You can watch the full interview now on YouTube. Project Hail Mary is in cinemas March 19.
