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  • "Hi, I'm James Gray.

  • I'm the co-writer and director of 'Ad Astra.'

  • We had thought for a while about what the moon might

  • be like in the next 50 to 100 years

  • and what it would take to settle the moon

  • and how we probably wouldn't be able to settle

  • the moon in certain parts.

  • So we tried to conceive of a sequence, which illustrated

  • the chaos of what it might mean to adhere to treaties

  • about certain parts you couldn't go to the moon,

  • and if that would mean lunar pirates.

  • Probably, it would.

  • And so we created an action scene around that concept.

  • The goal for the scene was really twofold, I'll say.

  • One was to have it play as a very subjective experience--

  • the strangeness of being on the moon

  • to sell the kind of one-sixth gravitational pull,

  • but also to illustrate what it means when there's

  • a total lack of order.

  • And that was really the ambition."

  • "Roy?"

  • "Yes, Colonel."

  • "Look at this, the big blue marble.

  • It never ceases to amaze me."

  • "But it was really our attempt to extrapolate, to think about

  • essentially what it would mean to settle territory

  • and who gets to own what.

  • And that has never resolved itself

  • peacefully in the entire history of the human race.

  • So why it would be different on the moon?

  • We have no idea."

  • "Lieutenant, you clocking this?"

  • "In an ordinary action sequence,

  • the issues are how to shoot a stunt safely

  • and superbly with a lot of impact.

  • But this represented some very weird, difficult challenges,

  • one of which was how to simulate

  • one/sixth gravitational pull.

  • Additionally, how to make sure that it looked like the moon.

  • So my first idea, which of course is always wrong,

  • was we're going to shoot in the desert.

  • And we will then figure out a way to color time

  • the sky that's blue, a jet black.

  • And then we'll take the color out of the sand,

  • and we've got it.

  • Well, what we wound up doing was shooting

  • the sequence in the desert.

  • And it presented huge and almost impossible

  • logistical challenges.

  • The first was, of course, well,

  • the desert does have life.

  • So all of the surfaces turned out to be useless.

  • The second was that the sky, sometimes had clouds

  • and sometimes had gradations.

  • So even though we shot it in part

  • with an infrared camera, which would turn the blue to black,

  • it still didn't turn it all the way black.

  • So the sequence had to be almost like visual effects,

  • heavily augmenting the practical stunts that we did.

  • And then, of course, there was the attempt

  • to simulate one-sixth gravity.

  • And that was a lengthy trial where

  • we experimented the different frame rates for the film.

  • And ultimately, we decided between 32 and 36 frames

  • per second as opposed to the usual 24 frames

  • per second simulated for some reason

  • what our experiences of what one-sixth gravity would look

  • like.

  • And may I say that the strange fact of the scene

  • is that when we had to replace all of the surface

  • and get rid of the desert, get rid of the vegetation,

  • we found ourselves using the very high-quality Hasselblad

  • photographs that were taken on the moon in the Apollo

  • missions. With a computer.

  • And you cut out around the wheels,

  • and you cut around the shape of the Rover itself.

  • And you replace the ground.

  • And the replacement background was the photographs

  • of the moon that were taken over a 20 to 30 year period.

  • And so when they're driving, what's

  • zooming past the wheels is a series of lunar photographs.

  • And so the actual surface you're seeing

  • is the lunar surface."

  • [HEAVY BREATHING]

"Hi, I'm James Gray.

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