{"id":557471,"date":"2026-04-01T03:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/557471\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T03:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:53:12","slug":"project-hail-mary-cinematographer-greig-fraser-on-how-filmed-the-tunnel-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/557471\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Project Hail Mary’ Cinematographer Greig Fraser on How Filmed the Tunnel Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCinematographer Greig Fraser <\/a>counts \u201cThe Batman,\u201d \u201cDune\u201d and \u201cRogue One\u201d among his credits. But his latest film, \u201cProject Hail Mary,<\/a>\u201d is what he calls his \u201cmost challenging film I\u2019ve ever done, by far.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d is based on Andy Weir\u2019s book of the same name and directed by \u00a0Phil Lord<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Chris Miller<\/a>. Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace, a science teacher and former molecular biologist who is recruited by the government to help save the Earth from dying. Ryland then unwittingly finds himself on an interstellar mission that includes meeting an alien, Rocky.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film shatters stereotypical visuals of space, veering away from cold and desaturated colors, and using warmer tones such as orange.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one scene, as Grace walks through the tunnel to first meet Rocky, Fraser explains that the tunnel itself went through an evolution. \u201cWe had to discover what this thing was,\u201d he says, referring to xenonite, which is the material the story says it was made from. \u201cThe sun has to come through it, but that provided a couple of challenges because this tunnel was 70 feet long.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with Variety for Inside the Frame<\/a> via Zoom from London where he\u2019s shooting The Beatles biopic movies with Sam Mendes<\/a>, Fraser discussed one of his biggest challenges: How was he going to light the tunnel? \u201cIn the past, what people have done to move light is they put a light on a frame and moved it over a window or through something, but we had to have the entire tunnel being hit by the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe tunnel had a bit of scariness to it at the beginning. It had to feel a little bit like he was going into a well,\u201d he says. Fraser says he took a lot of inspiration from deep-sea submersible footage where they\u2019re in pitch black, and they\u2019re diving into the darkness, lit purely by the lights from the ship or from a headlamp.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe tunnel in \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJonathan Olley<\/p>\n

\n\tFraser and his team ended up building lighting rigs using old tungsten lights \u2014 a lot of them. \u201cWe physically couldn\u2019t get enough LEDs to do that. They\u2019re all old school tungsten lights, and we pixel-mapped them, so it meant that the sun can rotate around in any sort of configuration that we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGreig Fraser\u2019s lighting rig. Photo credit Tam\u00e1s Papps.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for the multi-colored flare that appears throughout, Fraser reveals, \u201cI found this beautiful filter online, on Amazon. It\u2019s a rainbow filter, and it causes these beautiful rainbow streaks to the highlights, and that became a theme throughout the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce he had figured out how he would light the sun and the tunnel, Fraser also toyed with the idea of \u201cchanging the lenses to squeeze vertically rather than horizontally.\u201d He explains, \u201cWhat we did is we shot with an Alexa 65, which is already a wide screen sensor, but we squeezed it the other way. We squeezed it so that it went taller, for our film, it seemed perfect, because what it meant is that all the flares went vertically rather than horizontally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEverything required a close collaboration with the film\u2019s production designer, Charles Wood. \u201cWe worked closely with Charlie to make sure that the finish on the inside of the tunnel allowed enough light through, but not so much light through that it made it look transparent. It was a really fine balance. We did a lot of testing, because too much black finish means that you don\u2019t see light through it, and not enough black finish means that it looks like plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCinematographer Greig Fraser on set.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJonathan Olley<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for his camera choice, Fraser knew the film was going to have an Imax release. \u201cWe looked very carefully at the options of shooting with an Imax camera and shooting different formats,\u201d he says. His visual references were \u201cfilms from the \u201970s and \u201880s. I kept using \u2018Solaris,\u2019 \u2018Alien,\u2019 \u20182001: A Space Odyssey\u2019 as a visual reference for how the film should look.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was agreed that Lord and Miller wanted an analog patina. \u201cI think it comes from us growing up with films like \u2018E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial\u2019 and \u2018Close Encounters of the Third Kind,\u2019 where there is definitely a lack of digital clarity to what the images are with those films. So we needed to do the same thing here, because it just felt more human to be more analog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds that the Alexa 65 turned out to be the perfect camera because \u201cIf we shoot Imax, we\u2019ve got three-minute rolls. It\u2019s loud, which might be OK, and if Ryan\u2019s in a helmet, we might be able to get rid of the sounds, but it won\u2019t give us the film that we\u2019re after if we use those particular devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce Fraser was set on his camera, there were still challenges to overcome. Rocky could only be front-lit; Rocky couldn\u2019t emanate any light; it all had to come from the sun since his side of the tunnel was dark. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCinematographer Greig Fraser inside the tunnel.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJonathan Olley<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you talk to any DP, you\u2019ll know that is what we have, we wake up in cold sweats,\u201d he jokes. \u201cAdded to that, not only do we light this character with the front light, we light a character with a front light with no face, that looks like a rock, that looks like a spider.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs adorable as audiences have found Rocky, Fraser had no skin tone or facial personality to work with. He said, \u201cThe challenges were compounded. It was front lighting a rock with no face that emoted just through puppetry.\u201d Fraser concludes, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just a challenge. It was a challenge on a challenge, on top of a challenge, under a challenge, through a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tShots of the tunnel from above. Photo credit: Tam\u00e1s Papps. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe lighting rig. Photo credit: Tam\u00e1s Papps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cinematographer Greig Fraser counts \u201cThe Batman,\u201d \u201cDune\u201d and \u201cRogue One\u201d among his credits. But his latest film, \u201cProject…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,247440,167938,155909],"class_list":{"0":"post-557471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-greig-fraser","10":"tag-inside-the-frame","11":"tag-project-hail-mary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}