Gravity's Out-of-this-World Mocap

Gravity was directed, co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Alfonso Cuarón. It stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts who dramatically survive the mid-orbit destruction of a space shuttle and attempt to return to Earth. It was released in early October in the US, achieving a record-breaking opening weekend.

Framestore invested in the T40 cameras and integrated them with Blade - Vicon's innovative data-capture and data processing system - to help create complex and extremely realistic visual effects. "The pinpoint accuracy of today's motion-capture cameras have given directors the confidence that they can now deliver on their creative vision," said Imogen Moorhouse, CEO of Vicon.

As Mark Hughes said in a Gravity review for Forbes, "You've never seen anything like the visual experience of this film. It's akin to the visual effects leaps represented by  2001: A Space Odyssey,  Star Wars, and  Avatar. So realistic and breathtaking, in fact, that you'll forget you're watching special effects, and feel as if the movie were actually shot in space."

"This was Framestore's most ambitious project to date and involved working with world class actors. So the motion capture had to be in the same league, with to-the-point accuracy and the best post-processing flexibility. Equally, it was important that the crew were familiar with the technology and it would work exactly as expected. The Vicon cameras enabled outstanding clarity and realism in an unfamiliar environment, making the unknown appear familiar and believable," said Ben Guthrie, motion-capture supervisor at Framestore.

Moorhouse concluded: "It's great to see the extraordinary results that have been achieved by Framestore using Vicon technology. They should be truly proud of their work on Gravity and we are delighted that they will be using our system on another hotly anticipated sci-fi film, Jupiter Ascending."