The only way I know of to do this, apart from actually being in space, is flying in one of those specially designed planes that goes to a high altitude and takes a nose dive for short periods of weightlessness, then climbs and dives again... Is that what they did to accomplish this? Or was it all just clever special effects?
shareAll of the "weightlessness" was achieved through special effects or camera tricks. If you watch closely you will notice most of the time, the actors are just acting like they are floating. You only see them from the waist up most of the time.
I think many of the things the filmmakers did were clever, and even though I don't think the effects are mind blowing, they are effective. And once the audience is sold, they don't keep hitting you with the gimmicks.
The above poster nailed it. It was more camera gimmickry.
Its that man again!!
It was not filmed on a Vomet Comet, notice the female actors hair. It does not float like it would in a micro gravity environment. My understanding was they had the set on gimbals so it could be rotated. The actors were in a harness to make it seem like they were floating.
shareI'm watching this right now on HDNet. While I'm sure some of the "floating" effects are just camera tricks, there are several times when the actors are moving through the ship at odd angles from each other that can't be done in normal gravity. Perhaps it is with harnesses that are just well-hidden, but I'm still somewhat baffled by the weightless effects.
One in particular is when they bring Kate Capshaw back into the ship after she is knocked out. They are all at different positions and then all they float away in different directions to go on to finish the mission. If it is harnesses, and camera angles, then it's truly amazing.
There also don't seem to be any matte lines in these scenes (which are frankly glaringly obvious in other parts of the movie), so I doubt this was blue-screened.
Has anyone ever seen a "making of" doc on this? There isn't anything on the DVD as far as I know.
The HDNet version is horrible because it clearly shows a lot of the tricks that weren't visible in lower def versions.
At the space station, you can see the wires in pretty much every shot.
And when Andy is chasing Max you can actually see the borders of the "floating still image" that was superimposed onto the film to represent Andy in the long shots, and in the tight shots you can see the digital erasure of the entire suspension rig. It's bizarre to watch - it grabs the fourth wall with both hands and just rips it down.