Greig Fraser breaks down the cinematography behind Project Hail Mary
Posted on Apr 15, 2026 by Admin
From animatronic aliens to circadian lighting systems, DOP Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS breaks down the creative and technical innovations behind the grounded sci-fi world of Project Hail Mary
Words Oliver Webb \ Images Amazon MGM Studios
Based on Andy Weir’s 2021 novel of the same name, Project Hail Mary follows middle-school science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), who wakes up alone light years from Earth with no recollection of how he got there. As his memory slowly returns, he remembers his mission to stop a mysterious substance from drying out the Sun. Along with an unexpected friend, he must fight to save Earth.
After watching The Lego Movie, DOP Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS became a fan of directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. “I was so impressed by that film because my brain just doesn’t work that way,” he begins. “I was hellbent on meeting them to deep dive into their psyche and learn something from how they make films.”
When Project Hail Mary came along, it proved perfect timing for all involved. But working on a film of this scale involved significant preparation. “There’s all of the science-related complications and so we had certain limitations we had to follow, such as obeying the laws of gravity,” says Fraser. “The way our ship travels is non-conventional. It doesn’t move like the Millennium Falcon or a Star Destroyer; it travels in a vertical manner and when it slows down it goes horizontal. It’s been designed with reality and real physics in mind, not sci-fi.”
Fraser says the film’s core premise is simple. “When you strip it back, it’s about a guy in space, but Phil and Chris didn’t lead with that. Their idea was that it’s a buddy film. It was great because the science and space came second.”
Although it’s a buddy film at heart, the claustrophobia and vastness of space is integral to the story. “The idea of going to space freaks me out,” laughs Fraser. “We wanted to make something that doesn’t look too of the future, or of the past, so it was about finding that happy medium. It was a very fine balance.”
Two of us
On his journey, Grace meets a five-limbed, spider-shaped sentient rock he names Rocky, and the two form a close bond. Rocky is from the planet Erid and is also stranded alone on his ship. When he first meets Grace, he communicates via musical tones, echoing the same tones from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Rocky was built and designed by artist Neal Scanlan and performed by actor and puppeteer James Ortiz. “Rocky is an amalgamation of about five or six different techniques used to bring a puppet to life,” says Fraser. “He consists of animatronics powered by servos and motors, as well as some more old-school rod puppeteering.”
For close-ups, a model was fitted with servo motors to give his fingers more natural movement. That mix of practical techniques gave a strong foundation for any CG additions. “It also helped us, as filmmakers, understand how to light him effectively,” says Fraser.
One of the biggest challenges was how to make Rocky loveable. “Rocky is emotionless in the sense that he doesn’t have a face like we know,” Fraser says. “Creating warmth in a character that isn’t human or of this world isn’t easy. In the past, filmmakers have solved this in numerous ways. In ET, for example, while the character is a bit slimy and sticky, he’s goofy looking and the audience grow to love him. Then you have characters such as Grogu from The Mandalorian who is also loved by audiences.”
When it came to creating the look for Rocky, Fraser explains how they took a different approach. “There was never any talk of making him cuter or giving him something resembling eyes or a facial expression,” he says. “We didn’t want to cheat by creating a face. So I had to light him in a way that didn’t feel menacing, except for when we first meet him. The audience need to grow to love Rocky. I didn’t want to flat light him and then remove all texture. It was a challenge from a lighting perspective.”
Lighting the void
Fraser explains he’s a stickler for getting the look right while he’s shooting to make it easier in post. “I don’t do many tweaks with my DIT on-set, but I always try to get the LUT looking super correct. We found the look of the film throughout the shoot. David at FotoKem LA did the final grade.”
Fraser relied on practical lighting for interiors. Exteriors, however, proved more tricky to light, especially when Grace enters the centrifuge. “One challenge we faced was simulating moving sunlight inside a spinning spacecraft,” says Fraser. “Traditionally, it’s quite simple. You would use a crane light that is moving up and down past a window, but our set had multiple windows at different angles, so a single moving light wouldn’t work. There is no way to get a light on a crane to go over all three windows and be in sync.”
To solve this, a lighting rig was constructed using Creamsource Vortex fixtures that essentially formed three concentric semicircles. “We wanted the effect to feel natural and be something the audience will not consciously notice.”
Fraser focused on creating a realistic ‘circadian rhythm’ lighting system inside the ship as well. “Unlike many space films that use cold, mechanical white lighting (such as on the ISS), we wanted lighting that supported the crew’s mental and physical wellbeing,” he says. “If you keep people in white light 24/7 they go insane.’
The film starts with blinds opening to herald in the morning, and the lighting changes throughout the day. “We begin with cooler blue tones for the morning, move towards warmer light for the evening and then dimmer tungsten tones at night, with subtle UV lighting during sleep hours,” Fraser describes. “We had to come up with that language, which was quite hard in a spaceship with no day or night. This created a natural sense of time passing. The intention was for the audience to feel these changes subconsciously rather than actively notice them.”
Grounded in reality
The majority of the film was shot at the new stages at Shepperton Studio, with additional location shoots at Southsea, Durdle Door and second-unit shoots on an aircraft carrier in Los Angeles. Fraser selected an ARRI ALEXA 65 to shoot the film. “For the space sequences, we collaborated with ARRI to build custom 2.2 anamorphic lenses, which were vertically de-squeezed,” he adds. “After de-squeezing, we cropped the image for IMAX. For all Earth-based sequences, we used Atlas Mercury lenses.”
Fraser wanted to keep the camera handheld where possible to keep it lively, so it feels more human. “We worked hard at grounding the camera and putting it in places it really could be,” he says. “For example, we wouldn’t place it outside the ship’s window 25m away. That was really important for me because it helped to ground the film in some form of reality, even though it’s fantasy.”
Fraser points to the Astrophage sequence as an example of when he let the fantasy element take over. “I love the sequence when Grace is flying through all of the beautiful Astrophage. That was one of the only times we felt like we had earned the right to become fantasy for a minute. It meant we could cut loose and allow the audience a breath of the fantastical.”
There was a significant amount of preparation involved, particularly for the ship’s cockpit scenes. Grace first encounters it in one configuration. Later, he operates it in a horizontal rotation. And finally, when flying above Adrian, it shifts to an angled orientation with a different configuration altogether.
“With so many buttons and light sources inside the cockpit, I had to be very careful, as it was such a beautifully designed space,” says Fraser. “Charles Wood, the production designer, did an incredible job creating it. When all of the lights were activated, the cockpit became very colourful and visually dense, so it was always about striking the right balance for each scene. Even subtle adjustments to the colour palette helped signal that we were entering a new scene or journey, despite being in the same environment. Our fear was that returning to the same space repeatedly, with the same visual language, might become tiring for the audience. So we needed to refresh it each time to give it new energy.”
Across the universe
Paul Lambert served as VFX supervisor on the film, having previously collaborated with Fraser on the Dune franchise. “While working on Dune, we bonded over our disdain for green and blue screens,” says Fraser. “We’ve both been burnt by them in the past. With green screen, lighting is impacted and – visually speaking – you end up compromising significantly.
“We decided not to use it on this film, which was fantastic. We were completely aligned on that approach, and I know the directors were also very happy not to have it on-set.”
Fraser utilised blackouts for the film’s space environments and a grey screen for the planet Adrian sequence. “Adrian was the only environment with a greenish tinge to it. We introduced a green-blue aqua colour that we bounced into the space to create the desired reflective effect. For the ‘don’t go crazy’ room, we also incorporated LED screens.”
Fraser worked alongside Framestore and ILM to capture the spaceship work. In one scene, Rocky’s ship pulls up beside Grace’s, who tries to escape, gets away and then stops before Rocky’s ship pulls up again. “That may sound simple, but it’s actually very difficult to pull off,” explains Fraser. “It was a relatively inconsequential chase and felt very much like a cartoon sequence – very Tom and Jerry like. We spent a great deal of time in Unreal designing the sequences.”
Then, when Grace ejects the four Beetle probes, there is a shot of them coming up in shadow. “The last one comes up, takes off and then you see the four shadows. That was a shot I found through manoeuvring in 3D, seeing the animation and looking at the shadows.
“Traditionally, I would do my prep, pre-light the sets, shoot the film and then wave goodbye to everybody at the end of the shoot,” says Fraser. “I’d come back to grade the film and then Paul and the directors would be left to design all of the computer graphics for the spaceship sequences. I was a lot more involved in post for this project and I’m looking forward to doing more of that in the future. I hope more filmmakers lean on their cinematographers to be more involved in the visuals in post.”
Making Project Hail Mary required solving a range of technical complexities. “There were all these beautiful problems,” concludes Fraser. “Charles Wood coined the term a ‘solution opportunity’, and I thought that was a fantastic way of explaining it.’
This article appears in the April/May 2026 issue of Definition
