Unda

Shorter pasta could definitely fit on a store shelf. Longer pasta however...

Good luck manufacturing it, but I think it could be done by extrusion and chopping, but I don't know if it'd be spaghetti still

Project Hail Mary does very deliberate things with how the Mary feels and the way its shot. The directors have said as much explicitly, but you can feel how distinctive PHM is compared to most other films set in space.

I grabbed the above clip as a clear example of the Mary be set up in such a way that, divorced from the emotional cadence and symbolism of the film, honestly feels like the result of the ship being a rush job. There is so much shadow and darkness and incomplete lighting, it seems like it would interfere with the Science. As we watch Grace working on things with meticulous care, the light moves and circles and cycles and he relies sometimes on additional lamps to see.

Alternatively, it reminds me of how meticulous and thorough lighting has to be in space movies. For instance, any film you've seen where the characters are in a helmet, you may notice the helmet is aggressively lit on the inside to illuminate the actor's face. (Most prominent example is probably Ridley Scott's Prometheus.) This is because natural light is so bad inside helmets, costuming/lighting have to shove a bunch of bulbs in there for illumination or all your expensive Acting is for nothing.

(Left, Prometheus and the infamous bubble helmets. Right, PHM, which seems to have lighting inside the helmet but it always draws the color from the environment and scene.)

Compared to PHM, we have a movie that is still trying to create a clear image for the audience, but is not afraid of shadows nor of darkness. It seems to revel in them, trusting the mood of the scene to contribute as much as the acting.

Back to the clip: That specific shot after Grace catches Blip D when the light swells with the music-- it's a gaze sweeping over Grace and away again, the warm suffused light coming in and out. It's as though space is breathing around him.

This is emphasized by Daniel Pemberton's composition. Pemberton is up there with Lorne Balfe for my favorite film composers working, and he's done a lot of tremendous, experimental, interesting scores. (The Man From UNCLE is a stand-out to me, but he's also done the Spider-verse movies, Birds of Prey, the Slow Horses TV show-- tons of great shit.) As the light peaks, there is an organic sounding "oooooooooooooh" that moves with it, like it's a breath or a sigh.

Look at these side by side.

These are the same shot, seconds apart as the light changes.

So many shots go from bright to dim, vice versa then back again. As Grace paces around the lab, you can even see the space go from completely dark to the light in the foreground, then moving past a point that dims it, then bursting bright again as it passes over the lab itself.

There's an article in Variety about just how the xenonite tunnel was lit with tungsten lights all lined up and programmed to be controlled so the light move as needed. It's unclear if the same rig was used for the Mary but given how light cycles, it's likely at least a similar system.

Another instance of same shot seconds apart. It goes from illuminated to dark then back again. Which begs the question why? What purpose does all this serve to the story, beyond aesthetics?

My answers will not be yours, but here's what I think.

The flashbacks of the movie become increasingly cold. Grace's classroom is warm-toned, but each 'step' into PHM gets colder. This is partially in service to the plot, conveying the sun's dimming. but emotionally, the Mary is golden with life and love and emotional honesty.

But emotional honesty is intense and difficult to handle. Watching a character emotionally break down stretched over seconds is hard to watch. So the lighting breathes, so the audience breathes, so it's still gentle. Given the emotional climax of the movie, the final flashback, it feels like the audience is being primed to deal with that. To understand that it will hurt, but there will be warmth after. Do not forget you are here. Do not forget that Grace is here. Have faith. Breathe.

Whether that read is correct or not, I think it's clear: it's an artistically deliberate choice.

... Okay now that I've finally written this post I can work on another post.

Yeah, all of this? Was just to establish "it really IS that deep" so we can now talk about Grace's recurring motifs of glass, reflections, and diffused/refracted light. More on that soon.

UPDATE: The sequel to this post is here

Under the cut are more cleaned up screenshots for anyone who just wants more pretty pictures.

This is a follow-up to "I am losing my mind over the lighting of the Hail Mary," which I wrote pretty much to set context and argue It Really Is That Deep. Going into this, I am assuming you also believe the way lighting is used in PHM is intentional.

(Note: My screencaps come from a specific leak of PHM that is shockingly HQ but does have desaturation issues. I've done a HSV Saturation run on several images but not all of them. My screencap folder is like +300 items now and there's only so many hours in the day. If I could buy this on blu-ray TODAY I would.)

Sooooo... what's up with Grace and rainbows, question?

In Grace's very first flashback/recovered memory, one of the first things we see is a ring of light, rainbow. When he finally remembers being betrayed and put onto the Hail Mary against his will, this memory is triggered by the refracting light in Rocky's ship connecting to the rainbow overhead on the day he tried to run.

Refracted light is practically Grace's thumbprint smudged onto every corner of the story, the narrative voice in prismatic form. It truly reaches drinking game levels of ubiquity.

When Stratt first meets Grace, he just happens to be draped in a cloak of rainbow light. More subtly, but still obviously once you're looking for it, when he arrives on the aircraft carrier, he brings along a small halo of colored light.

At its most subtle, it comes from glass. Every time the camera implicitly slides into Rocky's POV, settling over his shoulder to observe Grace through xenonite glass, there are coronas to be found, touching Grace at all times. In the Clock Bros scene, when Grace leans in to observe Rocky's eridian clock, a smudge of refraction just happens to pop up. I cannot emphasize enough how no frame of this movie is safe from the rainbow.

Dr. Ryland Grace adjusts a light and it looks like a dance club in the Castro, it's absurd.

So, down to basics: why? What makes cameras do That Thing?

Well, it's not unique to cameras. It's a matter of glass and white-toned light. Modern camera lenses are either treated with a diffusion layer or have specific filters meant to diffuse light-- to break it up more clearly. When you use a lens without that coating, almost any light source can make this happen.

The rainbow, the prismatic light, it comes from a lack of filter, from the removal of deliberate or accidental barriers. You need light. You need glass. Clarity.

Okay but why, narratively?

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The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.