Before filming on ‘Sunshine’ started over one year ago now, director Danny Boyle was keen to give the eight actors a taste of what it would be like to be a real team of astronauts.
As we join the film, these characters have been together for many years- both on their mission in space and previously in training on Earth- and Danny wanted to make sure that when filming started the actors operated as a team. He also wanted to school them in science and sci-fi as well as give them some real flight experience.
All eight actors lived together in one house. They spent 24 hours a day with one another in order to fast track their team bonding. They all learned to SCUBA dive and did some underwater training to give them an idea of what it feels like to float and be forced to move slowly in the way you would do in space. They each learned to fly a plane on a £15 million flight simulator. And they were each taken up, individually, in a plane to experience Zero Gravity. It worked. Within weeks they really were thinking like the crew of the Icarus II.
We’ve got a new video showing each of the actors’ reactions to being in Zero G.
