Blocking: SPACE Orientation

Watching behind the scenes for Gravity, I was most interested in the director’s statement that there isn’t really an up or down in space. NASA’s first two Earth rise photos in 1966 and 1968 gave our first large looks at Earth with the poles on their side.

It wasn’t until 1967 when NASA took a photograph of the Earth with its poles oriented north and south. It’s uncommon to see the Earth in a non north/south rotation in film, but one example of a movie that uses inverse orientation in Space is Rogue One.

The effect is similar to looking at an upside-down peters projected map. Seeing something familiar at another rotation adds visual interest by giving us a new perspective on something we’ve seen hundreds of times.

There is also a shot of the Deathstar descending relative to the camera orientation.

This was inspiring to see how rotating orientation can add visual interest. As an exercise, I rotated images from the 2008 NASA EPOXI mission to create a shot of a “falling moon“. I’m excited to learn more about blocking orientation!