Oblivion

Kosinski first developed the story as an unpublished graphic novel, but the film’s real contribution is its method. Instead of blue screen, Claudio Miranda wrapped the Sky Tower set in a seamless muslin backdrop five hundred feet wide and forty two feet tall, then filled 270 degrees of it with sky from twenty one front projectors. The cloud plates were gathered over weeks atop a Hawaiian volcano, and Miranda credits the projection with ninety five percent of the lighting. The consequence is visible: because the glass was left in rather than removed for effects work, the reflections and the light on the actors are genuine, and they differ in texture from the digital ground level sequences. The storytelling has the opposite problem: the premise is withheld for over an hour, so the first stretch is maintenance routine and domestic life in the tower, and anyone who has seen a trailer spends it waiting. The mystery is not solved from clues either; one character explains it aloud in a single scene. For: viewers who value light and space existing in front of the camera, and quiet science fiction carried by its score. Not for: anyone wanting a puzzle to work out, or crowded action, since most of the hundred and twenty four minutes plays out in a sealed two person world.