There are scenes in the new movie "I.S.S." that could be mistaken for NASA footage filmed aboard the real International Space Station (ISS).
For those familiar with the layout and look of the space station's many modules, there are recognizable details that the filmmakers successfully recreated. And that's a good thing, because if the title of your movie is "I.S.S." and you set all of your action aboard the ISS, then you better make sure that the ISS you show on screen matches the real International Space Station on which it is based.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite understood this and challenged her production team to get it right — all the way down to the condiments stuck to the wall.
"One of the things I learned through research is that, over the years, people have gone up to the ISS and brought stuff with them, and they lose track of their stuff all the time. For example, you take out a ketchup packet, and you don't see where it floats, so it just embeds itself against the wall," said Cowperthwaite in a interview released by the film's studio, Bleecker Street. "There's literally decades worth of stuff that's been gathering, and nobody's going to clean it, because there's more important work to do on the space station."
"I told that to Geoff [Wallace, the production designer], and he had so much fun incorporating it into the production design," said Cowperthwaite. "I was just blown away by his work. It looked like he had been building this ISS for decades."
Related: Watch the explosive new trailer for astronaut action film 'I.S.S.' (video)
