I am really enjoying For All Mankind. But it is reminding me of something that always nags at me when I watch movies or TV shows set on other worlds: how to depict low gravity (or the absence of such depiction).
Filmmakers have figured out plenty of tricks to sell zero gravity: floating objects, “weightless” gestures.
But there’s no real way to depict a low-gravity environment like the moon’s surface (1/6th Earth gravity) or Mars (38% Earth gravity).
On For All Mankind, the actors do a good job bouncing around in their bulky pressure suits for moonwalks (on harnesses, I presume, digitally removed) like in actual Apollo footage.
But inside the Jamestown base, the characters would walk and move differently in low gravity, wouldn’t they? You’d have to step lightly, sort of shuffle, to avoid bouncing all over the place.
But there’s just no way to simulate this consistently or realistically—so they don’t even try.
I don’t actually care or begrudge the filmmakers, it’s just something I always think about—and short of filming on the moon, there really isn’t a fix, is there?