Chapter 764: Pregnancy Tactics

Sitting in a rattan chair beside her, Shelley looked at her frowning daughter and asked, "Honey, what are you worried about?"

Natalie Portman gave a slight shake of her head. "Nothing, Mom."

Shelley asked tentatively, "Is it about next year's Oscars?"

After a brief hesitation, Natalie slowly nodded.

Seeing this, Shelley patted her hand reassuringly. "Frank Pierson, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and Harvey Weinstein have all raved about your performance, and they've each hinted that they'll support you."

She smiled. "Honey, don't forget who you are and everything you've accomplished. Combine that with the right PR, and you have the best shot of anyone."

A couple of weeks ago, Natalie Portman would have found that argument completely convincing.

Now, however, she shook her head. "Mom, they'll support me because I'm of Jewish descent—and the most representative and self-identifying actress of Jewish descent at that. What if another actress of Jewish descent delivers a performance on par with mine in Black Swan, and has an even more powerful force pushing her? Do you really think I'm guaranteed to win?"

"But honey, is there even an actress like that in Hollywood?" Shelley couldn't think of anyone in her daughter's age group who could compare. "You're universally recognized as having the finest acting and the best public image of the new generation. If the School wants to put forward a representative for the new generation of actresses, no one is more fitting than you."

"A good image and great acting are enough to win an Oscar?" Natalie countered. "Mom, do you really believe that?"

Shelley was instantly left speechless. Much like the reasons she believed Natalie had a strong chance of taking home Best Actress next year, the role and the acting were never the deciding factors.

Still, she wasn't overly worried. "The Jewish influence in Hollywood will back you."

"No, they won't!" Natalie Portman said with absolute certainty. "Some of them will definitely back someone else."

She looked at her mother, dead serious. "Scarlett Johansson's new movie is filming right now, and it's aimed straight at an Oscar! Don't forget, she's of Jewish descent too. And the ones backing her are Duke Rosenberg and the entire Warner Group!"

"That..." It was the first Shelley had heard of this. Her mouth fell open, at a loss for words.

If it were just Scarlett Johansson, she wouldn't have given it a second thought. However, no one could ignore the man backing her, even if his style had never been particularly favored by the School.

Nor could she overlook the fact that Duke Rosenberg himself was a vital member of the Hollywood Jewish Club. On top of that, Scarlett Johansson's godmother had deep, intricate ties with many powerful Hollywood figures of Jewish descent, such as Spielberg.

As she looked at her daughter, the certainty in Shelley's eyes gave way to worry.

"To increase my odds of winning," Natalie Portman said forcefully, clenching her fist, "we need to do more!"

Do more? Do what? For a moment, Shelley couldn't think of anything.

"Mom, I want to have a baby," Natalie said, suddenly bringing up a seemingly unrelated topic. "A baby with Benjamin."

"What?" Shelley was stunned. "Nat, what are you thinking? Having a baby right now will ruin your career!"

"No, I have to!" Natalie seemed to have made up her mind. "This will push my career forward!"

Shelley didn't understand what Natalie meant and could only stare at her in shock. She knew her daughter was seeing the French dancer.

Since she was sitting across from her own mother, Natalie Portman saw no need to hide anything. She continued, "Mom, from what I know, Benjamin is still in touch with his ex-girlfriend..."

Truth be told, she had poached him in the first place, though Natalie would never admit to being the other woman.

"From what I've observed, Benjamin really loves children," she said earnestly. "If we have a baby, there won't be any more issues between us."

"But your career..."

Before Shelley could finish, Natalie Portman waved a hand to cut her off. "It'll be good for my career, too."

Looking down at the glass of juice on the table as if seeing her own future in it, Natalie Portman's gaze grew ever firmer. "As long as I get pregnant soon, photos of my pregnancy will be splashed across every major media outlet during awards season. Most people in this society sympathize with and favor pregnant women, and that will definitely sway the voting for a whole string of awards!"

Shelley was speechless, yet she had to admit her daughter made a compelling point. If an ordinary woman and a pregnant woman got into a dispute, over ninety percent of people would side with the pregnant woman.

That was the reality of society, and her daughter certainly knew how to use it to her advantage.

Natalie Portman was fully convinced that if she could make the rounds with a baby bump during awards season, she would undoubtedly be the strongest contender for Best Actress at every award show!

After weighing it over carefully, Shelley said, "You'd better give Martin a heads-up."

"I will," Natalie nodded. "We'll also need him and William Morris to coordinate the PR."

The next day, Martin Miller at William Morris received the news. He had to hand it to her—among the actresses in the industry, Natalie Portman definitely had one of the sharpest minds at the very top.

By mid-August, after intense preparations, Gravity entered production, and Duke kicked off filming at Warner Studios in Burbank.

Right from the start of filming, Duke put a custom-built piece of equipment to use—the "Light Box."

"Scar..." Standing in front of the Light Box, Duke called out, "How does it feel?"

Having already done test shoots beforehand, Scarlett didn't feel too uncomfortable and flashed Duke an "OK" sign.

"Keep your eyes on the images on the LED screens!"

With that final reminder, Duke returned to his director's chair. The opening shots weren't overly difficult—just close-ups of Scarlett's eyes. In those close-ups, the reflections in her eyes and on her helmet visor had to be meticulously calibrated to avoid any continuity errors.

Gravity featured a massive number of close-ups, and if the reflections in the eyes weren't handled properly, many shots would give the illusion away. The crew wasn't the first team to take this into account.

Back in 2004, Tim Webber's visual effects team at Industrial Light and Magic had come up with a similar concept while producing a commercial—designing a room lined with LED screens in front, behind, left, and right, all playing corresponding footage so the reflections in the eyes could be captured directly.

Expanding on that idea eventually yielded the two major pieces of visual effects hardware for Gravity—one being the all-LED shooting rig known as the "Light Box," and the other being large-format LED panels designed to solve light reflection issues.

For this setup, Duke had Scarlett gaze at the simulated cosmic light and shadow on the LED screens while the camera captured the resulting reflections in her eyes.

To film this specific sequence of close-ups, Scarlett Johansson had to stand directly in front of the massive LED screen and watch the simulated cosmic display, relying on a camera positioned ahead of the panel to catch the exact reflections.

Because the surface area of the human eye was tiny and didn't demand high image resolution, low-pixel LED screens could still guarantee the necessary image quality. Moreover, capturing images and lighting effects this way wasn't limited to reflections in the eyeballs; it was also used for other specular reflections, such as on the space helmets worn by Scarlett and George Clooney.

During this initial stretch of filming, the hardest part wasn't the acting, but the lighting. Because of lighting issues, this single shot required retakes for nearly the entire morning before they finally found the optimal setup just before lunch.

"Even when I close my eyes, all I see are lightbulbs."

Over lunch, Scarlett offered that mild complaint to Duke at just the right moment. Duke simply patted her hand reassuringly; filming had only just begun, and every aspect still needed adjustment.

Lighting was merely representative of a whole series of challenges.

Designing the lighting for the space environment involved three primary light sources: harsh, distant sunlight, soft light reflected off Earth, and occasional reflected light from the Moon.

This setup looked neither like real outer space nor like the interior of a space station. In real space, one faced pitch darkness, able to see only part of the sun, part of Earth, and occasionally the Moon.

Yet if the film were actually shot and produced that way, a movie set to run nearly a hundred minutes would have very little visual appeal to hold the audience's attention, so Duke decided to constantly shift the lighting.

Consequently, the crew's lighting technicians had to constantly adjust the properties of the light according to Duke's demands—how harsh or soft it was, what its reflectivity was, and what color it should be.

Those seemingly minor details could create a wide variety of distinct environments.

Fortunately for them, spacecraft traveled at high speeds, passing through several cycles of day and night within 24 hours.

In fact, the lighting effects during filming underwent rich, dramatic shifts as the camera and characters moved and rotated, with a sunset occurring every 90 minutes above the equator.

During the afternoon shoot, there was also a shot showing the heroine played by Scarlett finally spinning into the dark expanse of the stars, where there was almost no external lighting at all—only a faint glow emanating from inside her helmet.

Duke had also mapped out a precise global trajectory for the characters across the entire story arc. For instance, in the first scene scheduled for the second day of filming, Scarlett's heroine would be above the deserts of Africa just as the sun entered the frame; as a result, Earth would take on a very warm hue, and the light reflected onto her face would be warm as well.

Once a few simple scenes were in the can, the crew gradually found their rhythm, and Duke put the choreographed weightlessness sequences on the schedule.

The weightlessness scenes locked in specific combinations of movements, which were essential because the actors inside the Light Box were constantly rotating during filming.

For example, Duke would start on George Clooney's face, then move the camera over to Scarlett, who was spinning at a different speed, circle the camera around her, and then pull back to George Clooney—because if the camera simply backed straight up toward George Clooney, the next thing in the frame would be his feet.