CROWLEY: The Endurance is our main Interstellar ship.
It's the vehicle that carries our characters out of our solar system.
It was always gonna be grounded in NASA...
...and the International Space Station, and the shuttle...
...and those technologies.
NOLAN: When we came to look...
...at how we would make the actual design of the Endurance for the movie...
...we decided we wanted it to have something of the character of the ISS...
...in that we wanted it to look modular.
We wanted it to look like smaller parts have been flung up on different missions...
...and in the zero gravity of low earth orbit...
...they'd been assembled into this somewhat more fragile shape...
...than you could ever build on Earth and then lift off the Earth.
Because of the strains and stress due to gravity.
And then the circular shape came about, really...
...as a result of knowing that a long-term exposure to zero gravity...
...the ship would have to create artificial gravity for the bodies of the astronauts.
Because if you spend years in zero gravity, your muscles will atrophy.
A circular shape where the craft would be spun to create artificial gravity...
...for the astronauts to live in was a defining characteristic of the design.
It was really about moving to the next step of if you created an interstellar ship...
...that could achieve spin and gravity, how would it look and what would you need?
And it's designed as a series of 1 2 pods...
...and each pod has a function, and they're in groups of fours.
Four are engines, four are habitat and four are our landing pods.
We decided that we needed to really build three pods.
The cockpit, in the middle, and the Habitat part and then the cryo pod.
Because of the angle of the movement from pod to pod...
...we needed to put it on a giant hydraulic rocker...
...so we can raise and lower each pod to level so we could shoot it level...
...and then we will still have perspective through and up to the other pods.
We built basically the rocker that could tip it from 45 degrees each direction.
It was 1 60 feet long...
...so the entire frame, everything, all the structure had to be built and engineered.
And then all the hydraulic system, same thing, everything is built and engineered.
All the components, the pistons.
Everything was custom-built for that rig.
We wanted the technology of the inside of the spaceships, particularly...
...uh, to reflect the way space travel is done now.
CROWLEY: This is our interior Endurance.
This is basically the cockpit.
The cockpit pod was really about communicating and steering the thing.
So you have navigation up here and you have piloting up above...
...and communications down below which is--
Has a sort of level of privacy to it.
But, um-- You know, everything is packed away, so, you know, you have--
You have tables here.
See? And you can-- You know, everything is stowed. Much like a ship.
We've got, you know, seats that come out.
You know, everything, like these are-- When you navigate--
Because you're navigating in a new solar system...
...you know, we needed to create, you know, whiteboards...
...so you could work out orbits.
You know, this stuff is just scrolling data and updates.
I didn't really want anything that was too glossy, too fanciful.
The ISS is full of handles.
How would you move around this space, you know, in zero G, you know?
So how would you get from here to here to there?
Around to your air lock, and then around here.
So you-- You'd have to pull yourself around.
The problem is to travel vast distances...
...is you have to take everything with you because it's space. Heh.
So the amount of stuff you need to carry is vast.
So everything is storage.
You know, a lot of this is we ended going to the scrap yard.
A lot of them-- These are galley boxes from airplanes.
We ended up mixing stuff we could get...
...so we could get the age and realism of some of these pods...
...and then we would manufacture bits and pieces to tie them in.
I mean, these are actually galley units from airplanes that we just retrofitted...
...just to give us some realism.
Because this ship has been built over 20 years.
So some of the technology would be older, some of it would have been newer.
What would you do if you had no more funding? Well you better fix up the old gear.
You don't have money to create the new gear.
So it does have a sort of a blue collar feel to it.
It's not overly slick. It's metal and screws.
The computers are there...
...but you still gotta give it some elbow grease to make things work.
CROWLEY: So now we're coming into the cockpit.
This is the flight center of the Endurance.
A lot of this stuff was built on the idea...
...that you'd have four engine pods and you'd have to rotate.
This ship is about rotation and slow-moving.
It's like a truck. It lumbers along.
You know, you wouldn't have big windows.
I mean, you're trying to protect yourself from somewhere you shouldn't be, in space.
So the windows are small.
Within this claustrophobic-ness, you've gotta see a little bit of perspective.
If you don't identify the edge of your set, then it-- The place feels bigger.
So down here below the cockpit is the comm room.
This is the main comm station where you could send messages home.
Again, we took old flight chairs and then retrofitted them.
The comm room was designed with a level of privacy.
So, you know, if you wanted to shut yourself off, you could.
And here we've got windows. So if you-- If you're having a quiet moment...
...and just floating around in space, you could-- You have a great view.
Right now we're, uh-- We're in the cockpit, still, and we're at level.
So in terms of our hydraulic pod system, we're at--
This pod, because it's one of three, is at level.
So the one up here, the Habitat, will be at about, uh, 25, 30 degrees up.
So now I'm at an angle.
So up above is our entrance to--
Basically this is-- You dock your ship up there and you come down into the Endurance here.
And then we have living quarters back here which is--
There's a series of bunks.
Over here is a sort of kitchen-y, you know, living area...
...where you might hang out.
So, uh....
U h, again, there's lots of seats tucked away into the floor.
If you wanna....
If you wanna have a sit-down and have a chat.
There's more tables and chairs here.
So all this stuff unfolds.
There's other seats in back areas.
This is definitely where you might-- You might hang out.
You know, we looked at a ton of NA-- Obviously, NASA reference for hatches.
This is a hatch we saw-- I think it was on the ISS.
I mean, they spent decades designing this stuff.
And so we wanted to bring that realism into the set.
This is one of our air lock doors.
You know, so it slides across here and then it pushes in and then this system locks.
So this is all working linkages.
Everything should work automatically like in a spaceship.
That all falls under, uh, Special Effects.
We did 14 air lock doors through there.
There was all kinds of automatic mechanisms that work throughout it.
They were all remote-controlled.
CROWLEY: We had a split-Level cryo pod lab unit, the biggest portion of the set.
It was Dr. Brand's lab.
A sterile, air-locked place for our-- What we call the population bomb.
A cryo pod area--
I very much pushed the white tiles and the medical equipment...
...and the feel that you're really going in for surgery essentially.
Everything has to be high-tech and believable and kind of automated.
There was a lot of elements.
So the cryo beds had to be able to travel 20 feet from below the ship...
...and come up to like a ready loading position.
The doors were automated, the baskets.
And then they had this idea of the plastic, almost like a body bag covering them.
To get all those pieces working in harmony, in camera, was a little bit of a challenge.
MAN 1: We need to put this.... MAN 2: Yeah.
MAN 1: Yeah.
It's oftentimes thought to be much easier to just build it all in post...
...put the actors in front of a green screen.
And what's great about building sets like that is...
...for the actors, it's an amazing thing...
...because they're not having to supply the whole thing in their minds.
They're able to really interact with their physical surroundings.
HATHAWAY: I know that, for me, walking on to these sets and into these circumstances...
...it creates, I think, an emotional response.
There's nothing cozy on the Endurance.
Everything on the spaceship is practical.
Everything has a use. It's very utilitarian.
Just imagine what that would do to you over years and years...
...and how that would make you a bit weary.
GYASI: There's something about being in that enclosed environment.
Something that's created between all of us. A sense of unity and a sense of familiarity...
...with each other.
We never believed in expanding sets for the camera. We didn't want to get tempted...
...into faking ourselves into angles that are in effect impossible for real.
Think about the fact that NASA sends, uh, iMAX cameras up to space...
...and they can film with that camera in very small spaces.
By doing that, you create a very specific feeling...
...and we want to replicate it.