George Clooney's Midnight Sky inspiration

George Clooney has compared working on 'The Midnight Sky' to filming 'The Revenant' and 'Gravity'.

The 59-year-old actor stars in the upcoming Netflix movie as a scientist in the Arctic trying to protect a young girl while preventing a group of astronauts from returning to earth after a worldwide catastrophe.

According to Variety, during an online seminar at EnergaCamerimage Film Festival, Clooney - who has also directed the new sci-fi drama - said: "It’s two different worlds; we were basically saying we were going to shoot ‘The Revenant’ and stop, and then shoot ‘Gravity'.

"Usually, when space movies are shot, up is up and down is down, and that’s not exactly how it works. In ‘Gravity,’ the camera was constantly rotating.

"We wanted to keep the idea of the horizon being different, without making everyone throw up along the way.

"But our first conversation was: ‘How do we shoot winter.' "

Clooney revealed how two-thirds of Earthbound sequences were filmed in Iceland, with the rest shot on a soundstage.

He admitted the cast presented its challenges, as filming with his young co-star meant they had to be aware of the elements.

He added: "When you shoot with a 7-year-old, time is of the essence and [cinematographer Martin Ruhe] designed everything so that we could walk in and shoot most of the stuff in one or two takes.

"[In Iceland] it was 40 degrees below zero and we would tie strings to one another because you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

"You would see this cloud of wind and snow coming, which is what you want because it gives it the right look, and then nothing. You set the focus and pray.”

Meanwhile, Clooney explained how he and his collaborator were inspired by older sci-fi films rather than a "sharp" and "clear" style seen over the past decade.

He said: "We started to look at old astronaut footage and films like ‘Capricorn One’ that were shot on film, and there was a tremendous amount of grain to it.

"A big part of what we were doing was about reintroducing this grain and flare, the kind of things that gave it these imperfections.”