No locations, no sets

Stephen Lawes and UnitEleven rely on Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop CS software to create the sophisticated visual effects and cinematic look of “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”

Filmmaker Kerry Conran was among the earliest film directors to adopt Adobe® After Effects® desktop compositing and animation software. In 1995, inspired by the ability of After Effects to marry live-action and CG visual elements, he began creating a short film about New York City under robot attack.

Eight scripts and almost a decade later, Conran's "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was released to theaters. Although the budget for "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was hundreds of times that of Conran's original short, the Hollywood blockbuster version of the film was produced using the same tools: After Effects and Adobe Photoshop® CS software running on Apple Power Mac computers.

Actors in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” were shot on this giant bluescreen stage. Visual effects artists then used After Effects to composite close-ups of the actors with CG visuals ranging from robots to cityscapes.

“Yes, Adobe software is cost-effective. But more important, After Effects and Photoshop are artistic tools- they enabled us to experiment with virtually no limits to achieve the film's unique, stylized look.”

-Stephen Laws,
compositing supervisor, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

"Originally, Sky Captain was independently financed," says Stephen Lawes, compositing supervisor for the film. "Yes, Adobe software is cost-effective. But more important, After Effects and Photoshop are artistic tools — they enabled us to experiment with virtually no limits to achieve the film's unique, stylized look."

VFX ingenuity

Adobe software helped Conran and his effects team, headed by visual effects supervisor Darin Hollings with Lawes in charge of compositing, achieve a sophisticated cinematic style inspired by the Technicolor serials of the 1930s and 1940s that combines comic book style with vintage sci-fi appeal. The effects-intensive film includes an astonishing 2,100 CG shots. In fact, the entire movie was produced with no locations, no sets, and minimal props.

In the film, famous scientists around the world have mysteriously disappeared, and Chronicle reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) joins forces with ace aviator Sky Captain (Jude Law) to investigate their disappearance. Risking their lives as they travel to exotic places around the world, the duo tries to stop Dr. Totenkopf, the evil mastermind behind a plot to destroy the earth. They are aided by Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie), commander of an all-female amphibious squadron, and technical genius Dex (Giovanni Ribisi).

Flawless from beginning to end

Early in the film, Sky Captain flies down a Manhattan skyscraper canyon dodging attacking robots of all shapes and sizes. Producing that scene involved multiple steps: Law and other actors were shot on a giant bluescreen stage. The robots were computer-animated, the street-level details were 3D digital models, and the backgrounds — from Manhattan to Shangri-la and Radio City Music Hall — were 2D collages of modern and archival photography, expertly pieced together using Photoshop. Lawes and his team used After Effects to composite the CG visuals with close-ups of the actors.

“We literally had no issues with render times, and After Effects worked flawlessly from beginning to end.”

-Stephen Laws,
compositing supervisor, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Lawes and his team of 26 artists at UnitEleven composited and finished more than 1,200 of the shots at a production facility assembled for the movie. Although Lawes considered using other desktop tools for compositing and animation, he chose After Effects because he prefers the software's timeline-based editing model, which encourages a more freethinking creative process than node-based editors.

“Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” was produced with no locations, no sets, and minimal props. Artists working on the effects-intensive film used After Effects and Photoshop for an astonishing 2,100 CG shots.

UnitEleven was born from the core group of artists that produced Sky Captain. As a group, the firm is now pursuing film projects that promote and further the philosophy of filmmaking that was started on Sky Captain in 2002.

"Some people in the VFX industry were surprised that we used After Effects for such a monumental visual effects undertaking," says Lawes. "But why handle the compositing process on proprietary systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars when there's an equally powerful, more flexible option that costs about a thousand dollars? We literally had no issues with render times, and After Effects worked flawlessly from beginning to end."

Is it real or is it Technicolor?

The film was originally intended to be in black-and-white, but Lawes experimented by colorizing a short segment — the Chronicle sequence. Conran liked the result so much, he asked Lawes to colorize the entire film. Lawes used Photoshop to test color palettes that would mimic early Technicolor serials. He then applied color to portions of the film in Photoshop, bringing layered Photoshop comps into After Effects to use as motion tests. The ability to maintain work completed in Photoshop and carry it straight into After Effects was a major boon to productivity.

Once the look was set, full colorization began using After Effects. Hollings and Lawes set up two compositing teams: one for finishing shots in black-and-white, and a second for applying layers of color. According to Lawes, After Effects worked beautifully as a solution for colorizing the film because the software made it easy for the artists to apply colors on different layers, much like oil painting.

With help from After Effects and Photoshop, Stephen Lawes (pictured above left) and a team of 26 artists composited and finished more than 1,200 of the shots for “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” at a production facility assembled for the movie.

Outsourcing, After Effects style

Lawes and his team used After Effects running on Apple Power Mac G5 systems to create effects, and then they sent the shots to a PC-based render farm. The ability to work across platforms in After Effects was key to finishing shots quickly. Moving sequences across different platforms was flawless.

Once production was well under way and the look of the film had been established, the studio set an aggressive release date for the film. Scott Anderson, Brooke Breton, Michael Kanfer, and more than 13 other effects artists and houses — from mainstays like Industrial Light & Magic and The Orphanage to smaller houses like Café FX — worked with the production facility to speed completion of the project. Many of these shops also used After Effects to composite and render their sequences, making it easy to share files and promoting consistency across shots. In all it took around 320 visual effects artists a little over two years to create Sky Captain's 2,100 effects shots.

Visual effects expert

Over the course of his career, Lawes, who was trained in character animation and motion graphics, has directed traditional animated commercials for McDonald's and Coca-Cola as well as created numerous motion titles for films such as "The Sixth Sense" and "Chicken Run." "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was Lawes's first visual effects job, and the project was one of seven nominated into the visual effects bake-off for the Academy Awards.

"When I was asked to create visual effects for this film, I was thrilled," says Lawes. "'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' was the chance of a lifetime to create something totally unique — to push a film's style in daring and innovative ways. Photoshop and After Effects were vital to creating the stylized look of this film, efficiently and cost-effectively."