High-flying adventures abound in Around the World in 80 Days. All images © 2004 Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. All rights reserved.

The new Around the World in 80 Days is reworked on a more modest scale than the original 1956 Mike Todd production, the film for which Todd AO 70mm was invented, and which brought together David Niven, Cantiflas and Shirley MacLaine. That film was inspired by Orson Welles’ stage musical version of the Jules Verne novel, which ran on Broadway briefly, with songs by Cole Porter, and magic tricks by Welles himself, in the starring role of Phileas Fogg, the gambling globetrotter, portrayed in the remake by Steve Coogan. (Coincidentally, Welles’ 1938 radio version of Around the World was the show just one week prior to his War of the Worlds broadcast that panicked America.)

Obviously the world has shrunk a bit, and foreign locations no longer have as much exotic allure for audiences. Hence the new film is mainly a comic romp, showcasing Jackie Chan’s considerable talents. Part of the popularity of the Todd best picture Oscar winner came from the use of “cameo” performances, featuring stars such as Frank Sinatra and Marlene Dietrich in bit parts. In an homage to the classic, the new Around the World features numerous cameos, among them Arnold Schwartzenegger’s last performance on the big screen before he became governor of California.

Steamboats and Flying Machines
On their journey, Chan and Coogan have to make their way around the globe in various contraptions, some realistic, while others are zany imaginary vehicles, such as a flying machine. The bulk of the effects work on the film was done to create the vehicles, along with CG stars and extras to ride in them.

Derek Spears of Rhythm & Hues was visual effects supervisor on the production. He joined the film after previs on key sequences was completed, giving him a guide to the final work. “The balloon ride sequence and the steamer ship sequence, which included the bit with the flying machine as well, those were prevised, allowing us to find out the blocking and location for the sets. The previs that was really useful was the one where we had to build a CG paddle steamer. Previs helped us decide how we were going to shoot the plate, which included a live-action tugboat to make the water wake for our steamer, and guided us in deciding how fast it should move and how to frame it, which allowed the director to buy off on that before it was shot.”

Populating the World
Naturally, the film required a cast of thousands — something made more affordable with today’s technology. “We did motion capture for a lot of our background characters. We did maybe four or five shots of background crowds, and all the walk cycles were done with motion capture. On the deck of the ship all the sailors were motion captured. However, for our key actors — for Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan, they are actually hand-animated for specific action or stunts.” Though Chan still handles most of his action and fight scenes as he did in his Hong Kong days, hanging off a balloon miles high in the air was luckily not part of his contract!

Spears used a number of systems to get the necessary results. “For animation we have our internal software called Voodoo, for rendering we used two different paths. For the steamer ship and water we used Houdini, and for clouds and all the rest of our shots we used our internal renderer called Rend. We used our internal compositor called IC, we also used Inferno in some of the shots.”