Journey to the Center of the Earth offers a plethora of stereoscopic vfx, including virtual environments and fully CG characters. All images © MMVII New Line Productions, INC. and Walden Media, LLC.

For Eric Brevig's remake of the Jules Verne classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth (opening today from New Line), not only is it chock full of vfx but it also represents the first big live-action test case for 3-D.

There are virtual environments, fully CG creatures, atmospheric effects, water simulations, set extensions, digital doubles and complex live-action integration. As for the stereoscopic impact, for those fortunate enough to catch it in digital 3-D, the vfx team found it extremely challenging.

No less than five visual effects firms worked on the production. All five -- Meteor Studios (now defunct), Hybride (now sold to Ubisoft), Frantic Films, Mokko and Rodeo FX -- did CG environments, complex simulation work and stereo compositing. In addition, Meteor did CG creatures (the dinosaur). Hybride also did flowing water (river) and lava creatures (carnivorous plants, glowing bird and dandelions). Frantic Films did water (ocean) and lava creatures (flying fish, water dinosaur).

Coordinating their efforts and overseeing all the visual effects work on the film was a monumental task, one handled quite capably by Chris Townsend. Working hand-in-hand with Brevig (the vfx supervisor turned director), was Chris Townsend, the overall visual effects supervisor, to ensure that all the effects synced up in a stereo format.

"Everything had to work in stereo," Townsend stated. "All the tricks we are so used to using in the world of feature film visual effects in a mono world, had to be reconsidered." That proved to be, as one might expect, the most challenging aspect of the production.

For Journey, all the 2-D tricks were useless. In stereo the object literally has to be placed100 feet away, in the virtual world, and a CG 3-D environment has to be created to scale for every shot.

"In 2-D, if you need to show that an object is a hundred feet away, elevating the black levels, reducing its scale, maybe blurring a little to imply depth cueing, works. These are the tricks we know. Working in stereo -- all that goes out the window. In stereo the object literally has to be placed a hundred feet away, in the virtual world. That means you have to create a CG 3-D environment, which is created to scale -- for every shot. There is no cheating; the rulebook has changed. Those tricks, those sleights of hand, with which we are so familiar, they disappear. If it doesn't work in stereo, it doesn't work. That was the biggest challenge: learning that the way we work has changed."

Everything from composition of a shot within the third dimension to integrating live-action elements so that they seamlessly fit within a scene had to work not only from a 2-D aesthetic point of view but also from a stereo perspective.

"Often we worked with sub pixel accuracy to ensure that a splash happened upon the surface of an ocean rather than floating above, or a bluescreen foot walked upon a CG plane rather than under it. The level of detail required to ensure that the audience wouldn't think, 'Hey, there's something wrong about that image,' was intense. We look at the world in stereo, that's our life. Creating a film in stereo takes us one step closer to that reality that we know so well. You don't need to be a visual effects expert to tell if something is wrong in stereo. You just need to have stereo vision! However, understanding the problem and knowing how to solve it does require a different level of expertise."

So how did Townsend and the rest of the visual effects team solve the problem?