Hybride also created the striking white rain that falls in Sin City.

“That was a big question mark with the movie because he was really trying to convert the book one-to-one and sometimes it was more contrast or less. So that was another reason why it was difficult at the beginning and we made our decision to do everything with a lot of resolution, like a normal picture. On the final, we were able to cut details so we didn’t have to redo everything. We did it once and after that we could do different styles.” As for systems used on the film, he adds, “We use mainly XSI for the 3D. We have Maya for the 3D parts and for compositing it was Discreet logic, inferno, flame. We had 85 people working on it for the 3D and other things.”

Reflecting on the project, Leduc is really happy with the forest they created. “It wasn’t exactly a real forest; it was in between being stylized and real looking. The other challenge was the rain. We began by doing real rain and Robert said it looked too real and he didn’t want to see something that looked too real. So we tried to find the essence of the look of it from the comic book, trying to extract the style, but at the same time you need to believe it’s real rain.”

In the end, Leduc says the “The Hard Goodbye” segment consisted of 735 shots and another 200 shots of color correction, for about 54 minutes of effects. “We began shooting last spring, but the big chuck of production was in the last four months. Matter of fact, one of our shots, was shooting in the second week of January 2005! It was the shot with the priest at the end of our book. They were actually shooting Shark Boy and Lava Girl then, so they took a break from that to do a couple days of Sin City again.

Café FX’s Everett Burrell worked closely with director Robert Rodriguez to choose the right visual balance between the stark black-and-white of the graphic novels and the filmed color images.

CaféFX — “The Big, Fat Kill”
Digital effects supervisor Everett Burrell of CaféFX Inc. suggests their involvement with Sin City stemmed from the sheer volume of effects that were needed for the film. “Robert has a relationship with CaféFX since Spy Kids. Basically, when Hybride realized that there were just too many shots, it became an automatic decision to go back to the other vendors they trust the most: CaféFX and The Orphanage.” Burrell admits he was a fan of Miller’s novels before they were assigned and because of his familiarity with the books, he initially thought the project would be easier because of Miller’s high contrast style.

“As we talked to Robert, he said, ‘No that’s not necessarily true because we can’t go as graphic as the graphic novels because it would wear and tear on the audiences eyes.’ We then realized it was going to be a photorealistic show and that we would selectively pick areas that are more stylized than others. So, we had to build the whole world, photoreal, and then in certain moments, it goes more stylized. That way, the audience isn’t so strained looking at a big, white screen all the time.”

Using the graphic novel as their storyboard, Burrell admits, “It was a lot more intense than any of us originally thought. We thought it would be a lot more comic booky, but it’s actually more film noir, than, say, the Richard Linkletter film, Waking Lives.” So we watched these old noir films like The Third Man, Touch of Evil and even Eraserhead was a very big influence.” In order to balance the intense effects demands, Burrell says they broke the segment down in-house. “I supervised half of it and Jeff Goldman supervised the other half. We split it pretty evenly and then Dave Lombardi at our Santa Monica office handled the [guest directed Quentin] Tarantino sequence, which was 35 shots, I think. Our teams would share ideas and techniques.”

Because of the greenscreen shooting, creating their entire world from scratch took a huge bulk of CaféFx’s time. “[Robert] wanted the actors to appear very real, just more moody and keeping all the nuisances. That also translated to the world we had to build: a subtle, realistic world, that wouldn’t make the audience think it’s fake. We had to make sure we put in every nook and cranny, bolt, doorknob and light bulb, tiles and carpeting and dirty glass. It’s a very dirty world! There had to be stains on the walls and dripping water, garbage in the alleyways — very intense detail. Also, the actors had to interact in this world that didn’t exist. It was exciting, but it was also very frightening because the amount of work. When you look at the plates, you just see guys standing on a greenscreen. What’s there? What’s behind them and how deep do we have to make this world?”