Various visual effects tricks were used to create the stark black-and-white look of the graphic novels.

Very deep was the answer, with the minimal prop use meaning more work for the artists. “There would sometimes be a real car, but sometimes he couldn’t get the camera where he wanted so [the actors] were instead sitting on apple boxes. We had to create interiors of CG cars that had to cut with the real cars and match exactly. There is a scene where they go to, like, the La Brea Tar Pits and it’s really just a concrete floor. They are walking in wet mildew grass that didn’t exist, as well as bushes and tress and rain. We have the most rain in any episode and there was no rain on set. We had to create all the CG rain and the interaction of the rain and the clouds moving and trying to keep continuity. When you shoot an all greenscreen movie, you tend to get really lost quickly because you don’t have any point of reference. We had to develop north/south/east and west looks right off the bat. We actually temped out our entire episode by Thanksgiving of last year, even when it wasn’t due until the first of March. It was a tough call to make and it really burned some people out, but it was the only way we could be sure what Robert wanted.

“It was also scary, because Robert didn’t want us to share between the vendors,” Burrell continues. “We asked and Robert said, ‘No offense, I want you to do what you think is best and run with it. I want Hybride and The Orphanage to do the same because they are uniquely different stories.’ To Robert’s credit, he uses that to motivate the companies to come up with new things. If he sees something that he likes from one company, then he’ll tell the other company. But, honestly, I think everybody did such uniquely different jobs, we never got into a situation where Robert asked us to match.”

As for his favorite moments that CaféFX created, Burrell details, “There is a scene where Dwight is holding Jackie-Boy’s head in a toilet. In the graphic novel, it’s black shadows on Dwight and a white wall behind him. We built this photoreal bathroom, so what I thought would be neat was a slow push in on Dwight. We tweaked the levels and made it look just like the graphic novel. By the time the camera was done with the push in, we went from a photoreal world to a white wall and Dwight was super contrast-y and we captured that flavor from the graphic novel. When Dwight gets up to leave, it goes back to the real world. It’s an isolated moment and Robert loved it. Dwight is sort of a crazy character and you don’t know when he is going into his madness, so it heightens that. [Robert] liked it so much, he had us do it in other moments in the film, so there are moments where it goes into stylized mode, but it just accents the action or the motivation of the character.”

Sin City takes the art of all digital sets to a new level.

Another highlight involves Tarantino’s segment. “He directed a scene with Dwight driving a dead Jackie-Boy in his T-Bird to the Tar Pits. Jackie-Boy is dead, but Dwight thinks he is talking to him, so it’s a very maddening scene. Quentin shot it and referenced a really great film called Suspiria, which was one of the last films [printed in Technicolor dye transfer]. There was a super colorful scene of a girl in a taxi and these colored lights are going by and Quentin wanted us to match that and we did. Again, it’s super stylized and it’s not like in the graphic novel, but it captured the flavor.”

Detailing the overall production schedule, Burrell says, “It was a long haul. I was on it for nine months. We had a huge crew and it was the most shots Café has ever done for a single film — 650 shots. Our segments runs 42 minutes uncut, but Robert cut 10 minutes out. Some of that had to do with gore, but on the DVD all of it will be put back in. Also, one of the biggest things for us was that this HD444 technology is brand new and nothing works! Even Avid can’t make it work right, so there is a learning curve for not only the software and the hardware, but also the technology. People call it the new film, but it’s still video technology and you have to treat it like that, because it’s not quite there yet. It’s not like Cineon. There is a whole learning curve involved, so we learned a lot. I think the next show should go a lot easier. I had a great experience on it and knowing what I know from this, I have a better idea now on how to plan it out better — blueprinting the world a little more. We were so rushed to turn in ideas for looks that we overlooked the overall blueprint. From the get-go next time, we would blueprint the entire world and make a map of where we were in the city. Overall, it’s probably one of our most challenging projects ever because of the number of shots and that it was all green screen. I really have a deeper respect now for ILM and Star Wars films because they create so much. For Sin City, we are most proud of the fact that when most people watch it, they won’t have a clue that the city didn’t exist and they are all on a greenscreen, which is the point!”