Here, we see the focus on an organic feel toward the visual effects.

Toronto-based Intelligent Creatures, under the supervision of Raymond Gieringer and Jamie Hallett, was responsible for designing and creating a variety of space backgrounds that would serve as the backdrop for the trek. "We had a whole language that we spoke with [Intelligent Creatures] based on descriptions of Peter's work," Dawson adds. "We liked using something so small to illustrate something so massive and the whole cyclical nature of the film being about life and death. I thought it worked metaphysically. And we set up some rules and it gave us something that we probably wouldn't have thought of on our own."

Part of the design challenge was to create a sense of space that would be as timeless 20 years from now as it was today. To accomplish this, Intelligent Creatures drew from Park's library of macro-footage of various liquid chemical reactions. These practical elements were then split-apart, warped and displaced to become a series of naturally progressing space backgrounds. There were a multitude of scenes, 234 shots in all, in which these backgrounds were ultimately utilized.

"The first stage was to develop various 'Hero' backgrounds that would serve as the backdrops for Jackman's voyage to the dying star," Gieringer explains. "Each environment was modular, yet connected, so we had to discover what each would be comprised of, and ultimately how they fit together. These discoveries took the form of repurposing many of the elements, both large and minute that existed within Peter Park's macro-footage into a much larger and controllable canvas.

"The techniques that we used such as grid warping, displacement and defocus are somewhat standard in our industry, much like traditional paint, brush and canvas. However, the real accomplishment in the creation of the environments lies with the ways in which the artists utilized this toolset. In the end, the artists' imagination was the key to the cosmic jigsaw puzzle that lay within Peter's elements. In technical terms, our tool of choice in the construction of the space backgrounds was Digital Fusion. It was built for film use many years ago and has proven invaluable to us in the design and execution of high-end film work.

The filmmakers are hoping to make the little hairs on the audience members' necks stand up too.

"In terms of there being no CGI at all, it is really a matter of perspective. Traditionally, many or all of the elements that we utilized to create our backgrounds would have been computer-generated. But it was very important to Darren that the look and feel of the film was timeless, not just the best we could do in 2006. So we went down a different road in creating the elements... we generated them organically instead of in a computer. So, yes, technically there is no CGI at all in our creations. However, the various tools and techniques that we employed to ultimately create our master canvases were computer-centric. So in simple terms, the elements we used were from the real world, but the ways in which they were combined were CG-based. Our team consisted of about 35 crew members, and if you include the initial time we spent designing the environments we worked on the film for the better part of a year.

"Darren had a vision for the film. Dan and Jeremy were partners in the evolution and design of that vision. We worked closely with both Dan and Jeremy to see that Darren's ideas took form. We created many works in progress to test their ideas and offered as many of our own as we could. They spent a lot of time sitting with our artists to flush out concepts in the early development phase and to eventually tweak the final backgrounds. It really was a collaboration in the finest sense of the word. And Darren was kind enough to visit us himself on a couple of occasions, which thrilled all of us."

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.