The vfx work in The Number 23 gives Intelligent Creatures a chance to shine. All images © 2007 New Line Cinema. 

New Line Cinema's thriller, The Number 23 (opening Feb. 23), may feature a serious star turn for the usually comedic Jim Carrey, but it also provides an opportunity for the Toronto-based effects house Intelligent Creatures to shine. That's evident from the start of the movie, which opens with a complex tracking shot that carries viewers through a children's pop-up book. It's the kind of unbroken camera move you could imagine Alfred Hitchcock doing if he'd had today's digital tools.

Intelligent Creatures visual effects supervisor Jamie Hallett sets the scene: "It starts over Jim's shoulder as he reads The Number 23 book. Jim's character narrates -- talking about his childhood. The camera cranes down to an image in the book that shows the exterior of an old schoolhouse, and it keeps moving closer until we transition into that world. The camera continues toward the schoolhouse, and through a window we see Jim's character at about eight-years-old, sitting in school with his classmates. The camera goes through the window, and we see that -- except for a live-action young Jim -- all the kids are still images. They have this motion blur effect, as if time had stopped.

"The camera continues past young Jim and goes out a window over his shoulder and into another environment. He's walking down a country road with his friends, and it's Halloween. The kids begin disappearing as the camera goes over Jim's shoulder and continues through a graveyard and toward the exterior of his house. Through a window in the house, we see Jim's father working at a desk."

The camera then follows the father's gaze as he looks down at young Jim sitting on the floor, doing homework. Hallett explains, "The father catches the boy reading a detective magazine, and when he flips the magazine up, the camera goes right through it. The cover of the magazine shows a woman with a knife. In reality, it is Jim's mom, who'll be in the next scene. As we go through the detective magazine she turns into live action. Jim's mom then brings a birthday cake to the table where he's sitting. The camera goes past him, through a window and into a neighbor's yard -- a yard where Jim's character was never supposed to go."

In the final section of this non-stop shot, the camera picks up on a dog running through a fence toward the neighbor's vine-covered house. "We continue following the dog through the fence to the neighbor's door," says Hallett. "As we go through the door, we hand off the shot to live action." Director of photography Matthew Libatique used a Steadicam to follow the dog up the stairs and into a bedroom. "That is where," says Hallett, "we find a dead body on the bed."

Jim Carrey's character at about eight sits with his classmates. Except for a live-action young Carrey, all the kids are still images and IC uses a motion blur effect to make it seem as if time had stopped."

Setting the Style
Creating a shot that travels through time as well as space is always tricky, but in The Number 23 it provided a stylish way to summarize the background of Carrey's character. The metaphor of a book is central to this film, in which Carrey plans a man obsessed with a book that seems to tell his life story, and these opening effects reveal his back-story. "It was an impossible camera move for 3,000 frames," observes Hallett. "But it was so important we obviously wanted to nail it."

Fortunately, Intelligent Creatures joined the project early in development. As company president and visual effects supervisor Raymond Gieringer remarks, "We have a great relationship with New Line Cinema, and so we were given a copy of the script to read. It was immediately evident that certain elements of the movie would require visual effects treatments, so most of our efforts went toward flexing our design skills."

Director Joel Schumacher (The Client, Batman Forever, Phone Booth, Phantom of the Opera) clearly understands the role that visual effects can play in heightening suspense. He gave Intelligent Creatures the opportunity to test several ideas during preproduction, and one important test was for the children's book shot. The challenge, observes Gieringer, "was creating something that we hadn't done before."

Jamie Hallett, (whose credits include Matrix Revolutions and The Matador) recalls spending about three weeks on the film's initial storyboards. "We did complete storyboards and animatics for all the big shots, and we sketched out details for the smaller shots. As the storyboards got clearer and roughed in, we knew this was going to be a lot of work. The live-action elements in that opening shot would be filmed on complete greenscreen, so all the environments would have to be created."

Once Schumacher approved the boards, Intelligent Creatures created wire frame animatics using Autodesk's Maya. "It was just basic geometry to nail the camera moves, because there weren't going to be any lock-offs," Hallett explains. "I had worked previously with dp Matt Libatique on The Fountain, and our tests went well."