For Eagle Eye, Sony Pictures Imageworks seamlessly integrated fantastic elements into a real-world setting. A tunnel had to be created and combined with practical elements. All images © 2008 DreamWorks LLC.

Technology is less than friendly in DreamWorks' new thriller Eagle Eye, but it was more than helpful when it came to creating the film's visual effects.

The film's vfx work, by Sony Pictures Imageworks, was distinguished by the need to seamlessly and believably integrate the more fantastic elements of the film's premise into a real-world setting. Imageworks Visual Effects Supervisor Jim Berney and Digital Effects Supervisor Dave Smith say that was accomplished by integrating digital effects with practical equivalents shot on the set and with the help of a new renderer named Arnold that the company has been co-developing in-house.

Berney and Smith say they got the project because of their previous work with Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Jim Rygiel on such projects as The Lord of the Rings. Rygiel was the one on-set, working with director D.J. Caruso to ensure that what was shot would work out for the later effects work.

Berney says Caruso's primary direction for visual effects was that they support the story. "He didn't want the effects to steal the show," Smith says. "He would always have a name for a shot, and if we weren't telling the story, he'd say the name of this shot is '[whoever] exits the tunnel,' so we had to tell the story in the shot." The first sequence Berney and Smith worked on epitomized the challenges they faced on the film. The scene involved the mysterious overloading of some high-tension power lines in a remote desert location that snap, swing to the ground and electrocute someone. "That sequence, effects wise, wasn't over-the-top tricky -- it was more conceptually tricky," adds Berney. "We had to make it work in a way where it felt like there's some kind of intelligence behind it."

That intelligence is eventually revealed to be Aria, a military supercomputer connected to and capable of controlling every cell phone, web camera and networked electronic device in carrying out its mission of protecting the nation from terrorism. As often happens in such films, Aria believes it can only do so by seizing total control, and it uses all the tools at its disposal to blackmail a smart slacker and a single mom, played by Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan, into doing its dirty work.

For most of the film's vfx work, there were what Berney calls practical elements -- elements of sets, vehicles or shots that were captured on the set, miniatures shot at Kerner Studios, with digital effects used to supplement shots or create shots that were otherwise impossible to film.

Most sequences were a mix, such as a scene in which LeBeouf is freed from an FBI office tower when a crane smashes through the side of the building. The building seen in the film is fictional, with practical effects shot on a stage and placed digitally in a specific location near Quincy Station in downtown Chicago.

Another highlight was a chase scene in which small military aircraft, including Wasp and Reaper drones, pursue LeBeouf and Monaghan's vehicle into a long tunnel, resulting eventually in the explosion of a large tractor-trailer. When a real tunnel long enough to match the scene couldn't be found, Imageworks had to create one and combine practical elements shot at the El Toro Marine base in Orange County into the final shot.

"I think one of the Wasp shots and one of the Reaper shots used practical versions, and then when it was impossible to get the action that they wanted, or just impossible to shoot, we provided a CG version," suggests Smith.

The El Toro shots also provided their fair share of technical difficulties. "It was shot outside at night and it was raining. So trying to pull those mattes and get rid of all the rain and whatnot was really tricky," Berney adds.