Since the majority of the movie takes place at night, they studied how lights and colors blend together and defocus in the real photography. "We made sure the CG had the same feeling," Chen says. "And colors are important because a city at night is mostly defined by the color of the windows. You learn that each building has different types of colors. Some are green windows, some are warmer, some have blinds that are open and some are closed. We created a whole library of room interiors, so that whole floors could look like an office building; other floors were hotels with blinds. We made sure there was a television flickering inside a window whenever possible because Spider-Man might land on a perch and you want to see the detail around him. And it's all defined by these buildings and windows. We used our global illumination renderer, Arnold, which creates beautiful images that take forever. 

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Bill Desowitz is former senior editor of AWN and VFXWorld. He's the owner of the Immersed in Movies blog (www.billdesowitz.com), a regular contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and author of James Bond Unmasked (www.jamesbondunmasked.com), which chronicles the 50-year evolution of 007 on screen and features interviews with all six actors.