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 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Production NotesJoin the Resistance.
Featuring state-of-the-art special effects never seen before, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" represents a trailblazing moment in cinematic history. With more than 2000 effects shots, this unprecedented feature uses live action filmed against blue screen and fills in every frame detail digitally, after the completion of principal photography.
More than six years in the making, this groundbreaking achievement in film is the brainchild of first-time writer/director Kerry Conran, in collaboration with producer Jon Avnet. As Conran says: “This film exists because of Jon Avnet’s maverick spirit, his belief in me and his love for this project.”
Although "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" has virtually no sets and no locations, Conran uses the latest in digital technology to immerse audiences in a breathtakingly detailed and lush, long-lost sci-fi world, where pulp fiction fantasies come to life.
Flying high above New York City, the film opens with the Hindenburg III, a behemoth airship, docking atop the Empire State Building, the world's tallest port-of-call. Storm clouds rumble as snow blankets the city and startling news fills the screen: Famous scientists around the world are mysteriously disappearing.
When deadly gargantuan robots trample the city streets, flinging cars and crushing buildings in their wake, on the investigation is Chronicle reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), who enlists the help of her old flame, Captain H. Joseph Sullivan (Jude Law) -- aka Sky Captain -- an ace aviator with daredevil flying skills.
Traveling to the Himalayan Alps, where they're trapped in an enormous ice cave wired with explosives, and to the tranquil valley of Shangri-la, Polly and Sky Captain battle terrifying flying robots, make an incredible mid-air landing on a mobile airstrip thousands of feet in the sky, and experience the wonder of underwater flight as they search for Dr. Totenkopf, the evil mastermind behind a plot to destroy the world.
Will these two determined souls find the elusive Totenkopf in time? With the help of the courageous captain of an all-female amphibious squadron, Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie), and technical genius Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), Polly Perkins and Sky Captain may be our planet's only hope.
About the Six-Minute Film That Spawned a Film and A Revolution
"It's unlike anything you've seen," says producer Jon Avnet, who's been dubbed "the godfather" of this epic, unprecedented film for his hyphenate role as Conran's mentor-producer-protector. "There are crucial elements that set the film apart when I first saw it, and continue to make it quite unique on many levels." When Avnet showed the six minutes to Jude Law, who portrays flying ace Sky Captain Joe Sullivan, Law was so enthralled with "The World of Tomorrow" short, he not only agreed to play the feature film's title character, he also jumped on board as one of its producers. "What I watched was the most exciting and inspiring retrospective piece of cinema I'd ever seen," Law says. "I'd never seen anything like it before .... I couldn't work out how it was done, but it had this feeling that reminded me of the classical serials of the 1930s and '40s and had a place in today's, if you like, blockbuster, moviegoing appetite. It absolutely bowled me over."
"When I first watched the six-minute video, I understood finally, exactly what they were talking about, and it just looked unlike anything I had ever seen," says Gwyneth Paltrow, the Oscar-winning actress who was Avnet and Law's first choice to play reporter Polly Perkins. "Before I even read the script, I said, 'OK, I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll be in it,' because what I had seen was just amazing."
While boasting elements from many genres and sources, Conran's original six-minute film short was unlike anything anyone had seen. Working alone, the computer software whiz and aspiring filmmaker seamlessly merged classic styles and iconic images with today's cutting-edge digital technology, juxtaposing the Empire State Building, circa 1939, with wild, whip-lashing, point-of-view aerial action shots straight out of today's most intense virtual reality or simulated flight experiences.
"It's mind-blowing," says Giovanni Ribisi, who portrays technical genius Dex. "Absolutely overwhelming."
Using his laptap computer, Conran had not just re-created a world that almost existed, but he had taken the twists and "What If's...?" of science fiction, fantasy, history and destiny and given them fully rendered, vividly rich life. For years, Conran spent nearly every free moment toiling on his Mac©, experimenting with ideas, software, trying to turn his idealized world vision into a virtual reality. Through a quiet, painstakingly modern digital effort, Conran has not only achieved an astonishing re-creation of a long-lost world we all once knew; he launched a filmmaking revolution in the process.
"There is an enormous amount of action, but that's not all," says Avnet. "Kerry has such a special vision, a sense of scale, of graphic composition, of the use of light and the use of darkness that it is somewhat overwhelming. The result is that you take a ride; that the suspension of disbelief is uncanny.
Avnet knew that Conran's "World of Tomorrow," grounded as it was in a collective cinematic memory of classic films, Saturday morning serials and comic book superheroes, was familiar yet entirely new. Conran's short was defined as much by what it did not resonate as by what it did. It wasn't camp or self-conscious or ponderous. It wasn't kitsch or too serious. There may be a twinkle in Sky Captain's eye, but no wink at the camera. There was a glimmer of the inexplicable and unbelievable, which only served to heighten the film's overwhelming sense of the real and wondrous.
The style, tone and story was everything Conran -- and Avnet -- loved about the movies. It was an alternative reality, how things might have been ... once upon a time ... if only. It was a pure, adrenaline rush.
"With all our technology, they were much more future-thinking than we are now," says writerdirector Kerry Conran about the mass consciousness and culture of the 1930s and '40s. "My film was a sort of an idealized vision of the future that never quite materialized, but we all wish perhaps still could."
The six-minute short, which gave rise to the feature-length motion picture "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," gave new meaning to the term, "recruitment film." Conran's short seemed to captivate the hearts and minds of those few who saw it, although it was Kerry Conran's brother, Kevin Conran, who actually began to show it. "I didn't want to show it," Kerry says. "I did not sit down to make a six-minute film. I sat down to make a feature film and I got six minutes into it, and it was four years later, and I thought I might need some help, because this was obviously going to take a while."
In November 1999, Kevin Conran, who had done a couple of illustrations and paintings for Kerry's film, invited an old college friend of his wife over for dinner and a (short) movie. Kerry Conran knew, ready or not, he needed an "outside perspective" on his work and producer Marsha Oglesby seemed anxious to see this short she'd heard so much about. After Oglesby first finished watching it, she was almost speechless. Awestruck, she asked, "Can I see that again?" The next day, when it came time for Oglesby to share the film with her producing partner Avnet, it was all show, no tell. "Just watch it," she said and he did.
"It was the composition of shots, use of light, framing," Avnet says, remembering when he first glimpsed Conran's "World of Tomorrow" in his office years ago. "It had a film noir quality ... I really responded on a personal artistic level. Then, he had these huge mechanical robots invading New York City and it made me smile. It was a totally noncynical presentation of story. More importantly, I came to believe that Kerry had the ability to do it as a full-length film. In fact, he had done it on an Apple [computer] in his garage, which was pretty cool to me."
Avnet, like Oglesby, wanted to see the tape again. He was still wowed. "There are a couple of shots of these robots' feet, which I think are just fantastic because you feel the mass, you feel the density, you feel the weight of them. It's so real it's a little weird almost."
Avnet, a veteran producer-director, knew Conran's vision was unlike anything he'd ever seen. By 1998, having produced special effects-laden films as "George of the Jungle" and "Inspector Gadget," Avnet knew computer graphic imaging (CGI) shots were becoming a large part of moviemaking, but a film made entirely in a computer was unprecedented. The sets, landscapes, locations, design -- everything was done in a computer. Conran's desire to weave animation, computer graphics and actors-against-blue screen into a wild roller-coaster-ride-of-a-movie was incredibly ambitious.
"It's very difficult to describe the look when you are saying the fact that something is 'new,' that you haven't seen anything like it," Avnet says. "As colorful as my language may be at times, I felt I was unable to explain what [it] was unless you saw it."
"The World of Tomorrow" opens with a zeppelin flying through a snowstorm to dock at the top of the Empire State Building. Moments later, when flying robots descend into the soaring skyscraper canyons of Manhattan, wreaking havoc, and the hero, ace aviator Sky Captain, swoops down in his P-40 Warhawk to save the day, the images are breathtaking. Conran's stunning world, wrapped in the shadows of film noir and shaped by the sleek, geometric forms of an ever-faster, machine-driven culture, unfolds mysteriously, seductively, owing as much to Orson Welles as to H.G. Wells. Conran's visual homage leaps back to the future, mixing science-fiction, action-adventure and fantasy with historical fact, fiction and film, in a dark tale of man battling the machine for the survival of humanity.
As Conran remembers, when Avnet finished watching the short, he sat back and asked, "What do you want?" Conran said all he wanted was to make his movie and Avnet replied, "I think I can do that."
And pretty much just like that, Conran's long-held dream of realizing his epic fantasy world merged with Avnet's character-driven filmmaking know-how in an unusual marriage of common sensibilities and complementary strengths. Conran had spent four long years to complete six minutes of film. While the lone pursuit satisfied the self-described "shy" but "controlling," 37-year-old aspiring filmmaker, he knew that at such a glacial pace, his world of tomorrow might never arrive. And Avnet, while acknowledging the undertaking's unprecedented process and scope, saw in Conran's world of tomorrow a breakthrough in filmmaking. For both of them, the future was now.
"This is Kerry's movie," says Avnet of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." "What I am is Kerry's biggest fan, his benefactor. One of the things that appealed to me when I first met Kerry was the notion he had for shooting it. Working on the same computer that however many millions of people have, he was going to make a movie. And that's exactly what he did."
And what Avnet did, like any godfather, was make Kerry Conran an offer he couldn't refuse: Avnet would help Conran make his movie. He would spend his money, time, knowledge and influence to give the unknown Conran the opportunity to create his film. In return, all Kerry Conran had to do was take those six minutes and make them into a full-length feature film, which Avnet would produce and secure Aurelio De Laurentiis to fully finance.
Avnet says, “No one should underestimate the impact of Aurelio’s vote of confidence in this project. Though alternate sources of financing would have been available, Aurelio embraced the concept of allowing me full creative control, which I in turn could give to Kerry on an unprecedented basis. In a traditional development scenario within a studio, Kerry’s movie would never have been made. Something else might have been made, but not Kerry’s movie. Aurelio was instrumental in allowing this whole film to happen."
Aurelio commented, “I remember three years ago when Jon Avnet sent me the script and showed me the six minute tape in Rome. I was so blown away that I couldn’t even speak. When he assured me he would have big stars, I agreed to finance the movie and share ownership with him.”
No one knew at the time, it would take nearly 2000 special effects shots and some six years to realize Conran's vision. No one knew because no one had ever made a film like this before.
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Gwyneth Paltrow, director Kerry Conran and Jude Law on the set of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
