Paramount/Kobal/ShutterstockShooting on the “digital backlot,” where productions shoot on green-or-blue-screen sets with minimal props while backgrounds and depth are given later via CGI, has become commonplace. Its latest high-tech iteration involves Industrial Light & Magic’s StageCraft technology, colloquially known as “The Volume” and famed for its use in The Mandalorian and Doctor Who. This iteration involves a massive LED backdrop, allowing real-time background shifts instead of background changes in post-production. While these technologies are now everywhere in FX-driven Hollywood franchises, an innovative and wildly original tale from a little-known Irish filmmaker was a key early innovator of “digital backlot” filmmaking.Kerry Conran’s genre-bending Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a “digital backlot” pioneer when it debuted in 2004. To celebrate Shout! Studios’ rerelease of the film as a 4K UHD SteelBook, Inverse sat down with the film’s director of photography, Eric Adkins, to talk about the film’s unique look and pioneering role in “digital backlot” history.Unlikely BeginningsThe collaboration between Conran and Adkins stemmed from the pair’s time together at CalArts. “We just hit it off,” Adkins says of the origins of Sky Captain, “I was a mentor in a cinematography class, teaching him the ropes of 16mm and all that, so then he asked me to finish one of his short films for him. Fast forward, he started doing these robot walk cycles [a repeated animation of a robot’s walking gait] in an old Macintosh.”Inspired by film noir, German Expressionist cinema, comic books, and pulp-fiction novels, Conran had been working out the ideas and visuals that eventually became Sky Captain. Using archival footage and illustrative matte paintings, he effectively recreated “Max Fleischer's mechanical monsters,” Adkins says. Which took them to finally working with actual humans, bringing in actors into Conran’s apartment — which they dressed up with aluminum foil and blue cloth — to shoot a six-minute presentation demo.That presentation, presented as a classic serial, was The World of Tomorrow. They brought on Colin Batty, who Adkins worked with on Mars Attacks and The PJs, to design a model robot. “And that was enough to be able to take the project to John Avnet, and he just said, ‘Okay, don't show this to anyone, I'm going to make this movie.”’ Almost three years later, it was in development, with Kerry and his brother Kevin fleshing out its look.A-listers On the Blue ScreenAdkins and co. didn’t expect to land the A-list cast of Sky Captain. | Paramount/Kobal/ShutterstockYou wouldn’t guess its low-budget origins from the film’s stacked cast of A-listers, including Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Angelina Jolie… but that wasn’t Conran’s initial plan. “We started casting, and he originally wanted to do the Star Wars way, where he had unknown actors [as leads] and then known actors as just walk-on guest parts,” Adkins clarifies, “but then all of a sudden, Jude Law became involved and he wanted to be a producer, and he wanted us to help stimulate the economy, so that’s one reason why we shot in the UK and all the VFX was done in the US.”Once Law was on board, Sky Captain grew quickly. They started production at the UK’s Elstree Studios, and brought Gwyneth Paltrow on board. That brought more money in turn, bringing in Angelina Jolie. “All of a sudden, we had a major star cast, and it's unfamiliar territory,” Adkins says.Working against the blue-screen background provoked some creativity for Adkins and crew. “We want to get the actors involved, because it was a furniture-defined space,” he said, and it challenged him to get creative. “I'm going to be a little more dramatic,” he said, “I don't want to see Jude Law’s face when he walks in the door. I want him to be in complete shadow, and then come around the office and sit down in a pool of light. That's the first time you see his face, and then there’s Gwyneth Paltrow sitting there.” That footage ended up being the first test composite.They shot a higher quality version of the initial six-minute short, along with their blue screen footage, and proceeded to sell the package. They received two bids: “it was between DreamWorks and Paramount,” Adkins explains, “and I guess Paramount didn’t have a Mission Impossible that year so they were just like ‘well, let’s go with that,’ and with the difference of money between what we spent and then what he made by selling it, he was able to pay the actors right then and there.”The robot, in its final form. | Paramount/Kobal/ShutterstockAdkins had to work seamlessly with Darin to make the early blend of real-world cinematography and cutting-edge VFX work. “I built the virtual blue screen, he was making sure all the moves fit on it, and scaling them,” Adkins explains. “He was the virtual overseer, I was the practical overseer, and then we just made it happen.” The process of working with such a large VFX team was a positive one. Adkins worked with Digital Effects Supervisor Stephen Lawes to replicate an old film look, playing with compositing and color.The film’s rich 3D virtual sets also involved complex preparations. “We didn’t know how the 3-D stuff was going to turn out quite yet,” but they took a black and white approximation and colorized it with footage they’d already shot, allowing them to build the film’s 3-D depth while avoiding “that crazy, rigid CG stuff.”That’s not to say there weren’t challenges with developing an innovative meshing of live-action and CG. “There were some shots that were like, ‘Oh, holy... they really zoomed in on that in post, and there’s nothing sharp at all!’ For one particular close-up of Paltrow, the backgrounds were more in focus than her face… a highly noticeable problem on a massive silver screen. They drew “glasses” around her eyes and tracked her eyeballs, sharpening just her eyes. “They were the creative fixes to make sure the quality was good.”What New Upgrades Does The Sky Captain 4K Get?The CGI-heavy approach was key to the new 4K release. | Paramount/Kobal/ShutterstockThe obsessive commitment to quality, he explained, was even key to this new 4K release. “Getting extra film grain is the whole reason why we can get a 4K output today, because it was shot in HD and composited to create a film-out, and that becomes the new intermediate phase where it now has organic analog grain. That would now be able to go to 4K instead of using today’s AI tools to up-res something. We got an organic process out of it, and it's not unlike what people are using now in the sense they shoot everything digital, they make an intermediate, and then they rescan that… so they have legitimate film grain baked into it, so now you can feel it’s a film.”While films shot on the “digital backlot” and in “The Volume” sometimes get a reputation for feeling visually shallow, Sky Captain holds up surprisingly well for such an early adopter of the technique. “I think our secret is that the goal for interactivity was so key,” Adkins says.The extensive planning and deep collaboration between the camera crew and VFX team, the focus on interactivity, and the foresight to shoot in HD and create a film-out that could be turned into a stunning 4K release allowed Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow to be a key “digital backlot” pioneer well before it was commonplace. You can see it for yourself in unprecedented detail thanks to the new 4K UHD home release.Bonus content includes:Presented in Dolby VisionAudio Commentary with Director Kerry Conran, Production Designer Kevin Conran, Animation Director Steve Yamamoto, and Visual Effects Supervisor Darin HollingsAudio Commentary with Producer Jon AvnetBrave New World: A Two-Part Look at the Making of Sky Captain and the World of TomorrowThe Art of Tomorrow FeaturetteAnatomy of a Virtual SceneThe Original Six-Minute ShortDeleted ScenesGag ReelTheatrical TrailersSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow 4K Blu-rayAmazon -