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 on