BFTR created graphic overlays and 3D wireframes for the high-tech nightvision POV shots. ©1997 New Line Cinema

For the opening sequence of the film, BFTR shot Betacam footage of the airport scene and processed the footage to create a series of hi-tech nightvision POVs, with interactive computer overlays and tracking data. Because of an abbreviated schedule that allowed for only one night of shooting on the Los Angeles International Airport tarmac, we had to shoot our video coverage simultaneously with the main unit's film coverage of the scene; thus, we had to paint out the entire camera crew and equipment from our footage before we could do our actual work.

The targeting wireframes depicting planes and jetways were created and tracked by artists Steve Walker and Greg Notzelman using ElectricImage and composited in Adobe After Effects. For the final POV shot of the plane exploding, Van added hurtling CG cars, ElectricImage Mr. Nitro elements and stock explosions to a static plate of the plane sitting on the tarmac.

The airport sequence also featured the rocket launched by Al Simmons (Michael Jai White), hurtling towards its target, and the explosion of the control tower. With virtually static and completely uneventful film plates to work with, Van designed and Steve Walker executed a pair of ambitious shots using ElectricImage and After Effects, basically creating the shots from scratch in the computer.

BFTR created a CG environment to complete this shot. Download the Quicktime movie (1.5MB) to see a 'before and after.' ©1997 New Line Cinema

All of Spawn's chest, back and neck wounds, spouting unholy green energy, were created and composited by BFTR. Using a series of first unit plates shot with no interactive lighting and no prosthetic guides, artist Greg Notzelman achieved the requisite coruscating look and composited the wounds all in After Effects, tracking each of the many wounds as they bubbled and spouted dynamic crepuscular rays as they healed. One of the most challenging of the green energy shots was a Steadicam shot following a wounded Spawn into the Embassy kitchen, which was tracked and animated in ElectricImage by Steve Walker.

Al takes his trip to hell in this all-CG shot. ©1997 New Line Cinema

For Al's journey to Hell itself, BFTR provided the transitional tunnel of fire between the live action world of the living and the computer-generated Hell created by Santa Barbara Studios. The "Gullet" was originally supposed to be a pair of straight composites, with a burning stuntman moving past camera against black and comped onto a fire background, but we decided to try our own wholly-CG version of the shot, following a flailing, flaming figure falling past us through a twisting, organic corridor of flame.

This test proved so successful that the production not only dropped the live stunt shoot, but added several more variations of the shot throughout the film. We shot a series of live fire elements with practical effects supervisor Garry Elmendorf, scanned them into the computer, and lead artist Erich Ippen incorporated them into his ElectricImage projects for the shots.

These various fire elements were also key elements in a series of shots in Wanda's living room in the last act of the film, where the seemingly-normal fireplace is revealed as a portal to Hell. Erich animated living tendrils of fire roaring out of the fireplace, coalescing into a Hellspawned torture rack or grabbing Cog and Spawn and pulling them into the portal.

BFTR created ominous clouds and created a digital camera move to this complicated composite shot. ©1997 New Line Cinema

For a shot of Cog (Nicol Williamson) watching an ominous green cloudbank roll over the city, we created entirely CG moving clouds and lightning in After Effects. Using MetaCreation's Final Effects particle plug-ins, Erich generated and precomped thousands of layers of particles to create the boiling clouds, and then comped them in with both a live-action city skyline plate (augmented by a matte painting by Bruce Walter of XO Digital) and a bluescreen element of Cog. Although the shot was designed as a simple lockoff, we added digital crane-down to give it a more dynamic feel.

Other shots included morphs, screen burn-ins and other weird-ass composites and elements, such as a shot of Clown listening to Wynn's deadly heart implant. In one instance, because the production was not able to synchronize an actor's performance against a high-resolution video projection of BFTR's HEAT-16 dispersal graphic on the set, we went into the footage and matchmoved our own graphic back into the scene, slipping its sync so it timed out correctly with both Martin Sheen's performance and the camera's move.

What was unique about SPAWN was not so much that twenty-four separate visual effects houses from all over the world worked on it, from ILM on down, but the fact that producer Clint Goldman and director Mark Dippe had multiple houses working together on single shots. For example, at the climax of the film, a wide down-angle shot of Spawn and Cog blasting off in Hell to escape a mob of angry Hellspawn was created by four companies working together: BFTR created the hero animation of Spawn running to Cog and roaring up out of frame in a blast of green fire; Santa Barbara Studios built the breathing lava landscape; EyeDentify in Japan provided the flocking CG Hellspawn elements, and Digiscope composited all of our elements together for the final shot.