December 2008 26
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VFX/ Post
e radical innovation for Lionsgate's e Spirit is not the stylized look director Frank Miller chose
for his film adaptation of Will Eisner's comic book series, although it's likely that style will capture
the most attention. e Spirit's muted colors and stark black-and-white contrasts provide a subtle
variation to the filmmaking aesthetic introduced with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, one
in which digital backgrounds created by visual effects studios surround actors filmed on greenscreen
stages. It's a style particularly suited for lifting graphic novels onto the big screen, as the graphic and
gritty Sin City and painterly 300, both based on Frank Miller's graphic novels, soon demonstrated.
Stu Maschwitz, visual effects supervisor and second unit director for e Spirit, describes how
the visual effects created for this film differ from the previous comic book adaptations. Maschwitz,
CTO and co-founder of e Orphanage, where he also directs commercials and short films, was that
studio's visual effects supervisor for Sin City, which Miller co-directed. "Sin City brought that comic
book to life," Maschwitz says. "And, 300 turned the graphic novel into a painting. "But for e Spirit,
we wanted to do more than re-create the comic book. We wanted to create a cinematic experience
