Hollywood Science: How to Make a Digital World

Filming conventional high-speed action fare is hard enough, but to bring the classic cartoon Speed Racer to life, the Wachowski brothers had to contend with 300mph racecars sporting fanciful features like robotic reconnaissance pigeons and wheels that can rotate 180 degrees. With 2,300 visual-effects (VFX) shots—twice as many as last year’s eye-popping 300—it heralds the future of summer-blockbuster fare: The entire movie, aside from the human actors, exists only in a computer.

“It’s a film about racing cars with no real cars and no real racetracks,” says Kim Libreri, the vice president of advanced strategy at Digital Domain, a visual-effects studio responsible for many of the race scenes. In our photo gallery, we present a step-by-step guide to constructing an entire movie world from scratch.

Click here to launch the gallery.