As for depth, Rodriguez wanted to avoid the staged look that has sometimes plagued 3D productions of the past and bring out richer layers of texture. “The idea was to constantly highlight the visual assault factor of a video game. I had a requirement that in every shot we had to read several planes of distance: a foreground, a middle ground and a background,” he explains. “For the most part, I found that simplicity and a clean look to every frame was the best approach for the design. This works best for 3D and the simplicity of the design only serves to further remind the audience that the kids are trapped inside a world that is animated, not real.”
All along, Rodriguez wanted to avoid only one thing: predictability. “I think a lot of the fun of what we’ve created in the film is through the set-up of the different 3D gags. In previous 3D movies, you might have nine or ten good 3D gags, but this movie has hundreds and you can’t always see them coming,” he says. “We started from the rule that anything is possible inside a video game so anything could happen on the screen. 3D with anaglyphic glasses works fantastically well with computer generated images, so we were able to raise the bar even further on new thrills.”
Helping Rodriguez to create this chaotic, anything-can-and-and-will happen world were his crack team of special effects specialists, who were at the ready to sketch, composite and render on demand. Since you can’t shoot computer animation with a 3D camera, the effects team solved the problem by rendering each shot twice: the first time as seen by the right eye, and the second time as seen by the left. The computer then interwove the two images and voila: a 3-dimensional virtual reality world was created. Rodriguez notes: “One of the great things about having my own effects company is that I could work with the technical people to develop effects on the fly, rather than having to wait months to try out ideas. I’ve realized in making the SPY KIDS films that the more versed you are in the technical aspects of moviemaking, especially effects, the more it allows you as a director to be free creatively and push the envelope.”
Perhaps just as astonishing as the effects Rodriguez and crew created is how fast they did it – cramming into only a few months a pioneering technological production. “For me, making this film was a bit like being thrown into the most frantic, hectic, challenging video game there is,” says Rodriguez. “But it was by far the most fun I’ve ever had. There’s also a creative bonus to moving fast. You tend not to over think things, and you head straight towards the ideas that really work, and discard the rest. It’s a very efficient way to work, one that allows complete creative freedom because you’re also controlling the budget by doing it that way. Lower budgets mean total creative freedom, which is ultimately what you want as an artist.”
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