Fox Searchlight Pictures

A family drama usually isn’t the first kind of movie to come to mind when one thinks about visual effects. But “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s film that incorporates the formation of the universe into the tale of one Texas family, has awards prognosticators taking notice of its nontraditional visual techniques. The film is on the Oscar shortlist for best visual effects and is likely the only film listed there to have used computer-generated imagery, space photography, drops of colored dyes and splashes of half-and-half in tanks of water to generate its effects.



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Mr. Malick wanted effects that would help convey the emotions of his ambitious story. He used as his visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, whose résumé includes “Speed Racer,” “Batman Begins” and the “Matrix” sequels. And Mr. Malick brought in Douglas Trumbull, a filmmaker in his own right whose effects experience includes groundbreaking work on “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” as a consultant.

Here, Mr. Glass and Mr. Trumbull discuss how they helped Mr. Malick achieve his vision.

Dinosaurs, Restrained



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One scene that comes about 30 minutes into the movie flashes back to the prehistoric era. By a river, a predator shows mercy to a young parasaur. The scene reflects a moment in the evolutionary process when consciousness and awareness of others are evident.

“Terry was always trying to find the Tao, the beauty and natural aspects to the things he photographs,” Mr. Glass said of Mr. Malick’s approach. “We tried to play things down a lot of the time. You come across the dinosaurs and they’re offset or they’re very strongly backlit, so they’re really just a silhouette. It’s trying to find a way to show them that isn’t about showing off the work that’s been done, but finding restraint.”



Creating Space



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The scene above looks at the universe coming into formation. “We wanted to find ways to replicate what nature does normally, which has to do with gravity, atmosphere, forces and heat that form stars, planets and galaxies,” Mr. Trumbull said. “We tried to do it in a way that was in keeping with what you see in real space photographs.”

One of the many ways these natural acts were simulated was through the use of a water tank, similar to one that Mr. Trumbull used on “Close Encounters.” He first thought of the idea while working on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” when pouring cream in to his coffee and seeing the patterns it made.

For “The Tree of Life,” they introduced fluorescent dyes into a tank of water and used different lighting techniques for effects. “We found when we lit them from the side, we could get something that looked exactly like it came out of the Hubble space telescope,” he said.

The effects team experimented in labs on weekends and developed a technique where the dyes were filmed from different distances and lit with a high-wattage xenon lamp. It created an interstellar quality.

“One of the most interesting things about it was Terry’s willingness to go into the unexplored,” Mr. Trumbull said.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

In addition to the dyes, some actual Cassini spacecraft photography was used for scenes and enhanced with effects.

“There are images of Saturn where, when you work with the pristine, beautiful, original material, it actually looks so clean, you couldn’t put it on the screen without people thinking it’s just CG,” Mr. Glass said. “And so we had to add in tiny subtle textual details.” They separated out the moons around Saturn and added texture.

The scenes have a crispness to their imagery that a viewer could get lost inside. The filmmakers produced the work at an IMAX level of detail, using 5.5K screen resolution.

“That was a part of Terry’s passion,” Mr. Glass said. “He wanted to feel that you could zoom into an image and sense the detail that kept going. Like life itself, you don’t run out of pixel detail.”