THE CROSSING

For our first Chinese project, Tippett Studio created a fully CG recreation of 1940’s Shanghai for director John Woo’s gorgeously photographed film, The Crossing.

Tippett Studio conducted all of the geographical and historical research, mapped the terrain, built all the structures, and designed the camera move for a sweeping flyover sequence. The lengthy, uninterrupted shot begins at dusk in a squalid section of 1940’s Shanghai and ends inside a lushly appointed room at the Peace Hotel late at night, traversing both time and distance.

Every element of the urban landscape – from the tiniest hovel to the enormous exterior of the Peace Hotel – was digitally created. The Tippett team began with plates of Yu Zhen (Zhang Ziyi) making her way down an alley in a rundown section of Shanghai, digitally mapping the images of the practical set to a modeled environment, then extending the set to create an entire city.