With blue screens, miniatures and some 30 effects sequences mixed in with actual footage of Washington, D.C., visual effects artists Michael Lennick and Ray McMillan of Toronto’s The Blackfly Group recently recreated the White House of the Nixon years.

TriStar feature Dick recounts the final days of the Nixon administration in a story about two girls living in the Watergate building who develop a crush on the president and eventually become aware of the illegal events taking place on their doorstep.

Shot for around $25 million, the film stars Dan Hedaya (Cheers’ Nick Tortelli) as the president and was directed by Andrew Fleming (The Craft) and shot by dop Robbi Hinds. Executive producer is Gale Anne Hurd (Armageddon) and David Coatsworth is producing.

The philosophy behind Blackfly, formed in early 1996, is to create seamless, invisible visual effects that look as though they were shot on camera in one location. Lennick and McMillan each have over 20 years’ filmmaking experience, and say whatever the job, their aim is to never allow technology to dictate the results.

Dick called for Washington circa 1972 to 1974, a helicopter from the same era and a slew of elements that couldn’t be shot today due to strict security at the White House and the fact that the presidential palace has changed considerably over the last three decades.

Although creating a digital White House was an option, Lennick says the organic properties such as grass, trees blowing in the wind and changing sunlight wouldn’t have worked properly, and they decided a Brian Kohl miniature was the best way to go.

Aside from shots of typical Washington tourist destinations – the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Pentagon and parts of the White House – the majority of the film was lensed in a Toronto studio using mini-models and blue screens.

Digital compositors Bob Yoshioka, Jason Kolodziejczak and Mike Riley along with project director John Furniotis handled the mix at Toronto’s Film Effects.

One scene involving the two young girls – played by Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire) and Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek) – hanging around outside the White House gate took place in an empty parking lot at the Metro Toronto Zoo. Using a motion-control track, a number of shots were taken, starting with the girls in front of the zoo gates and then craning up to a 100-foot-wide blue screen hanging behind.

The data from the motion-control system was then scaled down by a factor of 12 and the same shot was repeated on the 12-scale miniature White House back in the studio. The footage was cut and pasted together using Cineon software.

The shot starts off at the White House (the miniature version in the Toronto studio) and pans down to reveal the girls outside (actually standing in the parking lot at the zoo). To add life to the scene, flying birds (shot in central Ontario) were composited in along with people (shot on blue screen).

Since no scene which involves the actors in a Washington setting was actually shot in that city, the assignment called for the compositing of numerous pictures shot in a variety of locales.

A scene which has the audience peering through binoculars into the window of the girls’ Watergate apartment, took Lennick and McMillan to Washington where they set up shop on a rooftop across the street from the Watergate complex.

The shot pans down the actual building and into the apartment (which was shot on a stage against a blue screen and composited into a plate shot at the famous structure), then pans down to the parking garage, where a limo drives in (shot in Toronto a month before the Watergate portion was lensed). Once composited together it’s a seamless peek into a Watergate apartment.

When it came to shooting the big stuff in Washington, the necessary permits were attained, but Lennick and McMillan decided to disregard the authorities in order to steal a shot of the White House flagÉalmost got themselves busted in the process.

After a day on the job, the two had some time to kill before going off-duty to check out the Smithsonian. Unhappy with the model’s flag, they took the opportunity to capture the real Stars and Stripes on film.

Using a long lens they shot the Capitol from a half-mile distance, but as they began packing up their gear, some men in black approached, sending the suspicious-looking duo zooming off in their van.

‘Every shot has its own demands,’ says Lennick. ‘In every shot in every film we try to find the best way to tell the story that that particular shot has to tell, and if it involves tweaking or massaging or a new approach, then that is what we do.’

One of their favorite parts in the film is a humorous reality break involving a 180-degree Exorcist-type head spin.

It’s late at night and the two girls are sneaking out of the apartment past mom’s boyfriend Rodrigues, a Nixon spy, sitting on the couch with his back to them. When he hears the friends approaching, he turns his head 180 degrees and smiles, sending the young ladies shrieking out the door.

Keeping in mind that this would be the only reality break in the picture, Lennick and McMillan wanted to make it as real as possible. They started by shooting the actor doing a normal head turn, then put him into an elaborate rig that rotated 180 degrees against a blue screen. Once all the necessary poses were in place, everything was color matched and shipped into Elastic Reality for a complex little morph that would give his neck a corkscrew effect as he turns his head.

‘Add a little twist of celery in the soundtrack and you got the shot,’ says Lennick, who calls it one of the nicest shots they did.

Dick involved a number of invisible effects sequences and a great deal of rear projection and reflections such as when Nixon flies over the city in his helicopter.

According to Lennick, this will be the kind of movie where people in the audience will ask ‘Where are the gags?’ because although it has as many special effects shots as a typical sci-fi picture, it is documented reality and therefore most of the experimental tricks they pulled off will go undetected.

But no matter what they’re doing, whether it’s taking down the Empire State Building (which they did for the Fox/Family Channel mow Quake), recreating the political past, or crashing and burning airplanes (which they’re gearing up for with Freefall, an mow for Saban Entertainment), ‘it’s all just very sophisticated smoke and mirrors.’