How do you effectively promote an upcoming blockbuster without a single frame of footage? You might do it with a clever combination of miniature shooting, motion capture and 3D animation.

West Hollywood’s Engine Room had about four weeks to prep, shoot and post a teaser promoting the 2006 Sony Pictures release The Da Vinci Code on behalf of Intralink Films, a trailer-creation company. Intralink owner Anthony Goldschmidt’s concept for the teaser involved a shot that would track across and descend into canyons that criss-crossed a barren landscape. Eventually the camera would pull out and back to reveal that the deep crevasses were actually cracks in the layers of paint that make up the Mona Lisa.

"Because it was the Mona Lisa we were dealing with, it needed to be done right," says Engine Room’s Dan Schmit, who served as director, DP and VFX supervisor on the project. Engine Room hired Richard Amend, a production designer and working artist, as art director. "He led this very large sculptural crew and scenic crew out at Jet Sets [a set-construction specialist in North Hollywood] to build the miniatures," says Schmit.

The first miniature was about 25 feet long, with a crack about a foot deep. (The camera dropped into it with a Century Optics periscope lens.) The shot transitions to a second miniature, about 30 feet long with a trench four feet deep. The miniatures were shot in 35mm with a Graphlite motion-control system from Pacific Motion using data from an animation previs. Meanwhile, CG supervisor Andrew Honacker led a team of modelers and texture artists to keep matching 3D models just a few hours behind the physical work.

Finally, Engine Room melded the miniature shots with CG and a shot of the actual Mona Lisa, followed by a 2K DI at Complete Post. "We were racing to get the piece done to go in front of Star Wars, which was opening in a week, and we ended up delivering in the middle of the night," Schmit recalls. "But we excel anytime you need a handshake between live action and CG. We’re kind of a laboratory of both technologies, so this was a fantastic project."