The opening shot of Zombieland shows the US Capitol building in all its splendor, before slowly panning down to see the ruins and being mauled by a ravenous zombie. The scene was created by CIS Vancouver and required some extensive CG and compositing work, which they discuss with CGSociety.
We had to cut a few corners on our build, allowing textures to do more of the work than we would normally want. But 8 weeks was very tight no matter what approach you take and we wanted the end result to look good, so even though we cut a few corners, we invested our resources and time into the areas that needed it most.
Starting the build straightaway, Emond used Google Earth to get an idea for the correct position for all the buildings in the location so we could start blocking out the camera move. Hart continued to work with Paraszczynec and Emond throughout the process refining the matchmove, fixing bumps or slips that showed up from time to time.
