Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow months before Conran made the movie with his actors, he shot it entirely with stand-ins in Los Angeles and then created the whole movie in animatics so that the actors had an idea of what the film would look like and where to move on the soundstage. To prepare for the film, Conran had his cast watch old movies, such as Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not" (1944) for Paltrow's performance and "The Thin Man" (1934) for the relationship between Nick and Nora that was to be echoed in the one between Joe and Polly. Avnet constantly pushed
Lauren Bacall not provided a quick career resurgence. "The Big Sleep" laid the foundation for her status as an icon of film noir. She would be strongly associated with the genre for the rest of her career, and would often be cast as variations of the independent and sultry femme fatale character of Vivian she played in the movie. As described by film scholar Joe McElhaney, "Vivian displays an almost total command of movement and gesture. She never crawls." Bacall was cast with Bogart in two more films. In "Dark Passage" (1947), another film noir, she played an enigmatic San Francisco artist.