I wondered where the fictional Gotham was filmed. The flyovers and aerial shots looked great, but weren’t easily identifiable as any real city. According to IMDb, it seems the shots flying through the skyscrapers with the train were Chicago, and i’d guess some of the wider aerial shots were New York City. Both with plenty of compositing of real footage with computer-generated images and miniature shots. All were assembled very neatly into realistic locations and backdrops that played pretty prominently into the film’s story.
Just found a couple of podcasts at fxguide from July 2005 where Paul Franklin from Double Negative discusses the intricacies of their special effects work on the film. In the beginning of part one, he explains that the train shots were done in Chicago’s downtown financial district. Since the area is more or less vacant after office hours, they were free to close down the streets for helicopter shots and car chase scenes. Interesting stuff.
