Superman, from Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios, delivers a character who’s driven by compassion and an inherent belief in the goodness of humankind. James Gunn directed the feature, which finds the superhero drawn into conflicts here and abroad. Tech billionaire Lex Luthor tries to leverage this opportunity to get Superman out of the way for good.
At the Daily Planet, Clark Kent’s reporting is drawing suspicion due to his frequent interviews with the elusive Man of Steel. In addition, Lois Lane is trying to use her secret romantic relationship with Superman to help her own journalism career. Krypto, the super canine, also makes an appearance, helping Superman when he needs it most.
The film stars David Corenswet as Superman and Clark Kent, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. Additional credits include Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion, Isabela Merced, Skyler Gisondo, Sara Sampaio, María Gabriela de Faría, Wendell Pierce, Alan Tudyk, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell.
Gunn partnered with director of photography Henry Braham to shoot the project, which was edited by William Hoy and Craig Alpert. Composers John Murphy and David Fleming created the film’s original music.
Weta FX
Like so many superhero movies of recent years, Superman is packed with visual effects. Weta FX served as the lead effects studio on the film, delivering 600 shots that represent a number of key sequences. One of which is the Kaiju — a monster that starts off small but quickly grows to skyscraper height. Lex Luthor releases the Kaiju in downtown Metropolis, hoping to distract Superman from his bigger plan.
According to Weta VFX supervisor Guy Williams (pictured), the production spent roughly a week shooting drone footage in Cleveland, which would serve as the backdrop of a large battle between the Kaiju and the Justice Gang, who offer their support to Metropolis. The shoot only allowed for coverage of a few city blocks, leaving VFX to create the surrounding area, as well as the top of buildings, which the drone was limited from filming due to flight restrictions.
“James (Gunn) and Henry (Braham) are very keen to shoot their whole movie,” says Weta FX’s Williams. “He’s not the kind of director who’s just like, ‘I’m not going to shoot any of this. We’ll do it in post.’ He wants to direct the camera, direct the actors. He wants it to be a part of the filmmaking process, with the screen, which is fantastic. Even if we end up replacing something, it’s starting from such a strong position.”
The VFX team would match-move the digital environment so that it replicated the live-action footage, continually iterating the models, textures and shaders.
“[You’d be] hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two,” says Williams. “Once you have that kind of fidelity...it becomes a sandbox to play in. You can build upon what the live-action unit was able to shoot.”
For the Kaiju, resolution independence allowed the studio to size up the 300-foot-tall character for shots where only his eye or head are visible.
“Since human-sized characters are fighting it, we would often end up really, really, really close to the CG character,” Williams explains. “When Hawk Girl lands on its head, we’re looking at about one percent of the surface of its head. When she’s on the eye, she’s only half as tall as his eyeball.”
Weta was also responsible for creating the Pocket Universe, where Lex Luthor secretly holds his adversaries.
“If you’ve watched a lot of James Gunn’s recent projects, especially Guardians of the Galaxy, he loves fractals,” Williams explains. “He loves repeating math shapes.”
Weta referenced the element Bismuth for inspiration, which can be melted and then cooled to create purple/blue/gold crystal extrusions.
“They’re very shiny,” he shares. “They’re absolutely stunning to look at. So, we based everything we did off the actual Bismuth crystal. We wrote software that would grow the crystals...We would draw some shapes and then we figured out all the characteristics that we needed to mimic. And then we had a piece of software that, if you drew a couple of shapes, it could give you a bunch of crystals.”
Using SideFX Houdini and their own custom code helped achieve the desired results.
The largest sequence that Weta FX executed comes near the end of the film, when Mister Terrific takes on a bunch of soldiers guarding the entrance to the Pocket Universe. The scene has the look of a Middle East desert, but was actually shot on the lake front in Cleveland. The scene spans two-and-a-half minutes and is a combination of choreographed stunts and digital effects.
“The stunt team worked with James for a longtime, choreographing all the beats,” Williams reveals. “They had it down to this beautiful performance.”
The scene was broken into three segments that were shot over two days, which helped to accommodate stunt rigging for multiple characters, as well as resets for multiple takes, but presented challenges due to changes in the weather and lighting.
“The breakpoints were very considered by the stunt team on how to best shoot it,” he recalls. “When we go to put those three scenes back together, it looks like one, long shot. The first part was shot in the morning. The second part was in the afternoon. The next part was the next day, in the morning, and there were less clouds in the sky, so the three scenes feel totally different. For the most part, we were able to deal with a lot of it just by changing the color temperature of the plates, and doing some selective grading and balancing. But the second and third sequence were significantly different.”
Weta’s work also involved digital characters, such as replacing the live-action Superman in select shots to better position his body, which was restricted by a harness.
“Even if we were using a digital human to replace a character, we’re match-moving with high fidelity the performance that the character gave...Sometimes we replace the whole character because lighting isn’t accurate enough, and it’s going to look a little bit comp’y if we have a face that’s not swinging around in the light like the camera is. But even then, we match move the face so that you can’t tell the difference. Our job isn’t to second guess an actor’s performance. It’s to take what they gave and put it into any environment and make it feel fantastical.”
Framestore
Framestore was another major contributor to the film’s visual effects, creating 541 shots that made it into the final edit. According to visual effects supervisor Stéphane Nazé (pictured), much of the studio’s work included the creation of Krypto, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and its staff of robots, and Lex Luthor’s Engineer — a female character that’s able to change her body thanks to implanted nanotechnology.
Krypto is based on James Gunn’s own dog, which is about 60 percent smaller than the super dog and brown in color. Gunn sent the VFX team videos of his dog for inspiration, capturing his energy and motion. Superman audiences find out that Krypto actually belongs to Supergirl, Superman’s cousin, and there’s a good chance he’ll appear in another film in the near future, as Framestore is set to contribute VFX.
“We got pictures and we got some clips, some videos — shot with an iPhone — in his house, on the terrace, just showing his dog,” Nazé recalls. “How he’s acting. How crazy he is. And what you see in the movie, that’s what literally he is at home. That’s exactly his dog!”
The studio didn’t have to start from scratch in developing the canine character. It was able to tap into its experience creating Cosmo for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies to develop Krypto’s look.
“Basically, we knew we’d be on this movie at the end of Guardians because James really enjoyed working with Framestore,” shares Nazé. “We did Cosmo, and we developed a lot of things internally. We have proprietary software. We have our own tools for the groom, for the hair, for the rendering and all those things.”
Krypto began as a base mesh asset, which Framestore then groomed by adding hair.
“The very complex part is to get the right base mesh, because when you groom on the top, that will define the length of the fur.”
He adds that the CG fur’s length, motion and texture combine to make the digital character that much more believable.
“When you see it bounce. When you have Krypto running or jumping, you feel like (there’s) muscle bouncing under the fur volume.”
The Framestore team focused on making Krypto look like a real dog, rather than a super-powered canine. His ability to fly would resemble a dog taking a big jump. And the landing would follow a nature posture.
“(We) grab a lot of references and always assume that to be a real dog,” Nazé explains. “The best way to appropriate this character is to feel he is a dog and it’s not a cartoony dog, doing crazy things.”
The studio used keyframe animation to create Krypto’s movement, which involved animating his four legs, tail and billowing red cape.
“It’s never motion capture,” says Nazé of the film’s character animation. “James is someone who loves to shoot fast. He has to go fast, and he’s very attached to the storytelling. There’s good expertise at Framestore about key-frame animation and the input of the artist also is super important. So for those specific things, we don’t do any capture…When you want to get very specific control, really, the best way is keyframe.”
Superman’s Fortress of Solitude also represents a significant portion of Framestore’s work. The building emerges from below the Antarctic snow as a massive structure made of crystals beams, and is later shown retracting back into the snow. According to Nazé, the overhead shot of the Fortress emerging, with the camera spins overhead, took more than a month to render.
“I have to say, [Framestore is] extremely proud to be the company developing this because, for us, it was very emblematic of the ‘Superman’ universe,” he states. “We got some quick sketches at the very beginning to define more the shape, overall, of the fortress. But then, quickly, the idea was, ‘What about those crystals? How transparent are they?’ When you see the fortress growing, and you have the top-down view, obviously that’s all CG.”
Framestore’s toolset includes Autodesk Maya, Maxon’s ZBrush and Foundry’s Nuke, along with many plug-ins. The studio shares assets when working on a film — in this case with Weta FX and ILM — but the level of tweaking an outside studio can apply to an asset may be limited due to the proprietary tools used to create the model.
“When you share back an asset, you can adjust it, you can look at it. Maybe you won’t be able to mimic everything. It’s the same with Nuke. Nuke is Nuke, but all the software, all the pipeline around it, is absolutely different depending on the company. But if you share back a Nuke script, you can at least open it and maybe it will load some tools. At least you have a base.”
Changes to Krypto, for example, would be a challenge for a collaborating studio that didn’t create the asset.
“We have the control,” says Nazé of the asset Framestore created. “It means, if you want (the groom) to be a little bit shorter there, or if you want to change something, you can, of course, because you own the asset, and it’s done with your tool. But when you send it, that’s what it is.”