SUPERMAN VFX BREAKDOWN
The fictional Fortress is thought of as Superman’s headquarters, and a place that only a Kryptonian like Superman – or his cousin Supergirl – can enter. Gunn’s Fortress takes its inspiration from the comics, placing it in Antarctica rather than the Arctic, but maintaining the frozen aesthetic. To keep its location a secret, the Fortress can disappear into the ice, reappearing only as needed. “The Fortress was one of the bigger challenges for us, for multiple reasons,” begins Nazé. “The main one is that it’s huge, reflective, refractive, there’s a lot of transparency and the light is bouncing. It meant that the render times were crazy. We spent months and months finding techniques to render some of the shots.” Very few shots include the entire Fortress; this is on purpose. When working with a set of such scale, extending the location requires CGI in all directions. “The Fortress was gigantic. Outside, it was always CGI. But inside, the set was absolutely phenomenal. I was really impressed,” Nazé shares. Lots of it – such as the crystals, which move – was visually enhanced in post. “It had to be beautiful. The idea was to have that ‘wow’ factor.” HOLOGRAPHIC FANTASTIC Besides housing Superman and Krypto, the Fortress of Solitude also hosts a team of humanoid robots who attend to Superman’s injuries. “We had real robots our friends from Legacy had created, which were fully articulated, camera- ready and remote-controlled,” shares Ceretti. “We quickly found out that they’re also highly reflective – as soon as the camera crew were close up, you could see them. The set is reflected. We ended up with a robot that could be in camera but came with tons of other problems.” Framestore stepped in to replace the robots in post. “We did one-to-one matching between the real robot shot on set and a CG render in the exact same
FURRY FRIEND Framestore rendered super- dog Krypto (left, above), modelled on Gunn’s own pooch Ozu, and collaborated with Infinite Reality on the design of the crucial hologram message VFX
shot, to make sure everything lined up. They got a perfect match,” says Ceretti. While healing Superman, the robots also play a hologram of his Kryptonian parents, at his request – a message that was damaged when he fell to Earth. This hologram serves a central purpose in Gunn’s story, as the missing part of the message, later recovered by Luthor, incriminates Superman as having been sent to colonise and repopulate Earth. Although they’ve become a sci-fi staple, appearing in the likes of Star Wars , Tron and Blade Runner 2049 , holograms are very tricky to get right. To create the message from Superman’s parents, Framestore collaborated with London- based Infinite Reality on Gaussian splatting, a rendering technique that uses volumetric capture to replicate 3D objects. Bradley Cooper and Angela Sarafyan, who play Superman’s parents,
recorded their message from a studio in London, with Gunn directing remotely. “The idea was to capture the two- or three-minute speech in its entirety, then be able to put the data where we wanted. We move the holograms around in the Fortress; they appear in different spots,” begins Nazé. “One of the complexities was extra effects; we were looking to add some imperfections and we added transparency.” For instance, when the message glitches, ‘you can see the back of the body’ for a truly 3D effect. TEAMING UP While Framestore primarily handled Krypto and the Fortress, ILM contributed Metropolis – including the rift, when the city splits open – and Wētā FX the pocket universe. For shared VFX elements, such as the nanites on The Engineer, Ceretti liked to ‘put brains on the problem’. “I would say, ‘I just want to see your take on this’. Then, we’d get all the different ideas from everyone, talk them over and pick and choose. We would collaborate. “We love what we do. We love sharing what we do. We love talking about it among ourselves,” Ceretti continues. In the end, “we were all trying to make the best possible movie – we wanted it to look as good as it possibly could.”
THE FORTRESS WAS ONE OF the bigger challenges FOR US”
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DEFINITIONMAGS
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