Kirk Alyn, who played the Man of Steel in the movie serials
Superman (1948) and
Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), probably had it the easiest. He would jump into the air and audiences would watch him actually change into an animated Superman who would handle the flying sequences, then revert back to Alyn upon landing.
George Reeves faced a bit more of a challenge in the 1950s on the TV series
The Adventures of Superman. In detailing his fling method, www.redboots.net reported, "George Reeves' Superman needed a little boost from an old-fashioned 'springboard' to become airborne. For 'sustained' flight shots, Reeves stretched out on a table facing a fan (to animate his cape) in front of a rear-projection screen. In
the color episodes, they used a form-fitted fiberglass piece attached to a boom arm rather like a large spatula and Reeves' legs were fastened to the boom arm covering it. They rotoscoped (traced) the protruding boom arm along the lines of his boots. If the holdout matte (mask used to cover an element in a frame of film) wasn't in sync with the burn-in passes (added composite elements), it created a black ghost of the cape in nearly every shot."
FLYING TO THE BIG SCREEN
The next time the character's flying became an issue was when director Richard Donner was readying Superman: The Movie, preproduction of which was begun by James Bond director Guy Hamilton. Donner instantly recognized that if Superman's appearance in flight didn't work, they simply didn't have a movie. "When I arrived and saw the preparation, I asked them to show me the flying material," says Donner. "I watched it and was stunned to a see a man walking along who's jerked off the ground by two wires, and then landing out of control. So that was the first thing we had to correct."
Superman Creative Director of Special Effects Colin Chilvers explains that wire rigs were created for the character's exterior flying. These wires were attached to a crane 250 feet high in order to make sure that the crane would not be in the shot when Christopher Reeve was flown on those wires. "We devised rigs that would give us complete control over chris while he was up in the air and for some of the process work as well," Chilvers notes. "We built rigs to fly Superman against front projection backings and back project screens and so on. Wires were not actually used to any great extent in the flying sequences — mostly when he was involved with other people, sort of literally talking to somebody else and then turning and flying off and waving goodbye, or landing where other people were involved.
"The rigs which we developed for process flying were mechanical inasmuch as they were either worked by hydraulics or were mechanical pieces operated by people," he continues. "You couldn't just put Superman on a piece of hydraulic equipment and push it up and down, because it would not look as though he were flying. You had to be able to have ultimate control over the hydraulics, so that you could make the hydraulic rig move exactly as you want it to move. Therefore, it was up to the operator — in conjunction with Chris Reeve, who knew how he wanted to fly — to try to work it out so that he flew naturaly, rather than simply being stuck in one place without being able to move."
To achieve his flying sequences, body molds were made with Reeve placed on a rig and flown in front of a blue screen so that background paltes could be added later. By creating molds for his back and his sies as well as his chest and stomach, it was possible to actually convey the image of Superman shifting in position while in flight, going so far as to "roll over" onto his back. "Chris was such a dedicated young actor," reflects Donner. "When he was up there, that kid was flying! I mean, he could feel the thermals, he could feel the movement, he could feel the exhilaration. His hand movements, his attitudes of anger flying around in hot pursuit, how he shifts his body movements — it was just brilliant. His performance enhanced everything we did."
The combination of actors on wires and on body-molds attached to specially designed rigs was not only used in the four Christopher Reeve films, but also for Helen Slater in Supergirl (1984), John Haymes Newton and Gerard Christopher in The Adventures of Superboy (1988-92) and Dean Cain in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-97).
FLYING SMALLVILLE STYLE
With the WB's
Smallville, the character entered the computer age, particularly in the season four premiere, "Crusade," in which Clark Kent (Tom Welling) takes off for the first time, in pursuit of a jet carrying something he needs. Visual Effects Supervisor Mat Beck explains that a new harness had been designed that would give Welling greater comfort level than most actors have had when they've been forced to go up on wires.
"Most of the flying sequences were done with him on a harness or standing on a small green platform with the camera flying past him," says Beck. "That allowed him to be comfortable and give it a lot of performance in terms of turning his body this way or that way. What was really cool is that we were able to pre-vis [previsualize] things extensively and then when we were on the set I was able to say, 'Okay, we're going to fly it this way and that way,' and we got all the stuff that we needed. One of the things that I thought woudl be really cool would be to have him so high that there are stars behind him. We wanted to add that in — I r
eally wanted that shot. I have him on the harness where, when you're looking at him, he's against green; when you're looking away from him, he's against green; and when you're looking overhead, he's just against the roof of the stage. I said, 'I don't care, we'll make that work.' What's cool about that, too, is that in some of these shots it's Tom for part of the shot and then it's a CG Tom for the other part of the shot."
RETURNS FLIGHT
A similar combination of practical and computer generated effects were utilized in the making of Superman Returns, albeit on a much grander scale. Stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell explains that many of the flight sequences were accomplished through an intermixing of live action footage with CG.
"Visual effects helps us do things we cannot do, and the audience believes that it's really the actors by putting the actors in difficult situations," he says. "When it's somebody else flying through the air, or say it's a reaction shot of somebody getting hit, thrown, tossed or falling, it's a little bit easier to do because it's a little more organic in how he falls and is more acceptable. But when he is supposed to fly like a plane or a missile, in that perfect form, it becomes quite a bit more difficult to do. Not only n his body postures, but how his face reacts, his hair and of course the cape.
"The entrances and exits we did real time, because that's our bread and butter," Rondell adds with a smile. "It's very hard for that to be CG or synthetic. Those are the moments that the audience will see him land or take off, and once he gets into the air they believe you a little more and you can shift over to CG. Flying Superman is something everybody has had to deal with, but the bar raises every year. With the era of Spider-Man and everything else, the audience has become very sophisticated, so it's a real challenge. And you get all of those geeks who are out there picking apart everything that you do, which is what keeps us honest. That's very hard to fool."
Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Stetson explains that in comparison to
Superman: The Movie, the new film has much more advanced compositing, tracking and scaling tools, as well as full 3D CG environment and a CG Superman. "There's a lot of going back and forth between green screen, wire work ad CG," he points out. "Even the wire work alone has advanced a lot since those days. They did some very aggressive and adventurous stunts when they were making that movie, and some of those stunts would not be attepted nowadays for safety reasons. Some of the real aggressive flying outside exteriors with Christopher Reeve on wires we just wouldn't do today, because we can do it more safely and can composite the results with the background and actually make it beter. And with the CG Superman, a lot of time is spent finding a better camera angle and finding the emotion in the performance of a digital character. It's kind of cool we can do that."
One has to wonder how much of a cool factor there was for the latest Superman, Brandon Routh. "Flying is quite an experience," he admits. "It's painful sometimes, long and arduous many times and there is fun in it — sometimes. You just don't know what the day brings. The fun stuff is when I'm actually interacting, lifting something or saving something, because then I've actually got my hands on something and I can see without have to visualize so much. Of course, I still have to visualize the rest of the object because we can only use so much of a piece of a set before they CG the rest of it.
"It's gone through many modifications," he adds, "from flying in a body pan to the X-Y-Z rig, as they call it, to standing on a box, to being on a machine that spins you around, to wire work where I'm actually moving and flying vertical. That's the most fun stuff, because I'm actually doing something and there's that exhilaration of when you reach the top and that sense of weightlessness that accompanies it. I miss that. We hadn't done it for, like a month, and then we did it one day and I was really psyched, because it was nice to be moving, to not be standing still. To be flying."
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