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SHOOTING BEGAN ON MONDAY MARCH 28 AT PINEWOOD STUDIOS, where sets for the opening Planet Krypton sequence had been built to designs by Production Designer John Barry (who had also constructed the offices at The Daily Planet at the studio, importing tons of American office paraphernalia to furnish his set – exteriors would be shot by a second unit in New York – as well as the ice palace which Superman visits to learn about his destiny). Marlon Brando had arrived a week earlier. Concerned about his star’s reputation for being difficult (“Marlon’s the kind of man that if he can collect his money and not do the deed, he’d be only too happy to do so,” Donner predicted), the director called Francis Coppola, who had worked with Brando on the infamous Apocalypse Now shoot. “Let him talk and he’ll provide his own answer,” was Coppola’s advice. This was hardly reassuring. Donner had pre-planned every second of Brando’s 12 working days. “I’d even figured out how much he cost me every time he went to the can,” he remembered. There was not going to be time for a lot of character-investigating chit chat.
He was further alarmed when word got to him that Brando was wandering around informing people that he intended to play the part “like a big, green suitcase”. Arriving on set swathed in jumpers and scarves, and suffering from a combination of flu and jetlag, he took a look at the costumes – white jumpsuits made out of highly-reflective back projection material – and suggested, “You know, maybe I shouldn’t look like the people on Krypton, maybe I should look like a bagel.” Donner feigned calm, “but Spengler almost fainted”, he recalled. After the Krypton sequence was in the bag, the production shut down for a few weeks while Donner and his FX team continued to work on their biggest headache: how to convince an audience that Superman could fly.
"“I was as naïve as everyone... the script would indicate that Superman flies here – without anyone ever figuring out how he was going to do it."
Richard Donner
“I was as naïve as everyone else,” admitted Donner, shortly after the shoot. “The script would indicate that Superman flies here, he does this, he does that – without anyone ever figuring out how he was going to do it.” Since Donner was working with an actor and not miniatures, the motion control technology developed for Star Wars was virtually useless. Since Reeve would inevitably move differently in the numerous computer-controlled passes that motion control uses to build up sequences, the different elements could never match. The old system of rear projection, in which the actor was suspended in front of a screen and a pre-shot sequence projected from behind it, wouldn’t allow the graceful camera movements and interactions between Reeve and background, so was rejected.
“We tried skydiving, but threw that out. We used some travelling mattes, which I was never happy about. We tried a flying stuntman from a 200-foot crane behind the Golden Gate Bridge in miniature – since the bridge was 60 feet long, we’d have to swing him several hundred feet behind in a long, sweeping arc. We did some night flying on cranes, which was dangerous – we shouldn’t have, but thank god we were lucky.”
In the end, a revolutionary system was developed by visual effects supremo Zoran Perisic, in which an image projected from the front of a reflective screen could be exactly synchronised with camera and character movements.
SHOOTING CONTINUNED THROUGHOUT 1977, relocating to Canada for the Smallville, Kansas sequences, and to the Rocky Mountains for the missile hijacking scene. But while the technical glitches, including massive difficulties in making Superman’s cape flutter in the wind, were slowly ironed out, Donner’s relationship with the producers, with whom he began to refer to as “the assholes”, deteriorated. Things reached crisis point when Pierre Spengler allowed miniatures supervisor Derek Meddings to leave production early.
“They tried to fire me many, many times,” Donner recalls. “But they couldn’t. Warners had director approval and there were only about four names on their list. It was me, Friedkin, Spielberg and maybe one other. But [because of Spengler’s inexperience], monies were just flushed away. I hate to see that when it should be up there on the screen.”
Relations became so strained that Richard Lester was brought in to supervise. His first decision was to abandon all work on the second movie and push on with the first. “I figured if no-one went to see the first there’d be no sequel,” Donner said. In fact, he was forced to cannibalise material shot for II to reconstruct the climax of the first movie, when a planned cliffhanger ending was abandoned.
Shooting on both films finally wrapped in August 1979 after an 18-month shoot, in which 1,250,000 feet of film had been exposed. Released on December 15, 1978 in the USA and the 23rd in the UK, Superman stayed at number one at the box office for 11 weeks, garnering a US gross of $132 million. Which must have made the call that Donner took sometime in March 1979 – whether in the lavatory or not – an irritating one. The Salkinds were firing him from the second film. The remainder of shooting on Superman II would be completed by Richard Lester. “They saw fit to replace me,” Donner sniffed, shortly after his pink slipping. “Since I completed at least 80 per cent of the film, I only hope they cannot hurt it that much."
http://www.empireonline.com/features/making-of-superman
He was further alarmed when word got to him that Brando was wandering around informing people that he intended to play the part “like a big, green suitcase”. Arriving on set swathed in jumpers and scarves, and suffering from a combination of flu and jetlag, he took a look at the costumes – white jumpsuits made out of highly-reflective back projection material – and suggested, “You know, maybe I shouldn’t look like the people on Krypton, maybe I should look like a bagel.” Donner feigned calm, “but Spengler almost fainted”, he recalled. After the Krypton sequence was in the bag, the production shut down for a few weeks while Donner and his FX team continued to work on their biggest headache: how to convince an audience that Superman could fly.
"“I was as naïve as everyone... the script would indicate that Superman flies here – without anyone ever figuring out how he was going to do it."
Richard Donner
“I was as naïve as everyone else,” admitted Donner, shortly after the shoot. “The script would indicate that Superman flies here, he does this, he does that – without anyone ever figuring out how he was going to do it.” Since Donner was working with an actor and not miniatures, the motion control technology developed for Star Wars was virtually useless. Since Reeve would inevitably move differently in the numerous computer-controlled passes that motion control uses to build up sequences, the different elements could never match. The old system of rear projection, in which the actor was suspended in front of a screen and a pre-shot sequence projected from behind it, wouldn’t allow the graceful camera movements and interactions between Reeve and background, so was rejected.
“We tried skydiving, but threw that out. We used some travelling mattes, which I was never happy about. We tried a flying stuntman from a 200-foot crane behind the Golden Gate Bridge in miniature – since the bridge was 60 feet long, we’d have to swing him several hundred feet behind in a long, sweeping arc. We did some night flying on cranes, which was dangerous – we shouldn’t have, but thank god we were lucky.”
In the end, a revolutionary system was developed by visual effects supremo Zoran Perisic, in which an image projected from the front of a reflective screen could be exactly synchronised with camera and character movements.
SHOOTING CONTINUNED THROUGHOUT 1977, relocating to Canada for the Smallville, Kansas sequences, and to the Rocky Mountains for the missile hijacking scene. But while the technical glitches, including massive difficulties in making Superman’s cape flutter in the wind, were slowly ironed out, Donner’s relationship with the producers, with whom he began to refer to as “the assholes”, deteriorated. Things reached crisis point when Pierre Spengler allowed miniatures supervisor Derek Meddings to leave production early.
“They tried to fire me many, many times,” Donner recalls. “But they couldn’t. Warners had director approval and there were only about four names on their list. It was me, Friedkin, Spielberg and maybe one other. But [because of Spengler’s inexperience], monies were just flushed away. I hate to see that when it should be up there on the screen.”
Relations became so strained that Richard Lester was brought in to supervise. His first decision was to abandon all work on the second movie and push on with the first. “I figured if no-one went to see the first there’d be no sequel,” Donner said. In fact, he was forced to cannibalise material shot for II to reconstruct the climax of the first movie, when a planned cliffhanger ending was abandoned.
Shooting on both films finally wrapped in August 1979 after an 18-month shoot, in which 1,250,000 feet of film had been exposed. Released on December 15, 1978 in the USA and the 23rd in the UK, Superman stayed at number one at the box office for 11 weeks, garnering a US gross of $132 million. Which must have made the call that Donner took sometime in March 1979 – whether in the lavatory or not – an irritating one. The Salkinds were firing him from the second film. The remainder of shooting on Superman II would be completed by Richard Lester. “They saw fit to replace me,” Donner sniffed, shortly after his pink slipping. “Since I completed at least 80 per cent of the film, I only hope they cannot hurt it that much."
http://www.empireonline.com/features/making-of-superman
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