Man of Steel Secrets [VIDEO]: Special Effects Techniques Revealed
Weeks after Man of Steel garnered the second largest box office debut, racking up $125 million in its opening weekend, moviegoers are still talking about the film's special effects and how it was used to produce futuristic technology in the film.
The film's special effects supervisors, Dan Lemmon and Joe Letteri, gave fans a glimpse of the strategies and techniques they implemented to produce the advanced technology used Kryptonians Jor-El and his his son Kal-El (Superman) to explore their crumbling home planet of Krypton.
"On Krypton they use a different technology for their displays, through this technology that we called liquid geo," Lemmon said, pointing out the display screens and other interfaces that use a liquid-mecury-like material. "The way we accomplished the display shapes was through a combination of animation and simulation. Once that animation was finalized, the effects department would run simulations on top of that animation."
Senior visual effects supervisor, Letteri, said director Zack Snyder came up with the idea.
"He wanted to do something that was interesting and different in the way that you saw information presented," Letteri said. "He didn't just want to do a typical screen. You need something that has that look but has to be in a sense more liquid."
This liquid is first seen in Man of Steel when Superman's father Jor-El completes the transportation device that will deliver his son to Earth. The effect is also used later in the film when Kal-El discovers a ship trapped under ice in a desolate part of the world, where an object shaped in the symbol of his birthright, "S", reveals the ship's memory bank and allows Superman to interact with his father's consciousness.
"What we tried to come up with was this hybrid technique," Letteri said. "[That] would allow us to develop these forms on the fly so they had this metallic liquid droplet feel, but it felt tactile."
Check out the interview with Man of Steel's special effects supervisors below.