You too can fly in the sky! The special effects of ``Superman'' incorporate various technologies.

Trial and error flight techniques

It's no surprise that a flightless Superman could be mistaken for a pervert, but in the first live-action Superman movie, made in 1948, the flying scenes were suddenly animated. It was also a last resort, as there were many technical problems with the live-action flight. Thirty years The Day After, things haven't changed much. If it's just about making people float, we've done it in the Genesis movie. However, Superman flies off the ground, flies freely through the air, and gracefully lands on the ground. It's not just once or twice, but takes off and lands repeatedly throughout the story, so it's not just a trick.

The staff then went through a process of trial and error to figure out how to make Superman's spectacular flight possible. The easiest way is to hang the actor with wire. In fact, not only on the studio set but also on location, Christopher Reeve, who played Superman, suspended himself in the air for an extended period of time. But even that has its limits. Synthesis is essential for flying beautifully in the sky, but there is a big problem.

A monochromatic blue or recently a monochromatic green is used for the background of the composition, and the monochromatic part is later replaced with another background, but there was a problem that Superman's costume was extremely unsuitable for composition. This is because blue occupies a large proportion of the costume. So I decided to look for a fabric that would be suitable for compositing, which is not the bright blue of the comic or TV version, but a mixture of blue and green. As many as 30 types of fabric were considered, and after taking test shots of each fabric, blue was chosen as it would cause the least problems in compositing, and Superman's costume was decided upon. Of course, these subtle color changes to the costumes were made with permission from DC Comics.

Superman and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and c DC Comics. c 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

Blueback compositing is still a method used daily in movies, television, and the web, even now that digital photography has become mainstream, but in the film era, it was a time-consuming process that required multiple steps after shooting in color. Moreover, when combining the foreground and background negatives, a frame would sometimes remain around the foreground subject, and it was often obvious that they were being combined. Nowadays, most of the flight scenes can be done with just blue-back compositing, but it is not so perfect that you can't see the imperfections of the compositing, so when Superman was made, blue-back compositing, Background composition techniques such as rear projection and front projection were used together.

Rear projection is a method in which actors stand in front of a background image projected from the back of the screen and film their performance from the front, making it almost like compositing is done on the spot. Even if you are acting on top of a stopped car, if the background is moving, it will appear as if you were filming on top of a moving car, and this is also used in close-ups in this work.

Utilized front projection