The key:

SPECIAL EFFECTS KEY

Optical effects and optical printing
The optical printer was created by Linwood Dunn for the film CITIZEN KANE, and is basically a laboratory machine that allows you to put together images of one or more film reels. This is done in the optical printer using photographic techniques.

Travelling Mattes
Foreground action is super-imposed on a separately filmed background. Up until recent times, opticals have been used for
travelling matte techniques, where an actor performs in front of a blue-screen and then a background plate is added later over the blue, but have always looked too smoothly shot to look real. Blue-screen was used wholey for compositing in such films as FLASH GORDON, STAR WARS, and SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE ( hence the reduced effects quality), but every other Superman movie used the compositing techniques of in-camera front-projection for flying, as well as *zoptic*. Compositing is placing one or more separately filmed images with another. In 1989 for INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, a new form of compositing was used. This is the now standard form of compositing, known as digital compositing, whereby the images are arranged in a computer, and not an optical printer.

Matte Paintings
A form of imaging compositing whereby a physical set is composited with a 2-D painting, enhancing the set or adding to the
space what's not physically there. The painting is painted by a matte artist onto glass and then the glass is either placed in front of the camera lined up to the set and filmed, or through optical printing.

Pyrotechnics
Physical effects concerning fire and explosions

Physical Effects
Special effects that happen on the set during the live-action shoot.

Rotoscoping
Animation technique, where live-action images are traced. This can be done manually or automatically. The technique is still used digitally, but was a product of the optical era. Rotoscope is also used for cell animation ( painting onto cells that can be animated) to add ink and paint effects, such as Superman's ice-breath and eye lasers.

Roy Field [BSC], a former titles artist for Hammer was Bowie's choice for supervising the *optical effects*. Field, who went on to supervise opticals for OUTLAND, THE DARK CRYSTAL, SATURN 3, SUPERGIRL, SUPERMAN II, SUPERMAN III, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, HYPER SAPIEN and LIGHTHOUSE, gave The man of steel many powers, noticeable and unnoticeable.
For the scene in which we see Superman using X-ray vision on Lois to view her lungs, the image of her lungs are actually painted cell animation.
For the scene in which our hero spins around the world, reversing time, the spiralled trail that he leaves around earth, is
painstakingly painted cell animation. This optical animation is also the technique which was used for the red sun of Krypton.

For the film's monumentally-memorable title sequence, master storyboard artist Dennis (JUDGE DREDD) Rich designed the look, while Roy Field and the famous New York titles house, R GREENBERG & ASSOCIATES, rendered the sequence using optical animation. Behind the titles, you can see various interacting galaxy images and stars. These were achieved by using blown-up photography of particles reacting, which were filmed blue-screen.
They were then composited onto a black space matte with animated stars.

To convince the audience that 'a man can fly', the audience must also believe a man can take-off, too. For the scenes in which
Superman takes off and flies all in one shot, Christopher Reeve was hooked on a flying wire rig, and flown along. But if he's being flown by visible wires, especially support wires supporting the weight of a human-being, then how come they aren't visible in ANY scene?
The answer; the wires were painfully rotoscoped out of the shot by Roy Field's optical department. For the initial shot of Superman in his fortress, taking off in the background and flying unto and making a pass into the foreground, the camera also performs a delicate tilt. This made it even harder to rotoscope, but with patients and a fair amount of time (and a Salkind sized budget), the unbelievable can become reality.

The Supervisor of Physical effects on Superman was Colin Chilvers, a effects supremo who established his talent for realising seemingly impossible FX on THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Because of Superman's busy shoot in different places across the globe, Two more FX supervisors were brought on to supervise physical FX elsewhere. American Bob MacDonald, who went on to work on ENEMY MINE, GREMLINS and HOWARD THE DUCK, was the physical FX supervisor for New Mexico, while John Richardson, the son of pioneering British FX wizard Cliff Richardson, was to be the physical FX supervisor of the New York unit. Richardson had previously worked on the film THE OMEN for Richard Donner, as well as JUGGERNAUT, ROLLERBALL, A BRIDGE TOO FAR, and went on to MOONRAKER, RAISE THE TITANIC, LADYHAWKE, OCTOPUSSY, A VIEW TO A KILL, ALIENS, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, WILLOW, LICENCE TO KILL, FAR AND AWAY, CLIFFHANGER, STARSHIP TROOPERS and TOMORROW NEVER DIES.

Chilvers also brought on board wire effects specialists Derek Botell and Bob Harman. Harman went on to supervise the wire effects on all of the other Superman films, aswell as 2010, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY, RETURN OF THE JEDI, THE ROCKETEER and JINGLE ALL THE WAY.

The physical effects were just as important as the visual effects, as Superman has nearly every set either smashed out of or blown up.
The pyrotechnics of the film were equally as alarming, the Krypton destruction has pieces of rubble and sparks being blown inches away from THE Marlon Brando's face alone.

Supervising the film's Make-up effects was Stuart Freeborn, the master British make-up genius of 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY (for which, he wasn't nominated for his work on that film's simians, as the judges thought they were real) and STAR WARS, for which he designed most of the creatures. Fresh off of STAR WARS, Freeborn was to design some of the most seamless make-ups of his career. He was to give Marlon Brando white hair, create a polar bear for a 4 second shot, create a nose prosthetic for bay Clark Kent- as to match the anatomical features of Christopher Reeve, give Gene Hackman a bald head, Ned Beatty a black eye, create a cat to be stuck up a tree for long shots as well as many other unnoticeable make-ups. Working on his crew was Nick Maley, who would later supervise the make-up on LIFEFORCE, KRULL and
HIGHLANDER.

The FX were all in place, and Alexander Salkind was taking the loan of his life from his backers, but on the films original release date in Summer 1978, the FX technicians demanded that MORE money and MORE time was needed. After a couple of unfortunate attempts of collapsing the famous dam scene, Derek Meddings and Paul Wilson had agreed to move onto MOONRAKER. The Salkinds found that Donner rightfully wanted the scene replaced, as he was a stickler for detail. Meddings and Wilson were brought back, and the third time was lucky. The newly completed scene was so convincing that it actually looks like National geographic footage.

The flying effects were troubled. For the majority of special effects shots concerning flying, travelling mattes couldn't be used, due to the colour of Superman's famous costume being blue. (As well as loss of picture quality). Yugoslavian front-projection expert was called in and given under two months to test out a system that would enable the 'flying' shots to be accomplished using process (front and back projection work). STAR WARS a year before had provided flying spaceships, photograhed by cameras moving, while the performer remains static. Perisic took this method further with
his ZOPTIC system. The system involves a computer controlled camera, on an aerial mount, that photographs the flying figure in front of a reflective front-projection screen. This is a system where an actor performs in front of a process screen, and facing him is a camera. This contains a 45 degree angled mirror. Facing into the mirror is a projector, projecting onto the mirror, a previously filmed background-plate. By lining the camera onto the mirror, and using a beam-splitter, the actor appears to be in the same space as the previously filmed background. This happens ENTIRELY inside the camera, so is considered an 'in-camera' effect. Whereas the technique rear-projection ( the actor being placed in front of a screen with the background projected onto it) only allows the actor to be standing in front, front-projection allows you to use the beam-splitter to add 'depth of field' to the picture.This helps to give a feeling of the actors being 'in' the frame. It is an extension of front projection. The actor is mounted on a crane arm, in a fibreglass mould. The mould is disguised each time, so as not to see the mould. The Zoptic system is able to appear bring the figure forward to the front of the frame, by moving it's zoom lens.

Denys N Coop [BSC], who lit the films ROSEBUD, ASYLUM, VAULT OF HORROR and INSERTS, was Les Bowie's choice for front-projection cinematographer. New to the world of visual effects, Coop set the standard for crisply photographed composites.

Problem solved for Bowie! Perisic was hired, and like every other FX technician on the film, He was chewed up and spat out by Bowie and the punishing deadline. Perisic went on to direct his GUNBUS, and was a consultant on CLIFFHANGER.
   
UNFORTUNATE

Meddings had left, and Bowie had one more miniature sequence to complete- Superman pushing boulders down a hill to stop a tidal wave. As British FX technicians had all of their hands full, the shot was farmed out to Howard A Anderson Co. in Los Angeles. Darrell Anderson who worked on the STAR TREK tv series shot it, and the scene looks OUT OF PLACE in a film where the special effects are supposed to be virtually unnoticeable. The blatantly obvious style of the miniatures are more akin to the Death star close-ups from STAR WARS or the miniature LONDON in LIFEFORCE, where those film's FX were supposed to look stylised. It's because of this, that the scene is UNSUITED to the rest of Superman: The Movie.

At the end of the day, SUPERMAN:THE MOVIE is Richard Donner's film. It was his decision to make the spectacle believable, and not another campy-Batman affair. It was Donner's decision to take the Superman subject matter straight, so at the end of the day, no matter how technically and artistically wizardry the FX may be, Richard Donner was THE no.1 figure who inspired the artists.

SUPERMAN WON THE 1978 SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS

Denys N Coop (1981)
Les Bowie (1979)
Derek Meddings (1995)
Wally Veevers (1983)

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