HARRISON ELLENSHAW INTERVIEW 1

Harrison Ellenshaw, influential matte artist and resourceful visual effects wizard has created many of modern cinema's most groundbreaking, popular and memorable images: The painted Death Star interiors of Star Wars, the Hoth Main Generator and Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back, the video game sequences from Tron and the blazing intergalactic fantasy seen in Michael Jackson's Captain Eo. With such highly respected, high quality, state-of-the-art VFX epics to his name, it is genuinely surprising that he was part of the largely disliked, lackluster visuals seen in the forth Superman installment.
In the next few months I will be conducting an interview with Harrison Ellenshaw, visual effects supervisor of Superman IV.

Ahem: How and when did you become involved in the project?

Harrison Ellenshaw: I had gone to work for Cannon Films in early 1986 as their on staff visual effects consultant. In May of that year, during a trip to Singapore I got a telegram from Sidney Furie in London, asking if I would fly there immediately to meet with him. He was just about to start pre-production on Superman IV, The Quest for Peace. [In 1984, I had met Sidney at 20th Century Fox. We spent six months in pre-production on Marvel of the Haunted Castle a film that never got made.] In England I told Sidney I would love to work on the next Superman. I was hired on the spot, probably made a bit easier as I was technically working for Cannon anyway though now I was exclusive to Superman IV. Department heads were just being hired and offices were set up at Pinewood Studios, later to transfer to Elstree Studios just North of London.

The first thing we did was view the first three films and Supergirl. I also talked to all the people who worked on the effects for the first films. It was fascinating and informative; but it made me realize what a complicated task we were up against. With sequels, it is always difficult to meet expectations and with this sequel it would prove to be no different.

Ahem: Superman requires verisimilitude for it's VFX work as seen to a variable degree in the troubled productions of Superman and Superman II and to hyper-photo realism in Superman III and Supergirl. With the exception of the first 2 films where scheduling dictated one egregiously misplaced miniature effect, rushed travelling matte work and animation due to the transatlantic coordination, the Superman films have championed a seamless subtlety with incredible model work, taken for granted matte paintings and countless rotoscope wire removals. Superman IV's VFX became the complete reverse of that, and it's down to the fact the original crew were replaced by highly talented yet foolishly misplaced FX artists. The VFX crew of S4 headed by Harrison Ellenshaw had names to their credit such as Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Ghostbusters and Tron, but their knack for stylised eye candy was unsuited to the Superman legend. The crew were "miscast" just as Robert Redford would have been had he played the part of Superman.

A VFX crew has to be cast for any film to guarantee their talents apply to the subject matter at hand. Superman IV is just one example, another is the film Krull. In order to realise Krull most effectively, a VFX crew was needed to produce breathtaking, stylised spectacle in line with the film's own brand of mystic adventure. Poorly miscast as the VFX supervisor however was verisimilitude legend Derek Meddings, and when applied to out right fantasy, his VFX which were aiming for realism fell flat and looked cheesy. The same with the effects artists who eventually made Superman IV. Now if Meddings, a verisimilitude specialist, had worked on Superman IV, a film requiring verisimilitude, and Harrison Ellenshaw, a stylised specialist, had worked on Krull, a film requiring stylisation, there is no doubt that both pictures would've been realised most effectively to their full potential.

How do you interpret this claim?

Harrison Ellenshaw: This is an interesting theory and may be applicable to certain films but I do not believe it applies to the Superman series of films.

I disagree that flaws in any of the Superman films were due to improper casting of effects personnel. In my opinion, the look of the effects in each of the four films was due to a number of factors including each writer's interpretation of story, each director's vision, the choice of cinematographer, the choice of production designer, the technology available and the budgetary requirements.

As an example, Geoffrey Unsworth, who photographed the first film and part of the second, was a notable cinematographer with a great reputation who often filled sets with smoke in order to create a wonderful diffused look that became his signature. I do not know whether or not this choice of cinematographer for Superman, the Movie came before or after the decision to utilize front projection for flying shots. However because Zoran Perisic's front projection rig [which he called the 'Zoptic' system] required zoom lenses which were softer than prime lenses and, because front projection by its nature is soft, and because diffusion (soft) filters were needed to hide the wires, the flying sequences had a similar look to that of Geoffrey Unsworth's cinematography. This was clearly not a coincidence.

I am sure that if I had been lucky enough to work on the first film I would not have been able to influence, nor would I have wanted to influence the look of that film. In regards to Krull, would I have done a better or different job on than Derek Meddings? Though I appreciate the implied compliment [I think?],
I sincerely doubt that I would have done better work. It may be unfortunate, it seems everyone BUT the visual effects supervisor usually determines the look of the effects on a film.

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