Q7: John Evans was the mechanical effects supervisor of SUPERMAN IV, a position he held on Supergirl [and later Batman]. In fact SUPERMAN IV is the only Christopher Reeve SUPERMAN where Colin Chilvers did not supervise the mechanical effects. How well did your physical and optical units interact?

A: I really enjoyed working with John. He was so cooperative and such an extremely competent mechanical effects supervisor. I was especially intrigued by the fact that the film he worked on just previous to SUPERMAN IV was Full Metal Jacket.

Q8: Is it true that Cannon Israel Studios was Menahem Golan's original choice of base camp for SUPERMAN IV?

A: There was talk of this, but that would have been much too difficult with so many effects shots and the need for big stages.

Q9: What were your thoughts on Elstree being the base camp of SUPERMAN IV?

A: We were originally going to shoot at Pinewood. In fact we set up pre-production offices there. It was the perfect choice, there were large stages great support shops and even Roy Field's optical department was located there. But London Cannon had just bought Elstree, so that's why we had to move. To solve the need for stage space we even built a temporary stage for SUPERMAN IV. It was supposed to be torn down after shooting, but it may still be up. I haven't been back to Elstree since.

Q10: So you split your time between OLW and the U.K.?

A: Yes, I spent most of preproduction and production in England, while Christopher Keith started OLW in California. I can remember walking into the new facility my first day back from the U.K. after shooting had wrapped and the effects animators were working on rotoscoping Nuclear Man 2 to give him a glow. They were not very happy to see me.

Q11: Why?

A: The animators wanted to know why we hadn't shot Nuclear Man 2 against a blue screen. This would have provided a matte and so there would be no need for the effects animators to trace the outline of the character one frame at a time, which was a very labor intensive and, needless to say, boring job. I told the effects animators that from the beginning, it was never intended that Nuclear Man 2 would have a glow around him. But then during the last week of shooting, Menahem Golan, one of the producers on the film and the co-head of Cannon Films, decided that such an effect was needed. He felt that Nuclear Man 2 wasn't threatening enough and needed to be more "scary." In fact, he also suggested that he have longer fingernails with blood dripping from them! Menahem had seen an Iron Maiden concert billboard on the way into London from the airport, it was a picture of one of the band members with his hand up in front of his face; he had very long sharp fingernails and he looked very menacing - ah, 80's heavy metal, wasn't it grand? Anyway, Menahem wanted Nuclear Man 2 to have the same look. But everything had already been shot [without blue screen] and so to get Nuclear Man 2 to glow about 80 shots needed rotoscoping [tracing the character's outline by hand]. That was about 5,000 individual frames. Even though we had a small budget we did have to hire about a dozen rotoscope artists just to handle these scenes.

Q12: Budget seemed to be a constant issue on SUPERMAN IV.

A: Oh yes, I suppose from the outset, the intention was to do the film "for a price" [the term Hollywood uses when they don't want to pay for their huge appetite]. And this is always the case when the studio wants to do a sequel. It's that they believe these so-called franchise films theoretically have a built in audience. The problem is, sequels, in order to be successful, have to be significantly better than the original movie, otherwise the audience feels cheated -- their expectations aren't met. And usually sequels cost more than originals for all sorts of
reasons; returning stars want more money, the "look" has to be grander, more effects, increasing production costs, etc.

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