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MillimeterSam Raimi, Director
May 1, 2002 12:00 PM, Michael Goldman
Despite his experience as a feature film director (The Gift, A Simple Plan, two Evil Dead films, Darkman) and television producer (Xena, Hercules), Sam Raimi calls Spider-Man “a huge learning experience.” In fact, the logistical challenge far outpaced anything he'd previously been associated with, and consumed almost three years of his life. Raimi's method of bringing all the disparate threads together? Mastering the art of collaboration with effects guru John Dykstra, production designer Neil Spisak, DP Don Burgess, costume designer James Acheson, and editors Bob Murawski and Arthur Coburn, among others.
But Raimi is most proud of the film's overall shooting philosophy. Known as an aficionado of wild, kinetic camera movement and odd angles, Raimi deliberately reigned in that instinct for the first act of the film, and then let it run wild later on.
“A style for the visuals was the key,” he explains. “The idea was to let the audience directly identify with Peter Parker, who eventually becomes Spider-Man. To do that, we had to emphasize that he is a regular person, so I tried hard to present him in a realistic way. That's why there is hardly any wild camera movement in that part of the film. Once he becomes Spider-Man, however, we had to have the audience identify with what it feels like to be Spider-Man, so I wanted to get across that tremendous energy and movement — that acrobatic feeling. So there, we make the camera swoop, glide, and swing with the character — we developed wild camera moves for that part of the film.”
When it came to building the film's 500-plus effects sequences, though, Raimi experienced a bit of a learning curve. That's where his close collaboration with Dykstra bore fruit.
“I had never worked with effects at this level before,” Raimi says. “So we brought John Dykstra on board. Having a guy like Dykstra doesn't necessarily solve all your problems, but it gives you a real general in the field with a tremendous army backing him up at Sony Pictures Imageworks.”
Among other things, Dykstra lured Raimi deep into the world of computer pre-visualization for virtually all complicated scenes in the movie, and then “led the charge,” in Raimi's words, in breaking down those sequences.
For the film's Times Square battle sequence, Raimi freely admits that “I relied heavily on Dykstra to tell me the best way to acquire each of the many elements. We ended up shooting it in multiple locations — plates from Time Square, a big set (at the former Boeing Plant in Downey, Calif.), CG, all that stuff. After we conceptualized the whole thing with storyboards, and later, digital animatics, John carried the ball to the goal. He told us which shots should be live-action on stage, which green screen, which from the New York location plate, which CG, and so forth. The major complexity revolved around simply keeping track of all elements — camera lenses, lighting, angles, timing, etc. Just figuring out that the Green Goblin would be soaring overhead for 1.5 seconds was a matter of major coordination.”
Raimi insists the design collaboration was equally crucial, both with Spisak for the overall look of the piece, and with Acheson, who Raimi credits with “ground-breaking” work in designing a Spider-Man costume for actor Tobey Maguire. That costume is unique compared to other films in the super-hero genre, says Raimi, because it accommodates the fact that Spider-Man is “a dancer in the sky.”
“Those typical foam muscle suits under spandex and latex wouldn't work,” Raimi explains. “We had to make him muscular and acrobatic, but no matter how good shape Tobey (Maguire) was in, a spandex outfit on him, or anyone, combined with the sheer tension of the thing, would flatten out the muscles. So our dilemma was we kind of needed a muscle suit, yet we couldn't use one.”
Acheson's solution, which Raimi calls “masterful,” was to develop a body suit featuring computer-generated rectangular patterns to create a 3D effect on Maguire's body. “That's a whole new type of printing onto fabric of the textures of the human anatomy and musculature,” says Raimi. “We put layers of those patterns onto the suit, and that gave him a dimensionality, let light play in a realistic way on the suit, and it gives a sense of Spider-Man being muscular and flexible.”
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
