Jay Stobie, writing at ILM.com, talks to ILM’s Enrico Damm, Paul Kavanagh, Stephen King, and Matt Middleton about the role they played in helping Superman soar with high-flying visual effects in James Gunn’s first theatrical release in the DC Universe.
Written and directed by James Gunn, DC Studios’ Superman (2025) has leapt to the forefront of the cinematic superhero landscape, aweing audiences with a message that inspires optimism and hope with a side of introspection. Industrial Light & Magic played a crucial part in the visual effects that brought this uplifting story to life, collaborating with Gunn and production visual effects supervisor Stephane Ceretti on their quest to supply a fresh perspective on the legendary character.
ILM visual effects supervisor Enrico Damm (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story [2016], Ahsoka [2023-present]), ILM animation supervisors Paul Kavanagh (Star Trek [2009], Deadpool & Wolverine [2024]) and Stephen King (The Avengers [2012], The Batman [2022]), and CG supervisor Matt Middleton (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One [2023]; Alien: Romulus [2024]) joined ILM.com to chat about ILM’s work on Superman, from taking the lead on characters such as Superman, the Hammer of Boravia, and Ultraman to tackling a large section of the climactic final battle involving a Metropolis baseball field, a deadly interdimensional rift, and fan-favorite dog, Krypto.
Welcome to Metropolis
“I joined Superman early on during pre-production, when [visual effects producer] Susan Pickett and Stef Ceretti approached ILM to talk about how we could build a Metropolis that we could art direct in a real-time fashion,” Enrico Damm explains to ILM.com. “This allowed the production designer and director to creatively iterate until we achieved a layout that would build the foundation for the final, post-production asset. We had real-time sessions with Stephane, [production designer] Beth Mickle, and, occasionally, even James Gunn, where he would be able to direct changes in real time. We established a look that was shared with the previs companies and the other vendors on the show, which permitted us to have everybody start with the same asset.”
Imbuing Metropolis with the living, breathing atmosphere of an actual city without replicating a real-world location was extremely important to Gunn. However, since roughly 70% of the design was inspired by New York, Stephane Ceretti and Susan Pickett authorized ILM to undertake an excursion to gather material. “I spent a couple days in a helicopter over New York City, capturing reference photography,” Damm details. “At the same time, my colleague Dacklin Young was capturing backdrops.”
CG supervisor Matt Middleton would go on to rely on Damm’s city references, explaining, “Our environment team at ILM’s Sydney studio did a large amount of the Metropolis city build. We knew this asset would need to be shared between vendors, and it was strongly based on the New York City references. We built Metropolis in sections, including various hero sections for our work. We had hundreds of unique buildings, which gave Metropolis a great organic feel. That was driven by what Enrico had done before the shoot had started. Many times, we might only build 10 buildings and do variations of them, but on Superman, we utilized an enormous number of distinct buildings to avoid a procedural feel.”
On-Set Observations
Damm’s duties intensified even further once filming got underway. “I was on set for pretty much every ILM-related shot,” he says. “I made sure that ILM would get what was necessary for our work, and I assembled things that could help us, which weren’t part of principal photography. On the side, I gathered motion tests and scans of his cape and suit, essentially grabbing David and the on-set visual effects crew for an hour to film him in the suit and see how the folds move,” Damm elaborates. “During the shoots of ILM sequences, I met with David almost daily and, with client-side visual effects supervisor Stef Ceretti, we developed a specifically-designed scanning system to gather data for ILM FaceSwap training.”
Since David Corenswet portrays both Superman and Ultraman in the film, this technology was useful for the moments when the two characters face off with each other. “The system helped us capture David’s face as faithfully as possible, so we could train a system to replicate him and FaceSwap in those moments. Almost every day, we held sessions with David to go through various lines to ensure that we captured every nuance of his performance, so we would be able to replicate it digitally on his stunt doubles.”
Suiting Up with Superman
ILM’s crucial involvement continued off the set and into post-production. “The client put their faith in ILM and had us build Superman, the Hammer of Boravia, and Ultraman, three characters who we see frequently,” Damm notes. “We even had the pleasure to have David Corenswet visit ILM’s San Francisco studio. Being a huge Star Wars fan, David had quite a blast. We scanned him using our proprietary MEDUSA scanning system to recreate him on-screen, which included a full digital replica with muscle, bone, and cloth systems. We’re dealing with an ultrabeing flying at ultraspeed, so we did a great deal of cloth simulation on his cape, suit, and hair to portray an appropriate sense of speed.”
ILM’s animation supervisor, Paul Kavanagh, is based at the San Francisco studio, the hub that oversaw the entirety of ILM’s work on Superman. Speaking to the prevalence of ILM’s digital Superman replica, Kavanagh says, “A lot of the times when you see Superman flying along in his suit and cape with his hair fluttering, the only thing that wasn’t CG was his face. But everything we did was based off of the live-action shoot, and we were very faithful to it. We weren’t making up a whole new shot; we were simply enhancing what was filmed.”
Meanwhile, operating out of ILM’s Sydney studio, ILM animation supervisor Stephen King was brought onto the project at the beginning of post-production. “As an animation supervisor, my job is to collaborate with Enrico and Paul to make sure that we’re creating the vision that’s coming from James Gunn and Stef Ceretti,” King remarks. “I helped establish the movement of Superman. The animation department was responsible for enhancing David’s performances by taking away the sense of him being on the rig they had filmed him on. We made certain that his body performance didn’t feel like he was on a rig – that he was actually flying. When I think of Superman, I think of his incredible strength and his ability to fly, so we needed that to appear as real as possible.”
King praises the cooperation between ILM’s various departments, stating, “Our team at ILM’s Sydney studio was in charge of Superman, creating the digital double that would go hand-in-hand and blend seamlessly with David Corenswet’s performance. For shots where we had to do a fully digital version, we wanted to ground it in reality. Our simulation department took care of his cape in every shot that we worked on, making it move and feel authentic. In many of the flying shots, we had to add digital hair because hair is difficult to recreate on stage. It’s either completely flat and doesn’t move, or a fan is placed in front of the actor and affects their performance by causing them to squint. James Gunn entrusted ILM with the title character. Guaranteeing that Superman shone in our work was of the utmost importance for us.”
Boravian Brutality
Damm also hones in on David Corenswet’s hair, referencing his previous point about the bald cap utilized to film the battle against the Hammer of Boravia. “James Gunn wanted to approach that scene with visual effects to allow us to portray an appropriate amount of speed within the hair and sell how fast these beings are flying. In the Hammer of Boravia sequence, it’s all digital hair. It was a unique challenge because there’s no room for errors. If there’s something off, it would immediately break the illusion,” Damm asserts.
“In terms of the character itself, the Hammer of Boravia was essentially a hard-surface object,” Damm adds. “Since he’s wearing a suit, he was a bit easier than Superman in the sense that we weren’t dealing with flesh. The main challenge emerged when it came to texturing and shading the character, as there’s a significant amount of creative and technical know-how called for to craft the shading response that a metallic object has.”
Damm hopes that audiences are unable to tell which shots necessitated the Hammer of Boravia becoming a digital character, noting, “There was a full-on practical suit in many shots, where the on-set crew filmed him on wires. Certain action beats and acrobatic movements required he either be partially or completely replaced. Even in a handful of close shots, where you might assume the practical version remained, we had to go with the digital version because the story changed after principal photography
The Nature of Narratives
As breathtaking as the visual effects of Superman are, Damm and King both emphasize that ILM’s contributions were all done in service to James Gunn’s compelling story. “There’s a sequence where Superman and Lois Lane [Rachel Brosnahan] are deep in conversation, but you have the Justice Gang fighting a giant jellyfish-type creature in the background. We played on the size of the creature so it would be subtle and not moving fast enough to be distracting,” King professes. “Then, when Superman tells Lois that he loves her, the creature spews out all these different colors, and it’s almost like fireworks that enhance the sense of their love and their connection to each other. It’s visual effects aiding in the storytelling, and that’s a credit to James and Stef knowing what they wanted.”
Similarly, Damm highlights the moment the interdimensional rift arrives at Metropolis and begins to split the city, pronouncing, “We were breaking buildings, and there were so many layers of destruction built on top of each other. However, all of that needed to hit precise story beats, meaning the effects weren’t just taking one building and letting it fall into another building. There’s a specific speed and cadence to it that was art directed by Stef and James. Our effects artists received very precise animations of how everything would collapse from the animation department, which were then used to drive simulations.”
Read the article in full here.
Images: ILM/Warner Bros.
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