In 2023, Stephane Ceretti took us behind the scenes of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Now, he’s crossed over to the DC Universe alongside director James Gunn — and this time, he’s here to tell us all about the visual effects of Superman.
That’s a new collaboration between James Gunn and you—how did that partnership come about, and what was it like working with him on this project?
When James told me he would be co-CEO at the new DC Studios and would be creating a totally new take on the characters, it all sounded very exciting to me. And when he confirmed he would start with Superman my heart went racing and I was so honored and excited that he would consider me for the job. I am a big fan of the Superman movies in general and the Richard Donner ones in particular. They are part of the films that shaped my life to some degree. I was really excited by the idea of following James in his new endeavor, despite what it meant for me personally, which was leaving my Marvel family that I really adore after spending many years working with some of the most talented people in the film community on some incredible movies.
What was your feeling to be back in the DC Universe?
I would not really call it a comeback ! I guess technically it’s my third comeback in the DC universe. My first ever film was Batman and Robin, back when I was working at BUF in Paris. At the time I was a young aspiring VFX artist. Then years later I was lucky enough to work as a VFX Supervisor for BUF on Batman Begins by Chris Nolan… I could not be more different than what we did on Batman and Robin obviously. And then now this new world and fresh vision that James is creating for the new DCU, and also getting to work on the “father” of all superheroes. So yes, it’s familiar characters but wildly different approaches and also a very different position for me.
Flying is one of Superman’s most iconic traits. How did you approach the filming and VFX work for his flying sequences to make them feel both dynamic and realistic?
Flying is so central to Superman that we knew it had to feel both visceral and emotional. We approached it less like a visual effect and more like an experience—how does it feel to be in the air with him? That’s why we mixed tools: FPV drones to get that raw, dynamic camera language, LED volume work to give David real environments and lighting to react to, and carefully designed digi-double for the moves he couldn’t physically perform.
We treated each flight beat differently depending on the story—sometimes clean and graceful, sometimes chaotic and turbulent. Hair and cape had to sell the physics of speed, so we leaned on advanced simulations while still grounding them in real performance. And Henry Braham’s choice of unusual wide lenses kept the camera almost uncomfortably close to Superman, which I think helps the audience feel the rush rather than just watch it, especially on a big screen. All those elements together made flight feel alive, not just a visual effect layered on top.
Were there any specific challenges in creating the visual effects for Superman’s flight, especially when it comes to integrating his movements with live-action footage?
One of the big challenges was marrying David’s live-action performance with the extreme physics of flight. Real wind rigs can’t replicate the speed Superman travels at, so we relied heavily on CG hair and cape simulations to capture that sense of power while still feeling natural. We often shot him on rigs or wires and then blended into digital doubles mid-shot, which gave us the freedom to push the motion further without losing his presence. The trick was always finding the right balance—using real photography as our anchor, but letting the digital work extend what was physically possible.
Krypto is a crucial part of Superman’s world. Can you walk us through the design process for the character and how the animation was approached?
Krypto was such a joy to bring to life because he’s rooted in something very personal—James’ own rescue dog, Ozu. Framestore, who are long-time collaborators with James and myself, led the build of the character. They started from scans and tons of video references that James gave us—hundreds of clips of Ozu running around, playing, and just being his mischievous self. Those little moments were gold for us, because they gave Krypto that spark of authenticity. We carried over quirks like Ozu’s one ear that’s always sticking up, which instantly gives him personality.
The idea was always to ground him as a real dog first—full of clumsy energy and stubborn charm—and then layer in the superhero moments. That way, when he suddenly takes flight or drags Superman across the snow, it feels like the same dog you’ve been watching all along, just pushed into extraordinary circumstances.
From a technical side, white fur on white snow was one of the hardest challenges we faced, so the team built in subtle tones and variations to avoid him looking flat. Framestore created the asset, but it was then shared with ILM and Weta, since each studio had Krypto shots to deliver. That kind of collaboration kept the character consistent across the film. In the end, Krypto isn’t just a CG effect—he feels like a companion with humor, warmth, and emotional weight, which is exactly what James wanted.
Krypto’s role is more than just a pet—how did you make sure the VFX brought out the emotion and personality of the character, especially in his scenes with Superman?
With Krypto, the goal was never to make him a dutiful sidekick—it was to capture his unruly, independent spirit. James’ own rescue dog Ozu was our blueprint, and Ozu is stubborn, chaotic, and full of quirks. Framestore’s team studied countless videos James gave us and built on those little details—like Ozu’s ear that never quite sits down—to give Krypto his unique personality.
The approach was always to keep him a dog first. He doesn’t behave like Superman’s pet; he behaves like a dog who just happens to have powers. That means he’s unpredictable—sometimes he helps, sometimes he’s a problem, and often he’s clearly in it for himself. In a way, it’s Superman who cares more about Krypto than the other way around, and that imbalance makes their relationship both funny and true to life.
That unpredictability is what makes him feel real. You never quite know what he’ll do next, but it’s always entertaining—and it adds a layer of humor and humanity to the film that balances out the big superhero spectacle.
The military base sequence with Mister Terrific is a standout moment in the film, especially with its impressive oner. How did you approach the filming of that sequence, and how did the VFX enhance the experience?
That oner was very much a James Gunn moment—he loves these long, continuous shots that carry a rhythm and a sense of fun. From the start, it was designed almost like a dance. Wayne Dalglish, our stunt coordinator, and his team choreographed it with that in mind, because Mister Terrific’s style isn’t just about power—it’s got a groove, a kind of swagger to it. You can feel that playfulness in the way he moves through the fight.
We shot the sequence in three parts, just to allow the rigging and wire pulls to be reset safely. Then in post, we stitched those pieces together to feel like a seamless take. That’s where VFX really came in—not to replace the action, but to enhance it. We smoothed the transitions, fixed continuity issues like changes in sun and shadows, and added digital Raptors or T-Sphere effects when the live-action couldn’t quite go far enough.
The philosophy was to keep the physical performance front and center, while letting VFX give it that extra layer of polish and spectacle. So when you watch it, you’re mostly seeing what was performed on the day, but it feels bigger, slicker, and absolutely seamless. It’s a great example of stunts, camera, and VFX all working together.
The robots in Superman’s world are quite a visual feat. What was the design process like for them, and how did you balance realism with their futuristic nature?
The robots were a great example of blending practical and digital work. Legacy Effects designed and built these beautiful animatronic puppets that we used on set. They gave us real weight and texture to work with, and their puppeteering helped define the kind of animation these automatons should have later.
Alan Tudyk, who voices Robot Four—‘Gary’—was also on set in a grey suit, performing as an acting reference for us. That gave the other actors someone to interact with, and it gave us invaluable timing and personality cues when we moved into animation.
The tricky part was that these robots were highly reflective, so in the raw plates you’d often see the crew, lights, and equipment reflected back. That meant most of the time Framestore had to fully replace them in CG. But we leaned heavily on both the on-set puppetry and Alan’s performance to guide how they moved and expressed themselves.
That’s really how we struck the balance: start with something tactile done live on set, then push and expand the limited motion and action we could do practically into our CG world while keeping the realism of how they were puppeteered on set.
The Hammer of Boravia is another impressive creation. How did the team approach the design and animation of this powerful object to make it both awe-inspiring and believable?
The Hammer of Boravia was designed and implemented by Legacy Effects, who built partial armor pieces for the stunt performers to wear on set. They created chest, arm, and shoulder sections that gave us real contact and weight in the photography, while keeping it safe for the actors. Legs were often just tracking pants, and hand armor would sometimes be swapped out for softer pads depending on the stunt. That gave us a strong base, but also meant we needed to extend or replace parts digitally in many shots.
ILM then scanned the practical builds and developed the full CG version. One of the big challenges was the surface—it had to feel like solid, heavy metal, but also carry a Kryptonian energy, with golden highlights that roll into green depending on the light. Getting that shading right was critical to making it sit naturally in Metropolis or against the other environments.
There are a handful of moments where the Hammer is completely in-camera—for example when he walks into the tent at the beach, or into the LuthorCorp comms hub set. Those shots are all Legacy’s build, no VFX at all, and they really helped anchor the digital work.
For the action, we leaned on stunt performance for weight and rhythm, and then pushed it further with digital extensions. The idea was always to start with something real, then expand it to the level of scale and intensity James wanted.
The giant creature in the film is another standout. What challenges did you face in bringing this creature to life, and how did you make it feel integrated into the physical world of the film?
The Kaiju was a huge challenge because of its scale and the way the camera often gets so close to it. Weta FX took the lead on the creature, but ILM had already designed Metropolis, and they handed that asset over so Weta could extend Public Square in Cleveland and dress it with extreme detail—street props, debris, lighting—so the Kaiju felt like it was stomping through a living city. We also had a full digital version of the square so that Weta FX could do shots that needed extreme camera work we could not achieve even with drones and also create all the interactions of the Kaiju with the environment.
We shot the entire battle on location in Cleveland’s Public Square, which gave us a massive practical foundation. The art department dressed parts of the square to look crushed, and Dan Sudick’s SFX team staged big gags like a truck being stomped, cars dragged by the Kaiju’s tail, and practical debris flying everywhere. We even brought a real squirrel on set as reference for a CG squirrel moment. All of that was gold for integration.
Some beats were filmed at Trilith in Georgia on a blue screen stage, where we did extensive wire work for Superman’s flying and fighting. David Corenswet did a lot of that stunt work himself, and Weta built their flying shots from a constant mix of real stunt photography and digital doubles. That interplay—real body language enhanced with digital when needed —was essential to making the action feel physical.
One highlight was the office set we built specifically for the Kaiju’s fiery spit. Sudick’s team actually burned it safely on stage, which was very spectacular, and gave Weta amazing real fire reference to build on.
The creature itself needed to hold up at any distance, so Weta used a resolution-independent texturing approach, layering procedural detail so that whether you’re wide on its full body or inches from its skin, you see believable complexity. And for the fire breath, early sims looked too light and soft, so the team studied WWI flamethrowers and naval fire hoses, simulating the fuel first and then the fire. That gave the flames weight, direction, and inertia, making them feel truly dangerous.
All of that—ILM’s city build, the practical shoot in Cleveland, real stunts and sets, and Weta’s simulation and animation work—came together to make the Kaiju feel like it’s genuinely rampaging through Metropolis, not just dropped into a CG background.
Green Lantern’s powers are very distinct. How did the VFX team approach visualizing his constructs and abilities, especially in contrast to Superman’s powers?
Honestly, it really just had to be funny and also very faithful to the comics. The constructs were designed to feel like hard-light projections: engineered, almost architectural. Weta FX developed a look where they had an internal energy core, surrounded by semi-transparent structure, so you could read the mechanics of how they were built. Every single construct was written in the script and we spent a bit of time designing them with our friends at Weta for the maximum effect. They are somewhat an extension of Guy Gardner’s quirky personality so it was always fun to figure out what they would look like and how they would operate.
The Fortress of Solitude is one of the most iconic locations in the Superman lore. How did you approach its design and the VFX to make it feel like a place of immense power and mystery?
The Fortress was one of the most complex environments we had to tackle. Beth Mickle gave us a strong production design direction, and Framestore developed the crystal world from there. We didn’t want it to look like a glossy CG palace—every crystal needed depth, internal fractures, and a sense of geology. Too transparent and it looked fake, too opaque and it looked like plastic. Getting that balance right required a lot of experimentation.
I worked closely with Stéphane Nazé at Framestore, which was fun because he and I go way back—we started together in Paris in the mid ’90s at BUF on Batman & Robin, our very first film. We’d already spent time then experimenting with crystals and ice, and here we were thirty years later pushing that same idea but with modern tools. That history helped us define the quality bar we were aiming for.
On set, we shot reference plates in Svalbard to capture the way real ice and snow behave in light, and Beth’s team built a huge part of the set with practical crystal and rock pieces that Framestore extended digitally. For the holograms inside the Fortress, we used 4D Gaussian splatting. The reason was very specific: we needed to show the same holographic recordings from multiple angles within a scene. Motion control and repeating the same performance would never have worked. By capturing a 3D volumetric version of a single take, we could move around it freely in post.
This was actually the first time the technique had been used in a motion picture, so it was a leap of faith. The technology was evolving and improving as we worked, which made it risky, but also exciting. In the end it turned out to be more streamlined than a full CG methodology. It naturally captures hair, cloth, and even transparencies—things that are notoriously difficult in CG. That meant we didn’t have to build digital doubles with CG hair or cloth just to make the holograms believable. The result looks more real, more immediate, and more like an actual hologram than anything we could have achieved with a full CG pipeline.
For Framestore, the rendering of the Fortress itself was a massive undertaking. Each crystal was essentially a refractive and reflective object, bouncing light through and across multiple layers of geometry. When you multiply that by thousands of crystals in a single shot, the complexity skyrockets. Getting clean renders without endless noise, while still preserving the subtle scattering and color shifts inside the crystals, required a lot of optimization and R&D. It wasn’t just about brute-force computing—it was about developing smart ways to handle all those light interactions so the Fortress felt alive but still renderable within production schedules.
Metropolis is often depicted as a vibrant, modern city. How did you go about creating and enhancing Metropolis for this film, and what were some of the key visual decisions you made to bring the city to life?
Metropolis was a city we had to build with several layers in mind: comic book legacy, story needs, and real-world grounding. We started by mapping out an overall layout inspired by the comics, then placed the scripted locations into that plan so the geography would work—especially for the rift sequence at the end, which required Superman to move across multiple landmarks in one continuous geography.
ILM led the digital build. New York was our reference point for scale, style, and density, but we also folded in the real places we filmed—Public Square in Cleveland, the baseball stadium, the river bridge—so they became part of Metropolis’ fabric. For the Hall of Justice, we drew directly from the Cincinnati Union Terminal, a beautiful Art Deco building that’s now a museum. We integrated that into the city plan, and ILM even used elements of London’s Hyde Park to create the parkland transition between the Hall and the dense downtown core.
A lot of the character of the city came from Beth Mickle’s direction. She pushed for a strong Art Deco influence throughout the architecture, giving Metropolis a distinctive elegance that feels timeless but not futuristic. The Daily Planet was a key part of that—we based it on an Art Deco AT&T building in Cleveland, which gave us the right scale and silhouette, and then reimagined it as the iconic centerpiece of the skyline.
We began design very early in prep, which was important because we had to generate translights and LED content for the shoot. For the Luthorcorp comms hub, we used translight city views; for Clark’s apartment, we rendered full cityscapes with the jellyfish animation playing across the skyline and displayed them on LED walls outside the windows. Those weren’t just backgrounds—they provided real reflections and interactive lighting on set, which made the VFX extensions much easier to integrate later.
Another key consideration was designing Metropolis to break. Cars, signage, glass, façades—all of that was modeled with destruction in mind, so when Superman battles enemies in the city, the damage feels physical and connected to its environment. That’s what makes Metropolis feel like more than a backdrop—it behaves like a real, functioning city that comes under threat, which was essential for the story.
Were there any memorable moments or scenes from the film that you found particularly rewarding or challenging to work on from a visual effects standpoint?
I’m really proud of the range of what we were able to achieve on this film. We had everything from the Fortress of Solitude to establishing a whole new Metropolis, building the pocket universe, bringing Krypto to the screen in live action for the first time, and of course, all of Superman’s flight and the powers of his foes. Each of those required a different set of tools, and I think the strength of the film comes from how we used the full spectrum of techniques—practical builds, stunt work, digital doubles, new simulation methods—to tell the story in a fresh way.
One aspect that stands out for me is the holograms in the Fortress. We pioneered the use of 4D Gaussian splatting for that, and to my knowledge it was the first time this technique had been used in a motion picture. It was a bit of a leap of faith because the technology was evolving as we were working, but it paid off. Not only did it let us capture performances volumetrically in a single take—which was essential for how often we had to show those holograms from multiple angles—but it also meant we didn’t need to build digital doubles with CG hair or cloth. The system naturally captured all those details, and the result looks more immediate, faithful to the actor’s performance, more like a true hologram than anything we could have done with a full CG pipeline.
Looking back, it’s the breadth of those challenges and the way the team pulled them all together that I’m most proud of. It shows what can be done when you combine craft, innovation, and a bit of risk-taking.
What’s the VFX shots count?
About 1766 VFX shots.
What is your next project?
Something cool I can’t really talk about until I am signed 😉
A big thanks for your time.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Framestore: Dedicated page about Superman on Framestore website.
Stéphane Nazé, Loïc Mireault & Kevin Sears: Here’s my interview of Stéphane Nazé (VFX Supervisor), Loïc Mireault (Animation Supervisor) & Kevin Sears (CG Supervisor) – Framestore.
ILM: Dedicated page about Superman on ILM website.
Weta FX: Dedicated page about Superman on Weta FX website.
Guy Williams: Here’s my interview of Guy Williams – VFX Supervisor – Weta FX.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025
