Superman XIII: We'll Always Have Metropolis
The Man of Steel Isn't Feeling So Super
Superman, Impotent?
In 2003, just after finishing my Master's program at the University of Chicago, I organized a team of friends for the 2nd annual New York Midnight Moviemaking Madness Contest. The first round of the competition required each team to write and produce a ten-minute film in two weeks. The movie had to conform to a genre and topic: our genre was "Spoof" and our topic was "Superman turns out to be impotent."
CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW TO WATCH THE FILM (9:58)
(Don't feel like downloading the latest version of Flash? Try viewing this video here. The copy on YouTube is of lower quality.)
Preproduction
Still flush with the joy of having made it through a grueling academic gauntlet, my team spent the first week drinking and carousing. I did, however, manage to write a first draft of the script that week, which was then revised over several pints at the Charleston in Chicago. We didn't find our leading man, Martin Arrascue, until he showed up in Rock Island, Illinois, for a weekend getaway at co-director David Alm's parents' house. We plied Martin with mojitos, and once he was drunk enough he finally surrendered to our requests for him to be our erectile dysfunctional Son of Jor-El.
Production
The film was shot in three days and for under $200. We used a small consumer Sony hand-held digital camera, borrowed from Mrs. Alm. Half of our budget was spent on the Superman costume we rented from Fantasy Headquarters on the Northside. The rest of it went into building a green screen and supplying the cast and crew with beer and pizza. More on the green screen in a moment.
The first day of principle photography was a nightmare. The costume shop opened later than we had thought, which caused an initial delay. Then during one of our trips across town, Superman and I got into a minor car accident near the Best Buy where we had just purchased a microphone, which turned out to be utterly useless. Once we finally got back on track, we moved our team down to the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park, where we were promptly kicked out of the Ida Noyes building (but not before completing the Succubot introduction scene on the main staircase).
The second day of shooting went far better, and we managed to get everything we had missed the day before. The living room of the Fortress of Solitude was, in fact, David Alm's apartment in Bucktown. Had we realized how squeaky that floor was, and how well our microphone would pick it up, we might have tried another place. We used the bedroom Olivia Belastock's (Lois Lane) apartment and the bathroom in mine. All three places cut together quite well in the final film.
Starring Greeney the Greenscreen as "The Impressive Visual Effect"
To make our green screen, co-director Christopher Rogala and I taped two 4' x 8' Styrofoam panels together, cleared out our dining room, covered the floor in newspaper, and painted the panels neon lime. Once it was dry, we put the panel up against the window and used every lamp in our place to light it evenly. (Seeing the pink side of the Styrofoam from outside, our landlord later stopped by to ask if we had broken the window.)
The famous green screen sequence in We'll Always Have Metropolis was shot in this dining room studio, and we managed to kill a 30-pack of Pabst in the process.
Superman II: The Musical
The idea of doing Superman II as a musical is one that several of my friends in New York had kicked around for years. I think it may have been Eric Lochstamphor and Jonathan O'Beirne who originally came up with it.
I incorporated this musical element into my script, wrote the lyrics, and came up with a melody. Ari Lauren composed the score for the film and made my simple melody into a real song. Our recording session was horribly low-tech. Using only a cheap computer microphone, I recorded Ari playing the piece on her keyboard. Then I recorded Martin singing (I had to twist his arm on that one), and I mixed the two tracks together into one.
Post-Production
We sent our footage to New York, where Jonathan O'Beirne edited it. He did an amazing job of correcting our mistakes. No one working on the film had ever produced a film before, and so our shots were bad, our sound was miserable, we'd had no time to rehearse the scenes, and we didn't get enough coverage of anything. Jonathan managed to piece together something that looked like an actual short. And we were all amazed that the greenscreen worked. We killed a 30-pack of Old Style to celebrate.
Runner-Up
Despite its technical shortcomings, We'll Always Have Metropolis was a runner up in the NYMMM competition. We were all fairly impressed with ourselves. Had we gotten our hands on more professional equipment--a better camera and a decent shotgun mic--I'm certain we could have made it to the second round of the competition. All the same, it was a valiant first try and a great deal of fun to make.
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