Creating the Sandman

A few weeks ago, we reported about the acting process behind Thomas Hayden Church’s transformation into the villianious Sandman in “Spider-Man 3.”

Recently, “USA Today” had an article that examines the revolutionary special effects process used to create the Sandman and other effects in the box-office hit film.

“In general, everything was a little bit harder,” says visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk.
The roughest of the tough: Sandman. At the film’s outset, the character (played by Thomas Haden Church) is a human criminal, Flint Marko, who stumbles into a particle atomizer and gets blasted, along with the sand inside.

In an iconic “birth of Sandman” scene, he emerges from the pile forever changed. Marko is so shocked that he literally can’t keep himself together. Then he sees a locket with a picture of his daughter. “It’s that vision of her that allows him to collect himself to a human form,” Stokdyk says.

Sand has been manipulated in other movies, most notably Universal’s The Mummy films. But for Sandman, the substance “is really a character as opposed to an effect,” Stokdyk says. “We wanted to create something that looked like it is rooted in the real world but had to do very special things.”

Back in 2004, once Imageworks knew that the script involved Sandman, its software engineers began working on a sand simulation program.

The finished Sandstorm program allowed animators to create flowing and blowing sand, as well as sand forming a body and limbs.

Adding to the complexity of the effects is that Sandman evolves during the film. “We really show the awesome powers that this beast has and how he controls it or doesn’t control it,” says Grant Curtis, one of the film’s producers and author of The Spiderman Chronicles: The Art and Making of Spider-Man 3 (Chronicle Books, $50).

Sandman’s many forms — from a wispy cloud to a Godzilla-sized giant — added to the effects team’s challenges, says Jody Duncan, editor of effects magazine Cinefex. “It was almost like they were reinventing the wheel with every shot.”

That kind of challenge makes it likely that Spider-Man 3 will be a contender for the effects Oscar. (The first sequel won in 2005).

But the year’s special effects are just getting started. Duncan points out: “Pirates won last year,” and Part 3 is out May 25. “And Transformers (opening July 4) with big robots, that has got to be good.”

Sony Pictures Imageworks created about 70 minutes of footage for Spider-Man 3, as opposed to 40 minutes for 2004’s Spider-Man 2. And with direction from Sam Raimi, the special-effects team took its work to a whole new level.

Sky fight: An aerial battle between an unmasked Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and Harry Osborn (James Franco), piloting a Goblin air board (called a “skystick”), was a scene that could not have been technically executed three years ago, says Grant Curtis, one of the film’s producers. “There was nothing like (that) in Spider-Man 1 or 2,” he says. “The notch that Sony Pictures Imageworks took it up to get what was in Sam’s head on the screens, it was leaps and bounds.”

Facial expressions: Improved digital face scanning and intricate computer-controlled camera movements allowed Imageworks animators to replace the faces of digital doubles with footage captured of the real actors. “The reason it was important to do that was Sam Raimi really wants the audience to be emotionally connected with these characters, and you are more likely to be emotionally connected if you are seeing the real actor’s face,” says Jody Duncan, editor of effects magazine Cinefex.

Other advances: Among the additional details given attention by the effects team were the lifelike black parasitic goo that attached itself to Parker and Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), a virtual set of the city scene where the final battle takes place and an Imageworks “ballistics” animation software tool developed specifically to create more realistic camera movements and better movements for Spider-Man’s (and other characters’) highflying exploits.