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2006 TV News Archives

September 21, 2006: “Smallville” Special Effects Examined

VFXWorld.com has published an article taking an indepth look at the special effects of "Smallville", including an interview with Mat Beck from Entity FX studio.

Q: Are most of Clark's "superpower" effects are done with greenscreen elements?

A: Greenscreen and avatar. We scan almost every principal in the show, so we can produce an avatar as needed. We can have a character that's CG, or starts out CG and morphs into a greenscreen character. Or we can track a CG character so that he appears to have a reflection, or casts a shadow on something that wasn't there when he was shot. A lot depends on how artfully an avatar is done, because under certain circumstances I think that you can still see the difference.

Q: How close can the camera get to Clark Kent's avatar and still have it look convincing?

A: Tom Welling (who plays Clark) is a professional, and we can get a lot of good footage of him doing his thing. So we haven't had to have his avatar come right up to camera. How close we can get depends on how fast he's moving. It won't matter if he's going 120 mph!

Read the complete four page article/interview at the VFXWorld.com website.

Thanks to Paul E. Nunn for the lead on this story.