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August 26, 2014: Dr. Christine Schreyer's Experience Working on "Man of Steel"

In a recent interview with The Wenner-Gren Blog, Dr. Christine Schreyer, the linguistic anthropologist who helped develop the Kryptonian language used in the movie "Man of Steel", talks about the whole experience of being on a movie set, and what she learned from working in Hollywood. Here's a few excerpts from the interview...

What was the input and feedback like from the non-anthropologists in the production?

I was given much leeway to decide how I wanted the language to be developed and the person who gave me the most feedback was Kristen, the graphic designer, as we were the ones who ended up knowing the most about how the language worked since we were using it frequently. However, Alex McDowell, Production Designer, and Helen Jarvis, Art Director, were also extremely supportive of the work that Kristen and I were doing, which was nice since it led to more opportunities for the language to be used throughout the film's production.

What did you take from the experience? Did this project influence the way you think about your scholarly work, or your work with "real" languages?

Since my work on this project, I've been fascinated with the ideas of world building and the on-line worlds that people build and participate in. This has led me to re-look at my research with Na'vi speakers through the lens of digital ethnography. I've also had fans of Superman contact me requesting more information about how to learn the language I developed. As of now, Warner Bros., the official owners of this work, have not yet developed a learning guide for Kryptonian. Despite this, people are interested in learning the language, making me wonder, what can we do to make those interested in learning minority languages "fans" of their languages again? What can "fandoms" teach us about the enthusiasm required to help reverse language shift?

Read the entire interview at The Wenner-Gren Blog.