News Superman & Lois Ordered to Series at The CW

In case anyone was wonder, they did change the view outside the windows in the scene set at the Daily Planet.

 

Why build a universe for this show and then ignore it.

It's not Earth 38, because Kal didn't have kids, and it's not Earth Prime because Kal was a Paragon assassin who assassinated his doppelganger and stole that guys wife and kids.

So where the frakk is this set?

 

It was the 90's. They were likely eXtreme Nazis. Jason

 

Yeah, I suspected they would, and I kept an eye out for that. I wonder, are they able to do that without greenscreens now, or was that publicity photo just posed for the still photographer before they erected the greenscreens in the windows?

 

There's only one shot where there are characters passing in front of the windows, the other window replacements are mostly out-of-focus deep background with no one in front of them (and it's hard to tell if it was shot like that, or the focus was made shallower with visual effects. The latter would make the whole process a lot easier, since the blurring would mean the window replacement could be very quick and dirty without looking bad in the final shot, without having to fight the blurring to paint out the original background). For the shot of Clark and Perry walking down the bullpen with the skyline in the background, there are some telltale hard edges on Perry's head and some of the furniture that point to it being rotoscoped instead of that being the actual view out the windows (which we already knew from the photo). They completely avoid the windows in the present-day Planet scenes, probably in part because they didn't have the dreamy, flashback look letting them get away with a rougher effect. And since the show isn't going to be based in Metropolis or at the Planet, they didn't need to come up with a practical long-term solution (which is also why they shot on location in the first place instead of building a set), just something that only needed to work once. Come to think of it, I'm glad the city looked as good as it did, I was afraid for another fifty-mile-wide expanse of identical video-game box-buildings like the Crisis on Infinite Earths Metropolis (though that probably came about because of the need to stage an aerial battle there).

With today's computer tools, while the greenscreen helps, it's relatively easy to do a background extraction as long as there's a good amount of contrast between what you're keeping and what you're replacing. Both in the final shot and the publicity photo, the outdoor view is so much brighter than the inside of the room, it would've been very possible for the computer to hold on to the outlines of the foreground (though not cheap or easy with how much stuff was passing in front of the windows, which is why they only did it once, and in a tracking shot where the foreground is constantly moving so you don't have time to look around the frame and see any places where it doesn't look perfect). Since a lot of the room's light comes from the windows, I doubt they would've wanted to block them off with green panels.

I just recently saw a demo reel for a company that specializes in similar after-the-fact effects (it looks like it was mostly changes to movies to censor content and remove product-placement for TV or airplane versions, or all-audiences trailers for PG-13 or R-rated movies, though there were a few "real" visual effects shots in there like background replacement and wire removal). It's not exactly analogous, but it gives you an idea of the kinds of things you can do with visual effects even without any on-set preparation.

(Watching the scene again, the "Daily Planet" logo stamped into the elevator wall also looks really CG.)

 

Supes killing Nazis is from this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_At_Earth's_End

 

It is Earth prime. We're following the same Superman from Supergirl.

Also what the hell are you talking about in your second point? This Superman wasn't a Paragon, it was the Brandon Routh superman that was a Paragon (before Lex rewrote the book of Destiny to make it him)

 

First off, that's not Perry, it's his successor Samuel Foswell. This is later in Superman & Lois's life, after all, and we've seen that Perry's former assistant Cat Grant has gone on to found her own media empire and former cub reporter James Olsen has become a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist and news executive. Perry's probably enjoying his retirement by now, if his heart didn't do him in. (Though he was going strong as late as Supergirl season 2.)

Second, those telltale edges can suggest greenscreen/chromakey mattes as well, so it's not definitive in itself.

Okay, that's what I wanted to know. So it's like that "magic wand" tool in computer drawing programs, but better and in motion.

That's a little disturbing, that they can alter images so completely. Well, I guess at least they don't have to cut as many scenes out entirely as they used to for TV. But I wondered about those shots where they erased whole people. Maybe for trailers to hide spoilers? Or maybe to avoid likeness clearance issues?

 

The scene David is talking about is in the flashback where Clark and Lois first meet. Perry is in that sequence, and there is a shot of him walking with the windows in the background.

 

I actually double-checked the credits to make sure it was Perry in that first scene, since he was only referred to as "sir," and he looked kind of like the guy in the present day scene.

I was curious about the context, too, but the only one I could find is that Warner Brothers wouldn't let the George Reeves biopic "Hollywoodland" use the Superman logo in its marketing, so they had to paint it out for the trailer.

 

Yeah, the end credits call him Perry White.

 

Oh, sorry. I got the two of them confused since they were both balding men. And that guy just doesn't look like a Perry White type to me. Too bland.

 

Superman did not remember his kids in the last chapter of Crisis.

I thought it was because he was a paragon, but it's because the martian Manhunter "helpfully" over wrote this world's Superman's memories with Earth 38 Superman's memories.

Ideally, Clark should have remembered the memories of both worlds.

But if he didn't know that he had children, then his Earth Prime memories are gone.

I'm rewatching the Flash, and all the crossovers, I've almost finished season 5, so I'm two days away from watching Crisis again, and that should clear up what I am getting wrong.

 

I think he has both sets of memories.

 

The shows have never been clear on that.

Shouldn't we stick to the Season 1 thread?

 

Lois phones Clark while he's flying around, and says he needs to get home because of the boys. Clark says, "The boys?" and furrows his brow, and Lois sarcastically responds, "Yeah, your sons," and Clark flies off, brow still furrowed.

For the audience, it communicates that he now has two sons instead of one (and Clark's reaction communicates that this is a change to the status quo), but in-universe, his confused reaction could either be because of the recent mind-mojo J'onn did to him leaving him with two sets of memories and he was still getting used to which one took precedence, or it could be entirely for the benefit of the audience, and his confused reaction was purely, "Boys? My boys? My boys in trouble? Well, I never, we'll just have to see about that," because he's a bit of an absentee workaholic father.

 

I think that for the most part, we're not likely to see much more acknowledgment of the whole "There was an earlier universe that some people remember and others don't" idea. That was narratively useful for the period right after the Crisis, but it's not narratively useful as the shows move on with their own storylines. It's simpler just to portray the current reality as the one that all the characters know and remember, and any inconsistency about what they should remember will just be glossed over as irrelevant to the story.

Although if Captain Luthor is from a universe lost to the Crisis, that could make the memories narratively relevant, so it could come up in that context.

 

I reviewed the scene.

Clark is not supposed to have children, or that many children who are that old, since Earth 38 Superman, his kid was only just recently born.

Its obviously a failure of communication.

Crisis probably annoyed each show runner, and they were all glad to be rid of of it, never to give that clusterfuck another thought.

Black Lightning, the series, does not give a fig.

I was actually wondering why Savitar didn't help out in the invasion?

Or the thinker didn't try to get the book of destiny off John Dee.

 

Rather, they've been really inconsistent on it, a trend Superman & Lois continues.

Basically, it seems to me that S&L took the opportunity of "Crisis" to set up the new status quo they wanted, and for all intents and purposes, they're pretty much going to ignore the plot and conceptual complications of Clark and Lois's old life versus their new one. After all, the montage at the beginning is grounded in the idea that these are the memories that define Clark, and they're all from his new Earth-Prime timeline, with nary a mention or acknowledgment that any other version ever existed.

The leaked draft script contains several explicit references to "Crisis" that were cut out of the aired version. No doubt part of it is trying to make the show accessible to potential new viewers, without all that complicated and confusing rigmarole, which has no actual relevance to the story being told.

Though, as Christopher notes, "Crisis" does seem to factor into the "Captain Luthor" storyline, so it hasn't gone away completely as a plot element.

That would be ideal, but message boards gonna message board.

 

He isn't the Earth 38 Superman at that point.