Thread by @AlliterAndy

Fun #SpiderVerse Fact!

1) To cut the post credit scene our assistants downloaded the 1960’s Spider-Man episode “Double Identity” off of YouTube. @philiplord, @rodneyrothman, and I were writing the scene on the fly and scratching dialogue to keep trying out different things...

2) The problem was we only had a few weeks until release and one animator left on the show (Joshua Beveridge?). We had one chance. We quickly workshopped and I cut the picture from the youtube video to match the dialogue we were trying, ignoring the pointing action at first...

3) When we were happy, I looped the footage of the pointing to match the dialogue which was a rudimentary way to “animate” this in editorial. I also comped the head of ‘67 Spidey on his body so I could loop his mouth movements to match his speech. I turned over to animation...

4) Animation acquired the highest Resolution and cleanest image of that episode from Marvel, never seen by the public before. They conformed to my crappy youtube ref cut. Then animated the image of Spider-man 2099 in place of the left ‘67 Spidey and added the portal jump...

5) More or less matching my AVID “animation.” They used talent and probably some wizard’s magic. The model is actually a 3D model rendered and lit super flat to match the old cartoon style... This had to be locked because this was the very end of animation. There was an issue...

6) Soon we recorded with real actors, Oscar Isaac and @jormataccone. They had to stick to script since production was over, the last animator was off the film on vacation now. Timing couldn’t change. But, as usual, there was a lot of improvisation. It was a gold mine of funny...

7) I had to use the funniest takes from the actors session but no new animation could be produced. Time to get creative! I took the footage from anim and split screened each Spidey and looped THAT footage to “animate” to the new dialogue including the ‘67 Spidey head again...

8) At first there was no cutaway to the police officer and JJJ. But the actors gave us so much great material that I thought it would be funny if we cut to the two spectators arguing who pointed first and when we cut back the Spideys are STILL arguing about who pointed first...

9) I came up with some lines for the duo, scratched myself doing both characters and cut them in. I guess everyone liked it! I got officially cast as the police officer and our Editorial APM, Adam Brown, got cast as JJJ (He was also metaphor man). Still, one more problem...

10) We didn’t know how to end it the scene. I mocked up a few endings. One of which is the one you saw. The second place ending was 2099 knocks out ‘67 Spidey and slowly drags him off screen saying, “This guy’s the worst.” The crude “animation” I did in the AVID made it funny...

11) I turned it over to sound to do the final mix and the DI to color-time and prepare the DCP. This was it! We were basically done. But!!!! At the last second, our animator came back from vacation early to re-animate Spidey 2099’s animation and he did it in less...

12) than a day (Like I said, Wizardry). The anim was more elaborate than the first pass! We rushed the footage to sound and the DI just in the knick of time. Seriously, it was close. So close, the scene didn’t make it into the Chinese release.

TL;DR - Making movies is hard.