Highlights
- The animators of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse utilized a unique process to incorporate Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man cameo, starting with a YouTube clip as a reference and later using actual archive footage from the film.
- The use of the YouTube clip was only for a temporary mock-up to test the scene with an audience, while the final shot used the original high-resolution footage obtained from Sony Imageworks.
- Including Garfield's footage was not solely for fanservice, but to emphasize a thematic point about the death of a captain in Spider-Man's story, and to provide a satisfying experience by including various Spider-Man easter eggs and cameos in the film.
Andrew Garfield's cameo in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was among the most prominent. Now one of the film's animators explained how they got that footage into the film.
Andrew Leviton explained how he worked out the process of including Garfield's Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which started with ripping off a YouTube clip of the film. This footage was later used as a reference when they incorporated the actual archive footage from the film.
Leviton gave the full Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse story on his Twitter page. "Before officially adding AG to this scene I had to do a temp mock up so we could see how it played and test it with an audience. I had the edit assistants grab the Stacy death clip from Youtube, brought it into After Effects. Used the auto roto feature (with a bunch of tweaking) to remove the background, added some glow and color effects, then brought it into the avid with alpha channel so I could use the bg from any storyboard. This allowed me to experiment with placement within the sequence and easily use/change out the background to keep continuity. When we decided to keep AG in the cut, we turned the mock-up over the SPI wizards, they obtained the original high res footage, and matched the mock-up." Leviton clarified that they went with the actual footage from the Spider-Man film, not the YouTube clip, and why. "And to be clear, what you see in the screenshot above is final shot, not my mock-up. The wizards at Sony Imageworks only used my mock-up as reference. They obtained the actual film footage from Sony to build it. They did not use the YouTube clip. That was only for quick mock-up."
The process they took was more than effective, as the movie did a splendid job showing the footage of Garfield while also making it look like a projection that fits much like the animated clips. Better yet, Garfield's appearance in the film, even if it was stock footage, wasn't done exclusively for fanservice but to emphasize Miguel O'Hara's point that Spider-Man's story typically involves the death of a captain, much like how Garfield's Spider-Man lost Captain Stacy.
Was including the stock footage of Garfield necessary for the film? Probably not, but it was cool to see Across the Spider-Verse go all out with the Spider-Man easter eggs and cameos, no holds barred. It gives fans what they want to see and shows that they did their homework while accessing everything they could to make the film enjoyable while centering around the infinite Spider-Verse.
This may not be the only time the fans see Garfield in this universe. Since Garfield appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home, much to the fans' delight, and fans will eagerly await the upcoming Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, they probably would love to see as much of Garfield as possible. Sony's been good at giving out fanservice over the past few years, and fans have not indicated that it's getting old, so there's no need to fix what isn't broken. Unless, of course, it's the Spider-Verse itself.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now playing in theaters and can be streamed digitally.
Source: Andy! Leviton/Twitter