How Jon Watts Changed The Visual Approach To ‘Spider-Man’

Jon Watts talks about how he approached Spider-Man: Homecoming from a visual standpoint and how he deems practical effects important.

Spider-Man
Spider-Man: Homecoming has a lowest budget for a Spider-Man movie since Sam Raimi’s 2002 movie, and a big part of that is because director Jon Watts opted to take a more practical approach with the character. Watts explained why he went for a less digital approach than his predecessors and what kind of camera work he employed with the film.

Watts took note that Spider-Man’s costume is practical in most of the movie’s shots (with the exception to the mask’s eye lenses, which are digitally-edited to shift and change depending on the situation), and that keeping the suit “real” was important for the story they were trying to tell. Watts also noted that he wanted to avoid having epic, sweeping shots in order to make the film feel as close to Peter Parker as possible:

“I wanted it to always be shot as if it was real, you know? If you actually had a Spider-Man who could do all of this stuff, you know, you would shoot it with actual equipment. So, it’s really cool to do that [the swoopy camera]. I always call it the Peter Jackson camera moves, where the camera is going like ten thousand miles. But I didn’t want to do that for this, because I wanted to keep it all as grounded as possible. So, whether it was shooting with a drone camera or a helicopter or a cable-cam, or even just handheld, up on a roof chasing after him, I wanted it to feel like we were there with him, and everything was something you could actually film.”

It makes sense that for Spider-Man’s first solo outing in the MCU would keep things more down-to-earth in terms of scale and avoid going overboard – after all, the movie not revolving around world-ending stakes is something that’s a selling point after the two The Amazing Spider-Man movies were criticized for doing that.

Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into theaters on July 7, 2017. The film features a cast that includes Tom Holland as Peter Parker (Spider-Man), Robert Downey Junior as Tony Stark (Iron Man), Zendaya Coleman as Michelle, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds, Tony Revolori as “Flash” Thompson, Laura Harrier as Liz Allan, Marisa Tomei as May Parker, Jon Favreau as Harold “Happy” Hogan, Michael Keaton as Adrian Toomes (Vulture), Bokeem Woodbine as Herman Schultz (Shocker), and Michael Chernus as Phineas Mason (Tinkerer).

Source: Den of Geek