Superman & Lois: Tom Cavanagh on Directing Season 1 Finale | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources
Tom Cavanagh is no stranger to the Arrowverse. A longtime star of The Flash, he has played multiple parts over multiple seasons and shows, from Harrison Wells to Reverse-Flash to Pariah of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" fame. Although he recently stepped away from his series regular position on The Flash, he has donned a new role on Superman & Lois: director. After previously directing three episode of The Flash, he stepped in to helm the Superman & Lois Season 1 finale.
Speaking to CBR, Cavanagh explained why he placed feel above all else when he approached the Superman & Lois Season 1 finale as its director. He described himself as a "fancy guest" on the series and praised the cast and crew for being so welcoming. He recalled how they were open to any and all of the ideas he threw out while filming and broke down the way he visualized shots to prepare for the episode's extensive VFX. He also teased why he hopes the episode will "break your heart," "make you wistful" and "have you on the edge of your seat" and more.
CBR: Let's go back to the beginning. How did you end up directing the Superman & Lois Season 1 finale? How did that conversation end up happening?
Tom Cavanagh: Well, it was quite easy. They said, "Do you want to direct the finale of Superman & Lois?" And I said, "Yes." [laughs] So that's how that happened. Pretty easy, right? Pretty straightforward.
Superman & Lois has a different look and feel from the other Arrowverse shows. How did that impact your approach to this episode as a director?
Well, that's a great question. It really is. Because the look, I think, sometimes is underrated a little bit, but the look is the thing that makes you feel something, right? Sometimes, on some of the other television shows, people are interested in getting in close to the actor and the action to say, "Oh, that's how you're going to feel." But oftentimes, if I bring the camera out and have an incredibly wide tableau of the Kent house, the farmhouse, as the sun is setting, it's going to make you feel something and then that sort of sets a background music, if you will, to the song that we're about to play. If we keep going and making that music, throughout our 60 minutes, it's going to help you feel something.
On Superman & Lois, they made the decision -- which is just, for a director, is heavenly -- to go with anamorphic lenses, which essentially translates to a widescreen look, which basically means you're looking at a movie. It makes no sense to use those tools and not try and respect the lighting in the background and the tableaus and shots to go into making something look like a movie. Over there at Superman & Lois, they're all on board with that concept.
On another television show, you just have to oftentimes put your schedule first and shoot what's on the schedule. If there happens to be nice lighting in the background, then great! On this one, very early on, Stephen Maier and I -- Stephen is the Director of Photography over there -- we would have long discussions about like, "Look, I can get this shot in 30 minutes, but it has to be between 9 and 9:30, which means we have to do this other scene in an hour before and we have to be out of it by the time 8:45 rolls around, so we can set up this thing so we can have the light that we want in the background."
You know, it's just a joy to be to be having those discussions and have everybody in agreement, as opposed to going like, "Well, we've got to get the day!" To have everybody, all the women and the men, on board with the idea that the look matters, because it's going to translate to feel, which is going to translate to telling good stories, and then the tools that we're telling those stories with the anamorphic lenses and all the incredible things that they can do over Superman & Lois with the digital effects and their visual effects...! It was just, for a director, an absolute pleasure to work over there.
This episode has a little bit of everything, between its big, sweeping action sequences and the smaller, emotional family beats. Did you find yourself drawn to one or the other in this particular episode, and why?
I would say -- and the last thing I'm trying to do is dodge your question -- but the larger picture, for me, is the story. It sounds elementary, perhaps, but it kind of all comes down to story. You hope to get a good story, and it doesn't always work out that way, right? But this one that we're telling on the finale, I think, is a really good story.
Then, if it's a really good story, necessarily, on a superhero show or a superhero movie, it should have -- I don't know if I can say it's going to -- but it should have those very things that you're talking about. Then, how do those pieces -- the small moments and the big, blowing-up action sequence -- how do they all tie together? Are they going to make you feel the maximum amount of stuff that you can feel? And if not, how can I make that happen?
So I mean, I think if you've seen it, then you know that there's moments where I'm definitely trying to break your heart, and then there's moments when I'm trying to make you wistful, and there's moments when I'm trying to ", watching the action sequence. None of those three things really work in a vacuum. The action sequence is going to be informed by the smaller thing, where hopefully we're trying to break your heart, because it means that there's stakes involved and the heavy stakes, that's the action sequences.
We're fighting for a family; we're fighting for stakes. We're fighting for the most important thing: we're fighting for love. Without those small moments, there really are no big moments. The big moments are payoff for the small moments. So ultimately, again -- it's a long winded answer, I realize -- but it comes down to the story and you hope your story can have both, and that it flows in all the right ways.
I love that. It's all the spaces in between.
Exactly! Well-said! Put that in. That's exactly right.
Speaking of that action, it looks like there was a whole lot of VFX involved in this episode. How, as a director, did you plan for that? How has your experience of being on the other side of that helped you elicit emotional performances from this cast?
Again, it comes down to -- I'm not trying to get too elemental on these answers -- but it does come down to what the story is. The story is going to necessitate the effects, the sequence, what we see. The nice thing about Superman is Superman's powers allow him to be at the farm and instantly allow him to be in -- pick a country! Russia! -- allow him to be on a different continent. It allows him to hear and see things, allows him to be not only what I just said, on the planet Earth, but he can also get up there and into the sky. You can go further; you can be in space.
Suddenly, your playground, as a director -- well, we're not limited. So the limitations on Superman are going to be the limitations of our imagination. You want to try and do everything you can to expand those limitations, so that they don't really enter into the vision that you're having.
I like to, when I'm reading the thing the first time, kind of see what comes to me... Every director, she's going to see it differently than I'm going to see it, than he's going to see it, but you want to honor the way that you see it and hope that you're doing a good job. Then, with what you see, you say, "I see it like this!"
Then once you understand how you see it, there's one moment where Superman is flying and stops and has something that he's thinking about. So how are you going to tell that part? Is the camera going to be above? Are you going to spin it around on Tyler [Hoechlin]'s face and not know what he's seeing and thinking right away, and then know what he's seeing and thinking? Are you going to crane up, and then land on Tyler to see where he is with his thought process?
Once you do that, then you say, "Okay, this is how I see it. Now, what are the tools that I need?" Well, you know, I need a camera on a techno. I need green screen. I need my visual effects supervisor here to talk to her and hammer out what the flyout should look like, and what I want to see. I like to draw a lot and say, "Here's what the storyboard feel of this sequence or this image is," and I find that can be extremely helpful. And then it becomes an all hands on deck, myself included, to try and make those moments happen.
So you need to have, I think, really creative people and collaborative people and intelligent people that can understand some kind of work discussion that I might be having, and get to the truth of it. Over at Superman & Lois, they have all that. They're immensely talented, welcoming and a great group to work with.
Unlike your previous Arrowverse directing credits, you worked with a cast you were largely unfamiliar with. What was that experience like for you?
Well, I think directing on a movie is one thing. You sort of have a vision, and if you wrote it, you've been involved in the creative process from the beginning. When you finally get on set, you're like, "Okay, good. Now we're working on the plan, and we're putting the plan in motion."
On a television show, you're just gonna be there from the beginning to the end. On a television show, it's largely different. The person who's ostensibly in charge is in charge for two weeks, and then is gone, and the next woman or the next man is coming over and they're going to be in charge for two weeks, then they're going to be gone. So it's not really an "in charge" thing the way it is if you're directing a play or or you're directing a movie.
So the cast has been there before you, and the cast will be there after you. The show belongs to the people of Superman & Lois and not the guests. You really amount to a fancy guest. So the cast that I've been most proud of, I'll mention a number on Ed. Julie Bowen, who's won I think every Emmy in the last decade for the television show Modern Family, would always introduce herself to everybody, even though everybody of course knew who she was. But not just when she ran into them; she would find her way to the trailer to talk to the person who was guesting for one scene in a scene that she wasn't in. She would be like, "Hi, I'm Julie." [laughs]
It seems like a small thing, but I have to tell you, it's a massive thing. It sets such a bar to be like, "No, thank you for making our show better. Thank you for coming on our show." I worked with Mark Hamill, and he's the same way. There's people that make your day and your moment and your lives better, because they want to be with you and then you want to be with them. Then all the stuff -- the ego and the obstacles that can sometimes get in the way of trying to tell a really, really good story -- are melted away with that kind of openness and compassion.
The people I've run into in my life that have been that way have had like a profound effect on me because you realize, "That's how you do it." There's definitely other people that do it different ways and have a massive amount of success with the way they do it, and it's a different type of -- I don't know what word you want to put in here -- control. But the happiest sets, I've found, are the ones without any kind of hierarchy.
So coming from the top with Greg Berlanti and Todd Helbing, it's very clear that they're interested in hearing what people have to say. They're collaborators, not people who are trying to exert any power, and that -- in a strange way -- gives them the power back. Tyler and Bitsie [Tulloch] are extremely welcoming as Superman and Lois, but not just that! The entire cast, and not just that! The entire crew seems happy to have you there, and it just makes a massive difference, because now we're all like, "Oh, I'm happy to be with you. You're happy to be with me? Let's go tell a great story!"
What is one moment or scene you can't wait for fans of the show to see?
Yeah, I'm sure you've got the good women and men from the Warner Bros. sniper department all training their artillery on me right now! [laughs] I'm not trying to dodge your question at all. Obviously, as you know, there's stuff that I don't want to give away that I want to be revealed to people, but I can say there's a couple of moments in the show that I think are rare.
You have to have a director of photography who, when you say, "I want to go back over there, 300 yards away on that road and get this techno scorpio and put this side camera on and sweep across the barley onto my heroes as something huge happens." There's two moments where we kind of sweep across one field of grain and then another field of barley. I'm proud of those shots, because they feel like those are the kind of shots that normally you don't see in television. Those are the shots that definitely you put up on a massive, big screen.
I'm proud of them not because I shot them, but because when I said, "I would like to do this," everybody met that suggestion with, "Oh, great idea!" as opposed to, "What?! Are you nuts?!" So each shot is maybe four or five seconds, but each shot supports a moment that is very, very, very, very important story points, and your viewers will know them when they see them and understand why the shots matter, because at the very start of our conversation, it all comes down to trying to make you feel.
Directed by Tom Cavanagh, the Superman & Lois Season 1 finale airs Tuesday, Aug. 17 at 9 pm ET/PT on The CW.
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