'Batman v. Superman' sleuths land social-media scoops

EAST LANSING – It wasnearing dusk in mid-October as Bananadoc walked near the fenced-off location on the Michigan State University campus where "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" is filming.

Bananadoc stays anonymous on a blog, Michigan Movies and More, and a Twitter account (@bananadoc), and would talk to the Free Press only if no name, gender or physical description were revealed that would tip off the movie production folks.

By the time Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice wrapped its brief East Lansing shoot, Bananadoc nabbed photos of several cast members — Jesse Eisenberg, (who plays Lex Luthor), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) and Holly Hunter — as well as the scene outside the main location, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.

"It's just exciting and fun," said Bananadoc of the hobby that's led to viral photos and snaps in Rolling Stone. "There's a big buzz around it, the filming in Detroit."

Batman v. Superman is completing its final days of shooting in Michigan this week and preparing to move on to other states in November.

The Warner Bros. superhero epic has tried to keep an extra-tight lid on information about the movie, which started filming in the Detroit area in late May and included the East Lansing shoot Oct. 15-17. It won't arrive at theaters until March 25, 2016.

Security is strict at the Michigan Motion Picture Studios in Pontiac, the site of filming on several state-of the-art indoor soundstages. Set visits by the local media aren't allowed. The stakes are so high that a recent Lansing TV station's news interview with an unidentified, hidden-face source led to online rumors that an extra was being sued for $5 million for breaking a confidentiality agreement.

But some impressive coverage of where the movie is shooting and which stars are on the set has emerged, thanks to a grassroots army of amateurs with smartphones who've been snapping pictures and posting tidbits through social media.

An out-of-state Batman fan visiting Detroit got a rare early video of Ben Affleck dressed as Bruce Wayne emerging from his trailer. Bananadoc has snagged a number of cool scoops, such as a picture of Henry Cavill wearing a dark robe over his Superman costume and a statue of Superman visible from the property of the Pontiac studio.

"Literally, you could go to the Wendy's and you could see it," Bananadoc said. "I got out of my car and walked up the hill and it was there for all to see."

The statue photos racked up 26,000 hits on the day they were posted to Bananadoc's blog.

The force of fans

The online grassroots coverage has been noticed by Batman-News.com, a popular source for all things Batman-related that has been getting more than 2 million hits per month since filming began in metro Detroit this spring.

"It's the fans that are bringing all of this great coverage," said Chris Begley, the east coast-based founder of Batman-News.com, a fan who runs the site in his spare time.

Of course, there are paparazzi in Michigan, or at least photographers based or sent here to land a Batfleck photo or two. But the impact has soared of amateurs who just want to get some clicks on the ground and online. At times it has affected the production's own information flow.

Begley points to images of the Batmobile obtained during filming at the Russell Industrial Center as a prime example. "People who looked out the window saw the Batmobile. They were the ones who got the great first photos. That was cool because that actually prompted the director to release his own photo."

Indeed, after a flurry of cell phone pictures of the vehicle were posted on the Web, Batman v. Superman director Zack Snyder in May released his own high-quality, professional image, presumably to regain control of defining the image in the public's mind.

"The fans are forcing Warner Bros. to put out content as well," said Begley.

Free publicity

A spokesperson for Batman v. Superman didn't respond to queries asking for comment on the impact of grassroots coverage.

But artists and cultural commentators are interested in the intersection between fans and filming. It's a phenomenon that fascinates Chicago-based filmmaker and film critic Kevin B. Lee, who has fan footage shot in Detroit in 2013 in his recent film "Transformers: The Premake."

Using more than 350 YouTube videos shot in Detroit, Chicago, Hong Kong, Texas and Utah on the making of "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (plus official promotional material and some of his own footage), Lee created a film that explores the tension between residents of a city and the blockbuster productions that take over public spaces — as well as the symbiotic relationship between the two.

"What can these videos tell us?" asks Lee. "Can it tell us more than just, oh, we've got a bunch of people that are interested in 'Transformers,' so they're filming it? That's a very obvious or superficial way of looking at it."

Lee's original idea was to make a movie about how such massive Hollywood productions work in an urban environment like Chicago. He spent several weekends scoping out the edges of the "Transformers" sets and feeling paralyzed by his inability to gain access to the sites, which are usually guarded by teams of production assistants and security guards assigned to shoo people away.

"On top of that, I look up and see 50 other people with their cell phones doing the same thing," he said, referring to those with vantage points from buildings. It prompted Lee to wonder what truly distinguishes a filmmaker or journalist's craft from what a cell phone can do.

Lee's goal became to try to "see into those videos or see through them or put them together in a way that's a larger picture of how Hollywood works, and how it engages with different parts of the world, different cities. ... Why are they in these locations? What's motivating them to shoot there? That just leads to all these other larger issues of the economics of film production and even the geopolitics of it."

Referring to the elaborate "Transformers" sets constructed near Grand Circus Park in Detroit to double for Hong Kong, he asks, "Why film in the U.S. instead of China, especially when what you're filming is supposed to be China but you're doing it in a square block of downtown Detroit?"

Lee's short film drew positive media attention for the way it explored how the natural curiosity of fans feeds the hype machine. In a sense, it's crowd-sourcing that doubles as free publicity — except when studios, in their control freak way, don't like the content and demand that footage be taken down.

"In a blockbuster film about humanoid robots, humans had become part of the giant marketing machine," said the New York Times about the short independent film.

Lee said he doesn't know whether studio executives talk in meetings about the amateur coverage, but it certainly fits their marketing model of "an industry of anticipation."

"It makes total sense with how Hollywood works because so much of it is in the buildup," said Lee. Amateur photos and videos fuel interest in movies that may take a year or more to actually reach multiplexes.

Lee also was intrigued by trying to understand the terms of engagement between studios and fans, a gray area indicated by the stray videos that had been taken down.

"What content is unacceptable, because there are, like, 355 YouTube videos that are totally out there and totally fine. What would it take to make something unacceptable? How much is too much?"

Lee communicated with a few people who'd had their "Transformers" videos taken down. "They said, 'Well, it's just because I had this footage of Mark Wahlberg and some characters in a spaceship.' But it made no sense to me because I'd seen other footage of Mark Wahlberg in a spaceship, so it seems poorly defined."

Spoilers?

But while Batfans who've captured a picture or two of the film working in downtown Detroit or Corktown may feel like they've gotten a privileged glimpse, the rule of thumb is that huge movies don't film things in public that reveal major spoilers.

"The Batmobile, it's going to be in every single trailer, every TV commercial," said Begley of Batman-News.com. "The stuff that's been released (on Youtube and Twitter by fans), I don't consider it spoilers."

Bananadoc thinks the photos and videos by amateur fans only build enthusiasm for the movie.

"If you look on Twitter now, everyone's going, 'We haven't heard anything for a week,' " he said. "Then, the interest kind of drops off until the next picture comes up. Then it's all exciting again."

For most people who stumble across a shoot or even drive somewhere to have a look, putting a photo on Twitter from a movie set is just part of living life on social media. It's only a few dedicated amateurs like Bananadoc who devote major chunks of time to the pursuit of the great photo.

Bananadoc is a metro Detroiter and a parent with a job completely unconnected to filmmaking. The blogger has been taking photos since 2010 of the filming in southeast Michigan spurred by the state's film incentives, beginning with "Scream 4."

Using a zoom lens and an ability to explore the nooks and crannies of public spaces surrounding sets unobtrusively, Bananadoc has amassed an online following, some of whom share tips on what's happening around town.

Bananadoc has had some hostile experiences with angry guards who talk arrests and lawsuits.

"They'll tell you it's illegal but it isn't," said Bananadoc.

Courts have generally ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of people in public spaces, such as a street or downtown, to take photos of activity that is in plain view.

The amateur photographer recently sold a few photos at the suggestion of real paparazzi. The photos earned what could be described as a pittance compared to the hours consumed by the hobby.

But Bananadoc, who supports Michigan film incentives, sees a story to spread about filming that goes beyond celebrity sightings.

"When you're around the set, you see how many local people there are working on them, how many small businesses are delivering food and flowers and working on building the sets, the drivers, all that stuff. You see how much of an impact it's having."

Covering Michigan movies can get in your blood, whether you're a filmmaker, a journalist or an enthusiast. In Bananadoc's case, it sometimes becomes a mission for the whole family. Once Bananadoc's daughter asked why the blogger wasn't going out to a certain shoot.

The answer was simple. Bananadoc was tired.

"If you don't go, Batman will be there," said the daughter.

It's a tough job, but somebody on social media has got to do it.

Julie Hinds is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press