Something that separates director David F. Sandberg from most other big Hollywood superhero directors is that he has a YouTube channel. Indeed, the director of Shazam! got his start on the video-sharing website under the username ponysmasher. In fact, it was through his second horror short film, Lights Out, that he gained a reputation and started on the path that led him to directing Shazam!.
And while Sandberg is not as active on the website as he used to be, that doesn’t mean his channel is dead. He still uses his platform to provide insight into the filmmaking process that few others do, from advice to tutorials to little tips and tricks. There's even some behind-the-scenes information about the production of Shazam! that many fans are unlikely to notice when casually watching the film.
It can be easy to forget that, despite the millions and millions of dollars poured into production, many films (even blockbusters) are, ultimately, made by people. And people can be imperfect, shocking as that may sound. Rather than try and hide away these imperfections, Sandberg instead chooses to illuminate them. And he uses them to try and provide a learning experience.
One of the best examples is the mall scene in the first Shazam! film. During the sequence, Shazam gets chased through the mall by Dr. Thaddeus Sivana and, while he is doing so, takes flight in the crowded mall. There is a visual effects (VFX) shot when Shazam initially leaves the ground, as there is some wire removal for the wires used to lift Zachary Levi off the ground. However, there is another sneaky use of VFX that most audiences won’t notice.
There was a problem with the shot Sandberg wanted to use for the film. There were crew members in the frame. That’s unfortunate, but mistakes happen, and it was no one’s fault. However, nobody noticed until editing. It would be too expensive to rotoscope the crew members out of the shot, so instead, they added shopping bags and gifts to these crew members. Now they were extras, people going about their Christmas shopping in the mall.
As Sandberg points out, it’s strange that these members of the public aren’t running away from the danger like everyone else. But that doesn’t matter; thanks to a clever bit of trickery, no one noticed that crew members were hanging about in the shot. That’s the problem-solving power of Shazam!, and Sandberg pointing out his own film’s imperfections highlights the creativity of himself and his crew.