When a practical effect cannot be accomplished, the crew turns to Entity FX to create digital imagery for a given scene. Sometimes this imagery is to substitute action sequences that they cannot do on-site, and other times it is used to create subtle foreground or background effects. For instance, a matte painting is used to establish the Metropolis background, which is composed of buildings from several modern-day cities in addition to Vancouver; they include Singapore and Hong Kong among others. For the scene where Clark rips his shirt open in the phone booth, revealing the tattoo, visual effects were added to the tattoo illuminating it. But in order to add the effects, the middle pane of glass was removed from the phone booth so that the special effects team had a clear line to Welling's chest; they re-added the middle pane digitally, adding reflections so that it looked natural.