Interview: The Emotionally Resonant Visual Effects Work in "Avengers: Infinity War"
Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 2:33PM It's our final Oscar nominee interview of the season!
On a break from their post-production madness for Avengers: Endgame (opening in 66 days!) we spoke with co-directors Joe Russo and Anthony Russo and the visual effects team of MCU's colossal two-parter. Part one, better known as Avengers: Infinity War, is culmination of ten years of serial storytelling within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is Oscar-nominated for Best Visual Effects. Given how strangely difficult it's proven for superhero films to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar --- only one has managed that competitively: Spider-Man 2 (2004) with Superman (1978) also getting a special achievement Oscar -- the odds are probably against Avengers: Infinity War, But, consider this: If Infinity War does win this Oscar no one will gripe that this team didn't deserve it.
Hell, the 'snapture' alone warrants it! Now excuse the dust as this team tries to top themselves once more in Endgame. Since our interview was with multiple people we're presenting it in a series of quotes rather than a conversation. Hope you enjoy...
On managing massive teams to come up with one cohesive entertainment --14 visual effects houses and about 2400 visual effects artists worked on the movie!
DAN DELEEUW (Visual Effects Supervisor): It comes down to casting. Sometimes it'll be people you've worked with before because you have a shorthand. It helps a lot on movies this big for people to know what you're thinking before you're thinking it. For Thanos, we went to WETA and Digital Domain looking at the work they did on Planet of the Apes and Beauty and the Beast, and leveraging the technology. And Russell Earl and his team at ILM had already worked with us on Civil War and Winter Soldier. They already know how we like to blow stuff up and destroy things [Laughter]... and they're great at it! Every day you're receiving shots and dailies and you're on the phone and giving notes to multiple visual effects houses daily. You do that as fast as you can and for as long as you can until you're out of time and the schedule is up!
The Russos describe us as generals and the generals have their lieutenants and everyone is involved. It starts early on working with the Russo brothers and the writers and what will be required of the characters to get an early start on pre-visualistion.
On the film's central visual effects achievement: Thanos (played by Josh Brolin)
DEELEUW: On the very first day that Josh came in we were going to get very specific lines that we could test with but instead what we ended up doing was leaving all the motion capture cameras running. What we ended up using for test was just from Joe and Anthony and Josh discussion and experimenting with the character. Instead of getting a big broad arch-villain performance we ended up getting these very thoughtful line readings.
KELLY PORT (Visual Effects Supervisor, Digital Domain): We boiled down over an hour of conversation with Josh Brolin and the Russos into a really cool 30 second test. When Josh came in for his first day of shooting we were in a meeting with Marvel Executives to show this test. Josh was kind of standing in the corner and we were nervous how he was going to react to it. But he just loved it because what he saw was the subtlety of his performance -- maybe he hadn't expected that fidelity to come through? That allowed him to be really comfortable. A lot of times in the past with this technology and an actor would give their performance and it would simply go to an animation rig - it's not fully captured. And the acting would sometimes get bigger which doesn't solve the problem. When he saw this test on his first day he saw that starting on that day, his first day of shooting, he could take that character where he wanted to.
On Marvel's collaborative feeling. Kelly Port hadn't done a Marvel picture in a long time. Was it like a homecoming?
PORT: Thor was my last one. [Laughter in the room] It was cool, I remember [on Thor] Kevin Feige came to Digital Domain and would sit in a screening room with us -- it was a different style and scope of work for sure. We did a small relatively complicated sequence on that film, the Jotunheim Ice Planet. But, as with this film, it was a very collaborative atmosphere. There are the directors, production designers, previsualization artists all there early on providing alternative ideas, and that's welcomed! When we get notes from Dan or the directors or if I have an idea or our animation director has an idea -- that environment of collabroation works its way down the chain.
On the visual details of the death of the Vision and the devastating emotional impact of both that moment and the infamous dusting effect.
DELEEUW: That's what's unique about how these movies work. Shots function for a variety of reasons but you're always telling a story and that's what's great about working with the Russos. You don't just have a bunch of CGI flying around the screen. When you're going to take out Vision, it's going to be emotional.
ANTHONY RUSSO [Co-Director]: To Dan's Point, that leads the process. A lot of these moments that you're talking are contributed to by a wide variety of people on the movie: the visual effects team, the whole stunt team, the production designer, costumes, and actors and on and on. We're a group of collaborators and we are all able to bring ideas to the table that could be pivotal on any given moment in the film. That's very much the process.
As Kelly mentioned earlier, Joe and I have always had this idea of "The best idea wins!" We love the process of collaboration. We want to work with other filmmakers and we want everyone to be contribute all the creative capital they can in creating the film, creating the characters, and creating these [emotional] moments we're looking for. For instance, the dusting away that's very much a dance between visual effects and an actor's performance and Joe and I thinking about the connection between the two as we're working with an actor's performance and the visual effects with the team. Sometimes one can leads the other [or vice versa] - Anything can happen in a given moment.
On what we can expect from Endgame. Was there any moment as challenging for the team as Thanos's dusting in Infinity War.
JOE RUSSO: There are lots of challenges. [Laughter from the whole group] I always describe it like we're the parents that have this awesome present for the kids but they don't want the kids to know what it is. It's pretty awesome but don't spoil it. Wake up Christmas morning and just open the box.
ANTHONY RUSSO: We also have a couple months of work left [Laughs] so we haven't even arrived at some of these moments.
"Avengers Infinity War" is currently streaming on Netflix if you'd like a refresher before "Avengers: Endgame" opens in movie theaters on April 26th. The Oscars are this Sunday night on ABC so tune in.
Reader Comments (7)
All respect to the artists involved in the extraordinary visual effects for this movie, which is mostly what this movie has going for it. One fight scene after another, with a little bit of typical arch comic banter (Hemsworth versus Platt was fun) or the occasional attempt at emotion (Gamora and Thanos didn't really move me, despite the performers trying to make the most of underwritten scenes). If it didn't look this good, it would have bombed.
The best effects are in the last five minutes. I'm glad I didn't turn it off early, like I was tempted to do.
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I really hope Infinity Wars wins the VFX category, Marvel is long overdue for it and I think the effects were stunning here.
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Congratulation on the movie! Breaking some theatre unbreakable record.
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