How the wizards at ILM created Captain America’s insane action scenes

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A fascinating look behind the scenes at a CGI-heavy movie. Photo: Marvel/Disney
A fascinating look behind the scenes at a CGI-heavy movie. Photo: Marvel/Disney

Nearly 900 insanely complex shots full of live-action and computer-generated imagery were created for Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier by the geniuses at Industrial Light and Magic, the effects house created by George Lucas back in the original Star Wars days.

The movie is an action-fest full of fighting, exploding, and comic-book reality all rolled into an engaging tale of patriotism, loyalty, and the possible corruption of big government. To create the magical movie illusions that help you suspend your disbelief in superheroes, the crew of more than 300 at ILM did a ton of painstaking work.

Here’s a short reel representing only a small sample of the full work done by the effects house – it’s amazing how complicated and layered everything is in a movie like this. Check it out.

“The bulk of ILM’s work appears in the film’s third act,” says the ILM YouTube descritpion, “and consists of the helicarrier’s massive underwater hanger, their ensuing battle, and the helicarriers themselves inside and out, sprawling digital Washington D.C. and Rosslyn environments including the Triskelion building complex on Roosevelt Island, highly detailed digital doubles for Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie).”

Whew, that’s a ton of work.

The 2014 film was directed by directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, and produced under the Disney-owned Marvel Films banner. The screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely was loosely based on the comic of the same name by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting (Brubaker even gets a cameo in the film).

Via: The Mary Sue

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