Movies

INFINITY WAR VFX Reel Shows How They Created Ebony Maw and New York City

by Michael Walsh
Aug 15 2018 • 12:19 PM
The “most ambitious crossover event in history” featured the largest collection of superheroes ever assembled on the big screen, and an even bigger team behind the scenes was required to make them look good. In fact, the CGI and visual effects in Infinity War did more than bring Earth’s mightiest heroes to life; as this VFX reel shows, the effects team was also called upon to recreate a New York City indistinguishable from the real place for the Avengers to fight back against the Children of Thanos.

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This making-of video (which we came across at /Film) comes from the British visual effects company Framestore, and it shows how they created 253 shots for the sequence in New York City when Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Wong, and Spider-Man fought Ebony Maw and Obsidian Cull. Starting with Bruce Banner crashing through the Sanctum Sanctorum and progressing to Spider-Man’s sneaking aboard the Maw’s ship, the video gives an idea of how layered some of the most complex shots and sequences really are.

But for as many characters and action scenes as there are here, what’s maybe even more impressive is that none of it was actually filmed in Greenwich Village or at Washington Square Park in New York, it all took place at Pinewood Studios in Atlanta. To make it look so authentic Framestore says they had their CaptureLab Studio spend a month there taking 250,000 photos and 15TB of data.

It’s easy to appreciate VFX work when you see Ebony Maw, or nanobots running down Tony Stark’s arm, but it’s the visual effects you never notice that make it all work. If it didn’t really look like New York City it wouldn’t matter if the heroes and villains fighting looked real.

What was your favorite effect shown here? Tell us in the comments below.

Featured Image: Marvel/Framestor