Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron – Inside ILM’s Role

I’ve said before that I think the acquisition of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) by Disney as part of its $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm, was worth that price tag just by itself. Sure, ILM would have continued making awesome special effects for Disney films, but now they’re part of the team and available for even greater collaboration.

Visual FX supervisor Ben Snow talks with Trevor Hogg about the work ILM did for Marvel saying,

“This by far was the biggest canvas we had with Marvel and we had a lot more shots [than on previous films],” states Snow. “Chris Townsend [Marvel’s overall VFX supervisor] is ex-ILM and we worked together quite closely when he was here. We had good shorthand and there was a strong degree of trust with him and Marvel. It gave us a bit of freedom and also meant that things went smoothly.”

Hogg’s interview of Snow is fairly extensive and runs from digital touch-ups to scenes that are completely animated and composite renderings like with the city of Sokovia in the movie:

Snow explains the complexity of creating the fictional city. “The lift off and the floating of Sokovia were a big challenge but fun to do. Charlie’s art department had suggested a design for the city. When we were filming in Northern Italy, where we shot some of the street level material for the sequence, I was up there in a helicopter taking plates of different parts of the Valle d’Aosta Valley. One of the things we liked about it was that it had a medieval look mixed with a Soviet Block era look. Sokovia is a fictional Eastern European city and that sort of mix of architecture was perfect. There was a location in London, the old police training station in Hendon that we used also because that had more of the 1960s and 1970s Soviet Block type architecture.”

Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron is a spectacular piece of film making that you can own for yourself on Blu-Ray/DVD. Pre-order today, save up to 40% off, and help The Disney Blog.