LORRAINE CINK: Marvel Studios' The Falcon
and the Winter Soldier no doubt has
some of the most high-flying VFX in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, which is why I wanted to talk
to VFX supervisor, Eric Leven.
Hey, Eric.
Hi, Lorraine.
LORRAINE CINK: Now the series has some incredible action
sequences.
What was your overall vision for those action
sequences in the show?
ERIC LEVEN: What I really wanted to do for the big action
sequences was, as much as possible,
make things feel like they're grounded in reality.
So obviously, we don't have Anthony Mackie flying around
in a real jetpack with real wings,
but we want to make it feel like, if he was,
how would we film that?
There are people who can actually fly.
You have wingsuit pilots who jump out of airplanes.
They all have little helmet cameras.
Kari Skogland, the director, really
wanted to bring that language to our show as well.
So we actually have many shots where we've got an action cam
in front of Sam's face, or on the wingtip, and as he moves,
we see the entire world move around him and things
like that.
And that was a really interesting, new
visual language to bring to the show
that we haven't brought before.
I think that new visual language is really clear,
especially when you look at other MCU
characters who also fly.
But what makes Falcon's flight so unique?
ERIC LEVEN: It was important for us
to have Falcon feel like a different character.
There are so many other characters in the MCU
that fly, like Iron Man, for example.
He flies, but he has a different center
of gravity because his engines are in a different
place than Falcon's.
He can hover in a way that Falcon
doesn't necessarily hover.
So we wanted to make sure that Falcon felt different
and that we weren't sort of copying the flight
patterns of other heroes.
Well, let's talk about where we really
see this happening in the show, which
is that big opening sequence.
It opens the show, so you're sort of dropped kind of right
in the middle of it.
Sam is kind of contracting with the Air Force.
There's a terrorist organization out there
that is-- they think is going to kidnap
an American Air Force plane.
And so they're sending Sam in to go make contact
with that plane, make sure everything's OK,
they've lost contact with it.
Then what he doesn't know, is that these guys are
expert wingsuit pilots and they actually
strap Captain Vassant to them and then jump out of the plane.
So it was just sort of this amazing moment,
like I didn't know they could do that.
So now Sam has to chase after these wingsuit guys.
So the first thing that we see is Sam in the airplane,
and then he drops out backwards.
How did you create that shot?
Yeah, that was a relatively straightforward shot.
We've seen that sort of thing done before,
so we wanted to make sure we put our stamp on it.
Basically, he's in the real plane.
There are pads below him.
There's a blue screen surrounding the plane.
And then when he falls out of the plane,
somewhere in the middle of that process
we basically blend to a digital version of him.
Ideally, the effect is seamless.
You don't know where you know Anthony starts
and where the digital version begins.
That sequence is so wild.
You really can't tell what's real
and what was shot practically.
How did you shoot the scene where
Falcon lands on the plane?
Is that shot in the air?
Not with a plane in the air, but with a plane on the ground.
That was something that we--
we previs that.
So we saw like, the sort of video game version of it,
where we had Falcon kind of coming
in and just sort of landing on the plane's cockpit.
And we talked with the stunt coordinator and the riggers
and figured out, you know, I think we can do that for real.
We're going to be in an Air Force base.
We have a real plane.
And they would wire Anthony up on a traveling
harness that would actually fly him into the shot.
And Anthony really did it.
He actually flew onto the nose of an aircraft.
In that particular shot, I think we've replaced him completely
at the beginning of the shot because we didn't like
the trajectory at the beginning, and then
we blended to real Anthony landing
on the nose of the aircraft.
So the next crazy thing that happens
is, there are these wingsuit flyers
weaving between the canyons.
Did you work with real wingsuits?
Not only are we working with actual folks in wingsuits,
but Captain Vassant is strapped to one of the wingsuit .
pilots.
In real life?
Yeah.
And so, that was the sort of thing--
you know, in the story he's strapped-- in the story,
yeah, he's going to strap him and he's going to jump out.
And I was talking with the stunt coordinator,
and he said, Oh, yeah, yeah, we can do that.
What? - What?
Oh, yeah.
No, we do it all the time.
You just strap a guy to another guy
and he'll just hold on real tight
and they'll jump out of the airplane.
Any time you can do anything for real,
you want to do it for real.
I think what's really important in--
especially in a sequence like this--
is even if, I don't know, 70%, 80% of the sequence
is done in a computer, it's CG, but having enough of it
to know that it's real and to be able to sell people,
Oh, they did that for real.
That's a real guy jumping out of an airplane with someone
strapped to his back.
If you have enough shots in there that are real,
I think it kind of makes the rest
of the sequence believable.
Then you start to question what's real, what's not,
what's digital.
And if you can't tell, that's the goal.
And then it seems like maybe it was all done for real.
LORRAINE CINK: The show is action-packed from start
to finish.
And as we arrive at the series finale,
we finally see Sam's heroic debut as Captain America.
Could you talk us through that big final scene?
Yeah, so everything kind of comes to a head at the end.
And our last episode, the Flag-Smashers have basically--
they've sort of become radicalized at this point.
Basically, they just take a bunch of hostages.
So one of the Flag-Smashers takes a bunch
of hostages in a helicopter and is flying
them all over New York City.
Then, there are two other trucks that are
hijacked by the Flag-Smashers.
So everybody converges here.
And at one point, Karli is just like, You know what?
I can't take this anymore.
And she's going to take one of the trucks full of hostages
and just drive it into a construction pit.
And it looks like the truck is going to hit the ground,
but at the last second, Captain America
shows up and saves the day.
I remember hearing from Malcolm Spellman, the writer,
that he really wanted to make this iconic moment of Sam
as Captain America saving this truckload of people
and pushing it back to safety.
That that was really important to him.
To have a Black superhero do that was
really a powerful moment.
It really is such an impactful moment.
How are you able to bring it to life with VFX?
ERIC LEVEN: It's sort of the same process.
Again, it starts with the page.
We'll start talking about, OK, let's look at some storyboards.
What are the shots going to look like?
Are these wide shots?
Are they tight shots?
If they're tight shots, maybe we can
do it on a blue screen stage.
Can we get one of these trucks?
Can we get it in a way that Anthony Mackie can actually
get his body into it and get the performance
that we were looking for.
And so Special Effects actually came in and rigged up
one of these giant BearCats in a way
that the Mackie could actually push against and pretend
he was pushing it up.
We start figuring out what can be done
for real from all the other departments
who say what they can do.
The pit itself, for example, was shot over a--
I think it was three story parking garage.
And three stories doesn't seem that dangerous
when you're at the top.
You want to make sure that if you fall in there, that there's
no chance of survival.
So we might be able to film at this practical location,
but we might need to take it over in visual effects
and make it seem deeper, so we'll do some set extensions.
It's definitely an absolutely amazing moment in the show,
but I'm curious.
Do you think there are any moments
that people might have missed?
What folks certainly missed is that the outfit that Captain
America wears-- he has this cowl,
that I know everybody at Marvel was very
specific about because it's based on the look
at the cowl in the books.
What I learned from the costume department,
though, is that what they want is really, really
hard to get in real life.
I don't think there are any fabrics that
can do exactly what they want, which
is it needs to be stretchy.
It needs to hug the face, but it also
has to feel thick like leather, but it
needs to flex like Spandex.
So what they end up doing was they built something
as close as they could possibly get it
and then depending how Anthony turned his head,
you might get a huge wrinkle back here.
Or the cowl might separate from his face.
So in many, many shots, we actually
replace that cowl so that it would stay snug in his face
and look the way we want it to look.
There are seams in the back of the cowl.
And as we know, there are no there are no seams or zippers
in the superhero costume, so those all had
to be replaced and touched up.
There are so many details that go into creating the VFX
for a series like this, but what was
your absolute favorite aspect of working on the series?
Certainly, working with these huge action
sequences was my favorite part of the show.
Because there's just so much that goes into this stuff.
There's so many moving parts.
You get to work with so many different people,
in so many different departments,
and bringing everybody's creativity on the table,
and working with these amazing people
to make these action sequences better, and better, and better,
was really, really fantastic.
Some of these scenes, we're working
on them for over a year.
And it was just really neat to see
them from the very beginning all the way
through to the very end.
Wow, Eric.
It's been quite a ride.
Thank you so much for talking to us.
And everybody, be sure to go watch all episodes of Marvel
Studios' The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
now streaming on Disney Plus.