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Captain America: The First A L venger VFX & post Creating OS ANGELES — Captain America:The First Avenger tells the story of the iconic World War II comic book By DANIEL RESTUCCIO dansweb451@aol.com Sixteen studios team up to provide 1,547 VFX shots. character Steve Rogers, who uses guts, gumption and noble courage to gain entry into a top secret government project that transforms him into a superhero that saves the world from destruction by the hands of the evil Red Skull. Bringing that larger-than-life saga to the big screen took the skill of director Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III, Jumanji, Rocketman), the team of editors Jeffrey Ford (Crazy Heart, Public En- emies) and Robert Dalva (October Sky, Hi- dalgo), and the combined talents of 16 visual effects companies managed by visual effects supervisor Chris Townsend (Percy Jackson & the Olympians:The Lightning Thief, Journey to the Center of the Earth). "It's a heightened reality of the 1940s that we're portraying here" said Johnston at the Captain America red carpet premiere at the El Capitan in Hollywood. "I used Raiders of the Lost Ark as a template for this film as a way to do the period for a lot of reasons: it looks timeless even today, it looks fun from beginning to end, and I wanted this film to be the same way." THE WORKFLOW The movie was shot by cinematographer Shelly Johnson (Hidalgo, Jurassic Park III) using primarily the Panavision Genesis with addi- tional footage provided by the Arri Alexa,Vi- sion Research's Phantom, 35mm film and even the Canon 5D.With the Genesis cam- era, principal photography was recorded di- rectly to the Panavision SSR-1 solid-state would color time the dailies," says Kiran Pag- glegadda, first assistant editor to Jeffrey Ford. Cinematographer Johnson supervised the color timing with E-film colorist Andrew there on-set on the day." A previs, says Townsend, can potentially block a sponta- neous opportunity of getting something better than the previs. Without that guide At its peak, editorial had 14 Avid Nitris DX systems at work on the film, including three for the visual effects editors. Francis and encoded the DPX files to Avid DNxHD 36."We would use the color-timed Avid media for cutting and back-up the raw DPX files to LTO and have them on hand to pull material for our 3D conversation house Stereo D and our VFX vendors." After nine months of shooting in Eng- land, post production went into full gear beginning in January 2011 at the Marvel Studios' facility at Raleigh Studios in Man- hattan Beach, CA.That became command central for Captain America's editorial and visual effects team. "At our peak we had 14 Avid Nitris DX workstations on the show," explains Paggle- gadda, "used by two editors, five assistant editors, three VFX editors and two stereo 3D editors. In addition, one Avid system was used for VFX review sessions and another was dedicated to exporting material sound, music for and digital intermediate turnovers. Our first assistant sound editor's Pro Tools station was also connected to our Avid Unity to streamline sound turnovers." There was over a million feet of footage Lola provided 350 VFX shots, including Red Skull and Skinny Steve (see page 18). 16 recorder and converted on set using Panavi- sion's digital transfer station to DPX log frames at 1920x1080. "At the end of the shooting day we would send the DPX files to E-film and they Post • August 2011 to work with but curiously no previsualiza- tion on the VFX-intensive movie. "Johnston has it clear in his mind the kind of shots he likes and how he's going to shoot," explains VFX supervisor Townsend."He doesn't want to be tied down to something until we get www.postmagazine.com for VFX shots Townsend caucused with the director to determine Johnston's shooting strategy and carefully studied his previous directorial work. That way the VFX team would be "as prepared as we possibly could on the shooting day." EDITING Meeting the movie's July 22nd release date necessitated the efforts of two princi- pal editors. Dalva had worked with John- ston before on Jurassic Park III and Jumanji. At Ford's request his agent had ap- proached Marvel about editing The Avengers and found that Captain America was looking for an additional editor.Though they never previously worked together the two editors instantly created a highly col- laborative working relationship. "We chose to do a leapfrog approach," says Ford. "I worked on the beginning of the film, the end and a little piece in the middle; Robert worked on the pieces in- between." Ford and Dalva broke the movie into around 10 sections that were "se- quences of scenes." More like "acts" than "reels," these sections ran from nine to 20 minutes in length. "It made sense to do it that way.That's how we got continuity and flow," recalls Dalva. "It was a lot of film because there were © 2011 MVLFFLLC.TM & © 2011 MARVEL.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.