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www.postmagazine.com 23 POST MAY 2016 oving along at a seemingly un- stoppable pace is the Marvel/ Disney juggernaut, with yet another major release opening in the- aters — Captain America: Civil War from director siblings Anthony and Joe Russo. In the tradition of its predecessors — The Avengers, Captain America: The First Soldier, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Iron Man and others in the Marvel franchise — this latest release, starring Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., promises epic battles of superhero proportions, and a respectable amount of wreckage and destruction, all re- quiring heavy doses of visual effects. According to VFX supervisor Dan DeLeeuw, Captain America: Civil War combines the efforts of 14 vendors to complete just under 3,000 visual effects shots. This includes environmental work, set extensions and CG characters, and a reach inside a deep toolbox with every- thing from proprietary software to the standard Maya and Nuke toolsets. "With Civil War, I think how it differs from the other Captain America films is just in terms of its scope," says DeLeeuw. "It's something you see in comic books, the characters have their solo outings and then there are comics where the characters are all there to help out. What happened with the 'Civil War' comics, they are the 'event' comics, fan favor- ites, where all your favorite heroes that wouldn't ordinarily interact with each other, and you certainly wouldn't nor- mally see them fighting against each other, come together. That's what makes Civil War special. It's that you have these giant set pieces with the characters showcasing all their powers, fighting against each other. It was a combination of taking everything we've seen before, taking everything to the next level and expanding on the heroes' powers so that you're culminating in this battle royale at [Germany's Leipzig/Halle] airport. That scene was shot in multiple places on multiple continents. We shot a large portion of it in Atlanta, on a concrete slab they poured for us, with greenscreens. For the types of things we wanted to do, we couldn't film in an actual airport. They don't usually like you destroying their jets, or anything like that [laughs]. So by the nature of what we had to do, a large portion is all greenscreen. You'll see that there's a hangar at the end and a termi- nal towards the middle where Falcon, Spider-Man and Winter Soldier fight that are actually practical, but everything you see outside is CG. But just by the nature of the heroes' powers themselves, you'll see a lot of those fights using digital doubles. It's a great mix of hidden effects for the environments and bigger effects for the heroes themselves." In an exclusive interview with Post, DeLeeuw talks about the latest Marvel/ Disney release, and what it took to cre- ate some of the film's most demanding visual effects. Most of the work in the film is a mix of environmental and character-based VFX? "Yes, that's the best part of the magi- cian's trick, it's the slight of hand, to dis- tract the audience with the shiny object and actually perform the trick with the other hand. So, trying to work with stunts and special effects to keep as much grounded as we could and mix the visual effects with that." And keep it seamless, so the audience can't tell the difference? "Yes, and you keep changing it up, too. So, if you think you're starting to figure out the trick, you throw more live action in and keep people from tracking down what you're doing." What was the film shot on? "The majority of the film was on the Arri Alexa XT with anamorphic lenses. The airport battle was on the Arri Alexa 65, which was completed for IMAX." You worked on Captain America: Winter Soldier and Iron Man, so you have a familiarity with these Marvel films and what they're looking for in terms of the VFX. Technically, is there a difference or any kind of advances on the VFX side from the previous films? "The big advancement on this one, was the overall scope and how much we were able to do. It's interesting, I came in on Iron Man 3 and as you come into the Marvel universe, you start picking up the playbook on the different charac- ters. So, on Iron Man 3, you start learning how to shoot Iron Man. You have what we call the 'football suit,' that Robert would wear. That was something that was photo ready, from the waist up. As the films progressed, we got more and more to the point where we would end up replacing it with CG, as the suits themselves became more complicated. And what we found for this one, because of the hand-to-hand battles that were happening at the end, we didn't want to have Robert with just tracking markers on his body, because as Captain America VFX SUPERVISOR DAN DELEEUW TACKLES VISUAL EFFECTS FOR SUPERHERO-SIZED BATTLES IN CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR The film was shot on Arri Alexa XT and Alexa 65 cameras.