Hollywood blockbusters’ production has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. Going back to the first of their kind visualizations in the Star Wars from the 70's moving through the gigantic Titanic and Gladiator and looking at the current fully digitalized movies from Marvel. Even though the budgets of the movies are still getting higher, the technologies are highly digitalized and offer much more opportunities for the producers and directors.
In this video we meet
The Third Floor: one of the busiest visualization studios in Hollywood to discover the secrets behind some of the most spectacular scenes in “Infinity Saga” by Marvel.
Let’s take the final scenes of “Infinity Saga” for example: The Third Floor reveals that they were designed three years before the actual movie went out. The secret is much earlier preparation and using a Previz technique: a short from Previsualization. This tool is allowing the movie makers to digitally map out all scenes and afterwards the directors on their own can check how the film would look like. This technique is not completely new for the movie makers but before it was used in a much limited way. What is unique about Marvel approach is that they rely on companies like The Third Floor to develop the previz tool in designing much larger pieces of the movies. And Marvel asked them to help out in creating 19 out of their 23 Infinity Saga with mapping out every single scene.
Another particularly interesting element in Marvel’s policy is that they encourage their previs-artist to contribute to the story development: very often they start working with the script earlier than the director himself. This whole process gives much more opportunities for all of the elements in the movie making chain: do virtual scouting, test out advanced camera work. For Spiderman, for example, they used a techvis: a technique allowing the directors with diagrams and data so they can recreate each shot in real life. This saves lots of money in the field having the concrete math, knowing the exact camera angle and number of shots needed for a scene.
At the end, The Third Floor also takes care of the postviz: which is taking the live shots and combining them with the previz elements. The postiviz shots basically serve as placeholders in the early cuts of the film, allowing Marvel to quickly preview it before commissioning the finishing effects and even testing it in front of a specific targeted audience.
The whole process is saving millions to Marvel on expensive effects and shoots. And is a logical next step in the merge of the physical and digital world in the cinema.
