The Falcon and Winter Soldier cemented a new Captain America in the Marvel Universe, and the creative team had the Herculean task of leading up to his next big film in Disney+ series form. They quickly proved to be up to the task of making their show cinematic, though, including seamless visual effects that showed off Sam’s skills and Bucky’s super strength like never before.
VFX Supervisor Eric Leven spoke to Screen Rant about how he approached the Marvel show, and which sequences were most memorable to him for different reasons.
The Falcon and Winter Soldier was fantastic, but let's get right into this. All visual effects aren't meant to be noticed. What are some of the trickiest VFX jobs you did on this show that no one will ever notice?
Eric Leven: Well, let's see. You know about the cowl that we had to replace on the Captain America suit, no one will ever see that. If you watch the Assembled documentary about to show, because of the shape of the cowl and the type of material, they didn't want it to look too stretchy and they wanted it to be a certain size.
I was talking with Michael Crow, and he was saying, "You just can't do it, it just. It's not physically possible." So, we knew we were gonna have to help them out. Whenever Sam turns his head, that cowl will bunch up and create a gap. So, we had to replace that cowl in probably over 100 shots. Also, there's a big Velcro seam down the back, and because this is a magical costume - who knows how he puts it on, but we don't want to see any seams - we had to replace that stuff. That was interesting.
Also, the big fight in the warehouse between Walker, Bucky and Sam in Episode 5 with the bloody shield? That shield is usually CG. The reason is because the actual prop shield is so delicate, it's such a very thin layer of aluminum, that you just can't touch it. If you dig it on something, it's gonna leave a mark. They were usually using a rubber stunt shield, so that shield had to be replaced.
I was just mentioning to somebody that there's a shot at the end of that sequence where Sam holds up the shield really close to the camera and wipes blood off of it. It's a very important moment in the scene. That's a CG shield with CG blood on it, and it looks fantastic. You'd never know it. So, it's neat to see that kind of stuff.
Aside from the color scheme, in what ways did you animate Sam's Captain America differently than the Falcon, particularly in the aerial sequences?
Eric Leven: Well, it was all about the wings, and it was also about the way that he flies with those wings. We already made a big change to the way Falcon flew in the beginning of the show - because previously, when Falcon flies, he always has his hands on his wings. And we wanted to move away from that, because we're gonna have so much footage of him in this Iron Cross pose. We wanted to find something a little different.
We use real jet people for reference - guys who actually fly with real jetpacks - and they usually just have their arms at their side. So, we wanted to give Sam the flexibility to fly differently for the beginning of the show. At the end, when he's Captain America, there's a different set of wings. We wanted to have different poses for him and how he would balance himself; how comfortable he is with those wings, and also the poses of the wings. How delta wing do they get, or how flexible are they? If they're too flexible - you don't wanna have too many S curves, for example, or they start to look like they're made of raw material.
So, finding all that stuff out was an interesting journey.
A lot of the feats of strength of the super soldiers didn't necessarily need complex VFX. How did you determine what would be better to shoot practically and what would be better for VFX?
Eric Leven: The goal, and I think every visual effects supervisor will tell you this, is to shoot anything you can shoot for real. There's a lot of conversations with our stunt team, determining what you guys think you can do - and it's always amazing what they can do. So, you always start with what's doable, realistically, even if you can only use a part of it.
For example: if someone's doing a flip, maybe they don't stick the landing 100%, but at least you've got the beginning of that flip and a great reference of what they look like in the scene. You might have to replace a little bit here and there. And then some things that they can't do, for example, there's a shot where Karli jumped from the back of one truck onto the cab with another truck. That was something that - frankly, I'm sure a stunt guy will tell you they can do that. We just didn't have the time to do it. So, that was done.
There's a lot of subtext and layers to the show and its themes. What did your team animate that holds a special significance to you?
Eric Leven: Good question. The answer to this question isn't as interesting as I think the question is, because I don't think we did a lot in terms of subtext. But when Sam is holding the truck at the end, that was a really important moment for Malcolm, the writer. He really wanted to have this moment of a black superhero doing this thing that you've seen before, but always with white people. It was really important for him to see this.
For us, there were conversations about how it's important to show that he is not superhuman. He's still a regular guy. He can't hold the truck like this, because his arms are not that strong. We had to come up with different poses and different ways for him to use his jetpacks to push the truck and still make it seem like he's a regular guy with a little extra tech to help them out.
That was a fantastic answer. Was there a difference in the approach of the VFX department to the series versus major feature films? How do the two experiences compare?
Eric Leven: We were originally the first streaming show out of the gate. I think there were conversations about how, "It's streaming, and we don't have the resources to do everything we want to do for the features." And then it became clear very quickly that we need to be just as good as the features. So, I would say there were probably little to no differences in terms of how we approached the the effects of the show versus the Marvel features.
Talk to me about the opening scene of the show. How much of the skydiving was done practically, and what were some of the challenges of that sequence?
Eric Leven: That's my favorite sequence; it's totally awesome. We shot for five days with skydivers, and probably seven or eight jumps per day. You're getting a lot of amazing footage of them doing a lot of amazing things. In the end, there are probably only a handful of shots that were practical from the skydiving shoot. And that's for a variety of reasons, whether we needed the camera to pan a little bit further right, or because we changed the story and now we have to have three guys instead of two guys, or who knows what.
But there's enough in there that, even if it was digital, it was probably based on a real shot. For example, there's a shot where all four guys fly right past camera. That was definitely shot practically. But at the end of the day, due to rotoscoping issues or who knows what, we had to replace them. But it was great to have that reference. And it was an amazing opportunity to shoot with that team.
The shield doesn't obey the law of physics, yet it has to be completely believable when thrown. What were some of the rules or guidelines that you followed to animate the shield throwing?
Eric Leven: The thing about the shield is everybody at Marvel knows what that shield is supposed to look like, even if they've never seen it before.
I think that we've never seen the shield thrown or caught as much as we have in this shown in all the Marvel stuff before. Usually when the shield is thrown, the shield bounces maybe once and then it's caught or we cut to another angle. In this show, when they're just throwing it around in the trees in Episode 5, you might see it bounce four times.
It's like, "The shield could totally do that, because it's made of Vibranium and it absorbs kinetic energy..." and who knows what. But there were a couple moments where we were having trouble making the shield look real, even though it's not real. And it was one of those things where we're starting to cross the uncanny valley, where the shield just can't do that. We had to reduce the number of bounces, for example.
It was really challenging, to be honest, because it is something that everyone thinks they know what it's going to look like. But even when compared it to the practical shield on set, it doesn't look right, and we'd have to replace it.
What did you learn on this project that you will take with you to future projects?
Eric Leven: I've definitely learned the value of collaboration, and being able to work with team of such amazing people - both on the VFX side, and also the production side. All the producers and the senior people at Marvel; it really is a different way of making movies, and I think it was fantastic. Everything's for the better when you do it that way.
Were there any sequences you worked on that were completely left out of the final cut?
Eric Leven: No entire sequences, but I would say there were moments in sequences. For example, very early on in the skydiving sequence, there was a whole bit where instead of Sam just saving Captain Vassant, there was going to be a bit where Torres goes and there are terrorists coming in trucks. We just cut it for time and budget, and it made the sequence a lot tighter and better. But there were little bits like that here and there.
Did anything change during COVID, in terms of previs that you didn't get to or you may want to use for another project?
Eric Leven: No, I think most of the previs had been finished. What happened in COVID was we had the time to step back and make all that previs better, so we added a lot of new beats.
For example, in [Episode] 6 when Captain America is flying around trying to save that helicopter, we were trying to figure out what's a really cool moment; what's something cool he could do here to make his character more interesting? What we settled on was he saves the the police helicopter pilots on thebridge and he covers himself up. That was something that was added after we'd done the initial previs.
But there were a lot of other ideas, like, "What if he could do this? What if he saves this? What if he does that?" So, there were little bits of exploratory things. Early on, we were trying to figure out how to use the wings and the shield together. So, we had a lot of really cool ways, like maybe the wings actually catch the shield and it comes back - or the wings can actually throw the shield.
There were explorations like that. It just happened that for this show, we didn't have the chance to use that stuff. Maybe that stuff gets used in the future, or maybe not.
I want to talk about the truck battle a little bit, because it blended acrobatics, comedy tension, and a few holy crap moments like the Flag Smashers casually running through a highway sign. What were some of the tricks and sequences you used to blend the VFX and action seamlessly?
Eric Leven: Well, I'll tell you the trick - and it was not a real trick. But I would say that scene had the tightest collaboration between the visual effects and stunts department. For example, hot potato was mostly visual effects department figuring that out, because it's all flying around and there's no way to shoot it practically. And then the bar fight at the Brass Monkey was mostly stunts department, because it's basically a fist fight.
But the trucks, because of all the different things involved, it was really stunts figuring out, "Okay, we're going to do this part." And so it was actually the stunts department that figured out how to smash through the sign; it was really cool. And in visual effects, we brought another part of the scene when Falcon flies low and saves Bucky. But tying those two departments together was actually really, really interesting. I think that's what made that sequence so cool.
Marvel Studios is very fluid with their storytelling, and Kevin Feige recently mentioned that there might be some chaos magic that goes into last minute decision making. How does that effect the VFX department who started working on this months and even years in advance?
Eric Leven: It's definitely different from a lot of the other studios. If you make last minute changes, that will cost you money, and a lot of other studios are hesitant to do that. They're just like, "Yeah, it'll be fine. We have this thing. It looks good. Let's just do it." And the Marvel team, they're just like, "No, no. If we change this, it's going to be better." Yes, we don't have much time, and it's more resources and more money. But let's just do it, and it'll be better.
And I think that's what makes a lot of Marvel movies so special; they're just prepared to do whatever it takes to keep making it better and better.
Can you talk to me a little bit about some of the challenges you faced when doing any VFX for the Winter Soldier? Because a lot of his stuff is very subtle, and it's so seamless. I know he has a VFX arm, but that looks real to me.
Eric Leven: Yeah, the arm was fun. In the same way that we had a lot more shield than I think we had in previous movies, this was the first time we've really seen his Vibranium arm. It's appeared in previous [movies], but there's been a shot here and a shot there. Now we're really seeing what it can do and what it looks like. So, that was an interesting development to try to figure out how to get that look exactly right. There were a couple close-up shots of the arm that I think looked pretty cool.
And then going back to how we work with the stunts department, it's coming up with cool things that Bucky can do in this show. Sometimes we'll have to replace his legs or replace his upper torso or whatever.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is now streaming on Disney+.