THE AVENGERS: B-ROLLS AND BEHIND THE SCENES

Sunday, 11 August 2013

I found an article on Empire Magazine’s website this week talking about Cinema's Greatest Effects (make sure you definitely check the whole article out!) and as a result of this I wanted to do a post on something I love in movies, and that's everything to do with the production and behinds the scenes that goes into producing and creating them. I wanted to focus on the Avengers as this was one of my favourite films from last year and I thought it was incredible.
*(This contains some spoilers as to how the Avengers were filmed in relation to locations used and any effects added after filming.)

There are a lot of topics to cover when talking about the production and the processes that go from taking that initial idea to creating a movie that is played at cinemas. With any movie you’ll have a story boarding process, numerous rewrites of scripts, finding locations, casting for roles, filming, sound effects, post production work etc. The thing I want to focus on in relation to the Empire article is the way in which movies are created and specifically b-rolls and behind the scenes footage. These allow the viewer to experience the goings on behind a major picture. I find B-Rolls, behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes and outtakes all extremely interesting to watch as it’s something that would have previously remained unseen had we only watched the movie.

One of the ways in which a B-roll can be used is in the form of showing the production and behinds the scenes goings on that result in the final shot. I really enjoy finding any behinds the scenes footage or outtakes with films, as I personally think it’s hugely interesting to see what goes into making that movie. One of my favourite b-rolls I've watched is a 4 video set showing Raw B-Roll footage taken on the sets of the Avengers movie. The amount of work that goes into creating something that it as visual amazing as the Avengers is truly outstanding.

One of the best sections of the Avengers B-Roll for me it is knowing that the big street explosion scene (if you've seen the Avengers you may know what I'm talking about, if not check out the trailer here to find out!) was actually real and the amount of time and planning that goes into filming a scene like that must be insane. You can see the shot being filmed in the below B-Roll footage (part 2 of 4. You can check out the other 3 parts to this footage here; part 1, part 3 and part 4)

What’s equally as impressive as the actually production of the shot is any work that goes on after the action has been filmed. There is a huge amount of CGI used in a film like The Avengers, more that some people may first believe. In this video shown on the channel ILM Visual FX (who have also created visuals for other films such as Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean) they explain that due to various restrictions to do with filming in New York, both on the ground and in the sky using helicopters, a large portion of the New York you see in The Avengers is CGI. The team behind it actually filmed 7 miles of streets, filming 100 metres above using cranes and filming 35 different rooftops across the city at both day and night. This resulted in the creation of around 2,000 spheres and over 250,000 images which they placed together to get the basics to the scenes. They then have to add a lot of extra components to get to the scenes that you see in the movie such as people, vehicles and even adding in the details like the insides of offices buildings.
I know some people don't like spoiling the magic of the movie but for me I always want to know more and I find this enhances the joy I get from movies. The majority of times after I have finished watching one, I will research a lot more about it. I’ll want to know what the location was for the shoot, the time it took to make the film and so on. I would highly recommend watching the B-rolls for The Avengers as it's fasicnating to see how a huge film like this is created. It’s not just The Avengers movie which has a B-Roll, there are a host of other movies on YouTube which can show you footage similar to this as well as featurettes. A couple of my other favourites are the The Dark Knight Rises featurette and The Amazing Spider-Man B-Roll, which you should definitely check out!

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