Marvel’s latest superhero juggernaut – which is already one of Marvel’s highest grossing films after less than two weeks in release – was a huge undertaking, with a massive VFX team contributing shots from all over the world.

The Art of VFX recently talked to VFX Supervisor Geoffrey Baumann about how the team came together, how he oversaw the work, and how cineSync helped.

From the interview:

How did you split the work amongst these vendors?
It depended on shot number, complexity, and time:

• capital T – 41 shots – Compositing, simple blue screen, split comps, clean up.
• Double Negative – 78 shots – 3rd act Vibranium Mine fight.
• Exceptional Minds – 38 – Compositing, simple blue screen, split comps, clean up.
• Ghost – 41 shots – 3rd act interior shots as Ross flies RTF hologram.
• ILM – 403 shots – Shots throughout the film focusing heavily on the enviroments of Wakanda and the Golden City.
• Luma – 232 shots – The casino fight, and car chase that follows, as well as the CIA blacksite.
• Mammal – 578 shots – Compositing, simple blue screen, split comps, clean up, as well as all temp comps and color for the few non VFX shots.
• Method Studios – 407 shots – Primarily the 3rd act on top of Mount Beshanga, they also did some of the work in Shuri’s lab.
• RiseFX – 180 shots – Built and designed Jabariland. They also helped out in Shuri’s lab.
• Scanline – 385 shots – The big focus here was the waterfall environment for the two sequences that take place here. They also did the work at the British museum and abandoned airfield in Korea.
• Storm – 8 shots – The prologue.
• Trixter – 205 – The Nigeria extraction as well as the Oakland apartment.

Can you tell us how you choose the various VFX vendors?

Choosing a vendor depends of the type of work, the number of shots in the sequence, and the amount of time we have until delivery. We chose Scanline for all of our Warrior Falls work. It required heavy water simulations, and a large number of shots at various complexities. We chose Trixter to help us with the Nigeria sequence as they had worked on CIVIL WAR and this sequence would be using the Civil War Black Panther suit asset. Lisa and I would break down all of the work and split it into packages. We would write these packages on a white board with the sequences they included. We would then put all of the vendors on post it notes and then shuffle post it notes around until we felt comfortable about both the number of shots a vendor would have but also their complexity.

Can you tell us more about your collaboration with their VFX supervisors?

We worked very closely with all of our supervisors. In addition to having them be present during principle photography we would have multiple cineSyncs per week to over the work. There was a constant flow of information back and forth between the various supervisors and the film makers. I also felt it important to have face to face meetings when possible and I tried to make this happen as often as possible.

The vendors are all around the world. How did you proceed to follow their work

I split the work with our additional VFX supervisor Jesse James Chisholm. We would review material from as soon as it was online and try to get notes back as soon as possible. With crews working around the globe at all hours of the day we relied heavily on cineSync, although not as good as human to human is a great visual tool that allowed us to stay on the same page.

The rest of the article is available at Art of VFX