The Avengers

The long-awaited blockbuster 'The Avengers' has finally landed on the shores of Singapore. I was one of the lucky ones because I got to watch it on the day it was released. Unfortunately, I did not watch it in 3D because they were sold out pretty quickly.

There were a few memorable VFX scenes in The Avengers movie. Firstly, there was a scene where Loki attends a conference as a cover for his henchmen under his spell to retrieve an important item. He acquires a source of identification for his men to get the item so he whips out a device which he forcefully implants into the speaker's eye. I was interested to know how they managed to composite the shot where the hologram of the eyeball itself was projected to the reader. Maybe they modeled and animated an eyeball then used filters in After Effects like noise and some colour correction techniques to make it look like a projection. It made me believe that there is such a device in the world.

After Loki took out the speaker, he slowly strolls out of the building, revealing under a bright, hot orange light his armour. I might have guessed that the use of exposure could be in play in this shot.

There was also a scene where Loki is up on the Stark tower, looking over the destruction and chaos him and his army has caused. I recently found a video of the 'Behind-The-Scenes' of the movie and for this particular shot, they used a blue screen and not the usual greenscreen which they have used quite a bit. They probably utilised the bluescreen because Loki's armour reflects light so using green will cause green spill which is difficult to remove in post-production.

I have to admit that the people involved in matte painting did a good job with their environments because it looks clean and believable.