[MUSIC PLAYING]
 Hey Marvel fans, I'm
Ryan Penagos, a.k.a.
Agent M, and I'm so
excited to be sitting here
with VFX supervisor
of Marvel Studios
Avengers: Endgame, Dan DeLeeuw.
How are you doing, Dan?
 Doing great.
 So there's so much to
talk about in this film.
You worked three years on it.
I-- let's just dive
right into some stuff.
You ready?
 Yep.
Lets' go.
RYAN PENAGOS: You know I
think about this big battle,
how much creative input
do you have in seeing
all this come together?
DAN DELEEUW: You
know, you get kind
of a rough idea of what
the story needs to be,
get a rough idea
from Joe and Anthony.
It's like, OK, these are
the beats we want to do,
we want the compound to blow
up, we want to make a crater.
This is kind of where
the dreams come true,
you know, in terms
of growing up,
loving comics, loving
films, and then
getting to design these fights.
I kind of describe it as you
had your little action figures
you had when you were a kid.
And now like, you're grown up.
You're doing the same
things with real people
and stunties and CG characters.
And you kind of sit down
and start brainstorming.
It's like, what has to happen?
And it's like Cap's
going to pick up Mjolnir.
He's going to take up--
he's going to pick up the
hammer, one way or another.
If it's the last thing I do,
he's picking up that hammer.
 Assemble.
RYAN PENAGOS: So you
get to the moment
where the portals
start opening up.
How many layers are going
on in a shot like that?
 It's pretty--
I mean, astronomical is a kind
of an easy way to describe it.
We had our big days where
we had everybody there.
You kind of see it
in the big masters,
and when Cap says assemble,
everybody's standing there
and we had all
the actors on set.
And then depending
on who we had,
it dictated what would be
CG and what wouldn't be.
We had like a dirt floor, we
had some wreckage and rubble,
and some of that we would
replace, depending on if it
made it easier to light
the shot or the composition
would get better.
But when you get into
the portals opening up,
you've got everybody on this
side of the portals with the CG
crater, CG fire, CG smoke,
CG atmosphere, CG embers, CG
dust, CG ash floating around.
And then you've got
the portals themselves,
which they're their
own effect simulation,
complex effects simulation.
And then you've got all
the "digis" walking out.
We just didn't want
to make it feel
like they're coming from
kind of this flat space
when you see the portal.
You wanted it to feel like
it's a dimensional space.
With Marvel, too, it is a shared
universe, everything's online.
Everything's in the archives.
So if you need to go
back and get Contraxia,
you just go back
and get Contraxia.
 That's so cool.
 It's just there, right, so--
and then we had Andy Thy
built portions of New Asgard,
so we did portions
of New Asgard.
So it's like you've got
everything in this world,
and plus everything from
all the other worlds
that they're coming from.
So it's almost incalculable
in terms of how much we have.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
 Is that everyone?
 What, you want even more?
RYAN PENAGOS: We then
get into the battle.
You've got that wonderful
scene, Cap rallying everyone,
he assembles everyone,
charge, and you
have a lot of actual, physical,
practical people and effects
and stuff.
They are charging into
just hordes of enemies.
But those are all VFX, right?
DAN DELEEUW: Yeah, no, the
before and after of those
are the best before
and afters ever,
in terms of just
the work that we did
and just the general
comedy of what
was actually happening on set.
[LAUGHTER]
So if you look at
the shots and there's
the shot where we
begin kind the one
where you come in,
right, when Giant
Man punches the Leviathan.
But you're zooming in
on that, you've got
all the heroes running forward.
And you've got your actors
there and then there's
maybe like six guys in motion
capture suits running at them,
again, just to kind
of let all the actors
know, generally,
where the eyeline
is for the approaching aliens.
But yeah, Thanos's army was
kind of weak in that version
of the show.
 He just came with six.
DAN DELEEUW: Yeah,
 Oh no.
[LAUGHTER]
DAN DELEEUW: Yeah, it's
sometimes the befores are just
some of the oddly
crude things, but it
was something that worked.
It got them there.
It was like, we were hooking it
up, we had the kind of big shot
where you kind of went into
the live action of everybody
running together.
Then you comes up into the
air to see Giant Man punch
Leviathan, you go
back to CG, and then
you come back down again on
Panther and Okoye and Shuri.
And that was shot as a separate
little piece on their set.
And then as you pan left,
you get a little bit
of a CG Drax coming in
that pulls you from that,
that lands into the live
action Dave Bautista, who's
on this kind of, I don't
know, large punching bag
thing with stunt guys
hanging all over it,
trying to make sure Dave
didn't fall off of it.
 And then there's, you
know, the guy in the mocap
suit for Korg, which,
just, all of it,
it's this elegant ballet.
And it's really neat.
All right, last but not least,
we have to talk about one
of the moments that made
crowds roar, that gives
you all the biggest feels.
It's when we see all the
women of Marvel come together.
They're on the battlefield.
How much of that was
filmed practically,
how much was added in, and how
do you bring that all together?
 Well we had everyone there.
There was like two or three
weeks where everybody is there.
You've got every
Avenger from every movie
that we've done all on
set at the same time.
And so it was a great
day to go to set,
because it's like, whoa,
there's Pepper, there's Okoye,
there's Valkyrie.
There's like all the
characters you love
are actually there on set.
So when they all come
together, the idea
of having this kind of
passing of the torch,
passing the gauntlet, there was
a lot of symbolism going on.
But then it was
also something that
was kind of special to do, to
bring all the women of Marvel
together.
So when we shot it, you
had everybody there.
Valkyrie, we put in, later, a
different element, because she
was on the back of the Pegasus.
 You didn't have a
practical Pegasus for this?
 We tried, but again, that's
probably like three years out.
Cloning's two
years, three years.
But anyway, you know,
she's landing in the back.
For the most part, we
had everybody there.
And so we go ahead
and shot him, you
pull them, you'll add Pepper's
armor later, you'll have--
Hope comes in as
the Wasp and grows,
so you actually have
Evangeline there kind
of walking in the shot,
and you just kind of
paint her out and
then just kind of have
the Wasp grow into her size.
 I was sitting in a
crowd opening night
and I watched a
kid in front of me
jump up out of his chair,
arms up in the air, scream,
everybody's like crying
and laughing and cheering.
How much fun is it for you
guys to put all this together
and then to see it work?
 It's the best part.
You know, it's the--
we're all fans too, right.
So then there's all these
moments that you want to see.
And then for us, it's something
that you see it in previs
and you're kind of like,
OK, that's really cool.
It's going to be really great.
And so you see all
these scenes in pieces
and you see them kind of
come together in editorial.
And I remember the first
time we kind of cut
the portals together,
and Jeff Ward called
me and he said, take a look.
And it's like, you a little
tear in the corner of your eye.
And then you're kind
of like, this is great.
This is going to work.
And then part of the
fun is then going in
to see with the real audience
and just kind of see,
OK, is this going to work?
You're sitting there
and you're like,
oh my god, this totally works.
[LAUGHTER]
You go opening weekend
and then people
are just going nuts over it.
And I think that's the
best part, the most
rewarding part, that
everybody loved what we did,
which is great.
 Dan, thanks so much
for sharing so much
about Marvel Studio's
Avengers: Endgame.
You guys, make sure you
pick up the film now.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
