The Avengers... Behind The Scenes

Today we are going for a more fantasy like movie. This time I will be talking about the Avengers! We all know about this movie's great special effects and action scenes but what exactly do the actors have to do in order to achieve the great superheroes on camera?

First off, the majority of the movie is filmed in green screen. The crew does create some realistic scenery for the actors to use like in this photo where Black Widow is riding a Chitauri (alien) she is riding a replica of what the alien ship looks like in the movie and an actor in a CGI costume and Hawkeye shooting his arrows from a very tall skyscraper when in reality he is shooting from the replica of the skyscraper that is only 3 feet tall. These green and blue screens are represent different parts of New York, buildings, streets, or the city in general.

Photo credited to Google

Second, the movie uses CGI in order to achieve anything from lightning coming out of Thor's hammer to the Hulk coming to life. The Hulk for example is basically Mark Ruffalo in a CGI suit just making expressions and moving very exaggerated for the camera in order to achieve the Hulk going on a rampage. The actors have to sometimes pretend to fight something that is not there. Imagine that! They have to do their action scenes basically alone. Of course, there are times where just like Ruffalo there are people dressed in CGI suits in order to help the actor. Usually those people are the stunt people.

Photo credited to Google

Lastly, the actors have to practice practice practice! What I mean about practice is that the actors have to specialize themselves in some form of marital art in order to do their famous fighting scenes. It's not always that the actor has a stunt double to do all their scenes. Jeremy Renner specializes in four different fighting styles to achieve his action roles. Scarlett Johansson specialized in Wushu Style to get a lean physique while learning how to fight. She actually trained for months in order to get Black Widow to where she is now. For fight scenes Robert Downey Jr. isn't in the Iron Man suit, most of the time it is a stunt double. Chris Hemsworth just focused on his muscle build rather than fight since what he does is mostly with Thor's hammer. Mark Ruffalo luckily doesn't have to do much because the Hulk does all the action scenes and for that there is CGI. This photo is Jeremy Renner practicing a fight scenes with stunt people.

GIF credited to Google