00:05I know, it's crazy. I'm wearing shirts now.
00:10Hey Marvel fans, Ryan Penagos aka Agent M here with the VFX supervisor of Marvel Studios' Avengers Endgame, Dan DeLue.
00:19How you doing, Dan?
00:19Good, how are you?
00:20Very well. I would love to talk about The Hulk. One of my favorite reveals in the movie is when
00:26we see the new Smart Hulk.
00:28He's very classy, he's got great fashion sense, wonderful glasses. Where did you and the team start to look at
00:35developing this new look for Hulk?
00:38Well we started with a couple different ways. We had, it was kind of the look dev. They started kind
00:43of experimenting with different ideas.
00:46How much Ruffalo, how much Hulk. And so it was making sure that we could have just enough of Ruffalo
00:50there that you'd believe him as a character and help us to bring that character to life.
00:55by what we could do with bringing the animation into it and the motion capture into it.
00:59Mark doing the motion capture and it seems like he's just having a ball. He's like ad-libbing and even
01:05though he's dabbing.
01:06Yeah.
01:06What is that like for you as someone who's creating all this and being able to express this amazing CGI
01:13character with someone like Mark?
01:15It's that partnership I think is key when you get someone of the caliber of Mark Ruffalo.
01:20He can bring so much because he knows the character's journey through the films.
01:23You know how brilliant of an actor he is and then suddenly he's bringing that to you.
01:27And then for the visual effects side of it, you want to be in a place that you have the
01:31artistry and the technology at a place that can actually incorporate that into the final visual effect.
01:37His face is so elastic and his big cheeks, it's like you need to be able to get all of
01:41that.
01:41And kind of one, to get you out of the uncanny valley and two, just to make, you know, realize
01:45that it's Mark.
01:46And kind of some of the first tests we did and when we finally got all the software working, it's
01:50just, it's like magic.
01:51You know, you've got him in the diner and there's this one shot, that's my favorite shot in the film,
01:55where he's like, you know, Hulk's there eating a giant stack of pancakes and eggs.
01:59And you've actually got the digital character, you know, talking with his mouth full of food.
02:05You know, it's hard enough to get the lip sync to work correctly, but suddenly he's actually, you know, around
02:09the food and it's like, oh my God, it's working. This is amazing.
02:12I love that diner scene.
02:14As I was re-watching actually where Mark is in the suit, the motion capture suit, I just got fascinated
02:21with the fact that there was an actual crepe.
02:22And then I, you know, you watch the final version and then there's this digital crepe and Hulk's hand.
02:28And I just find it fascinating of how you and the team put Hulk in the scene with all these
02:35other characters and how this all comes together.
02:38The key to all this, making all this work, the biggest thing you can do is make the actors comfortable
02:42on set.
02:43They're in this giant helmet with a camera on the front of it and this crazy outfit that we use
02:47to be able to track it with cameras and without, you know, a lot of times people will try to
02:50do that just in like a motion capture volume that's separate from set.
02:53And if you can, you want to be able to put them on set with their other actors so they
02:58can listen to each other and play off each other.
02:59And then you give them things like the crepes and the sausages so that they can actually feel like they're
03:04that character in the scene.
03:05So, you know, it's a way to keep the scene from becoming sterile because a lot of times with visual
03:09effects, you know, when he's got a giant blue screen out there, it's kind of will take the actors out
03:13of it.
03:14I want to talk about the taco scene.
03:16One, the internet loves them, that Hulk giving tacos to Scott scene.
03:20I think it is wonderful, it's so sweet, and when you talk about, you know, Mark taking Hulk on this
03:27journey and the character and the way he's developed, I also am just fascinated by this massive CGI character handing
03:34these tiny little tacos.
03:36I assume that was all VFX.
03:39Yeah, it was all VFX.
03:40We had, you know, Mark on set and he had real tacos that he could hand to Paul.
03:45Sometimes you'll get lucky and you can keep the real tacos, sometimes you can't.
03:48You know, with the case with Hulk, you know, his hand's so much bigger than Mark, we ended up replacing
03:51them and, you know, it ended up being this really sweet moment.
03:53When we're talking about the way that the Hulk has evolved, now we see our Hulk going back to the
04:01Battle of New York and seeing his more aggressive side out.
04:06How do you, as the VFX team, work with Mark to actually express the sort of reluctant Hulk?
04:16If you look at the different films, you go from the first Avengers to Ultron to Ragnarok, you know, the
04:21Hulk model changed throughout the films.
04:23And so, because we were traveling back in time, we actually just went back and resurrected the actual sculpt of
04:30Hulk from the first Avengers and started with that.
04:32And then when we started with Smart Hulk, we knew he was going to be, because of the merging of
04:36Banner and Hulk, he'd be a little bit smaller, right?
04:38So the Hulk himself, he's about eight foot, eight foot five.
04:41You know, he'll slouch a little bit.
04:42If you compare him to Thanos, he's actually taller than Thanos, except when he slouches.
04:46So he's a little shorter than Thanos.
04:47So we made him about seven foot five.
04:49So we used the proportions from the first Avengers and then kind of started manipulating from there and kind of
04:55putting some more Banner's humanity into the Hulk, into a sculpt.
04:59We got the first kind of turntables back and on his face, you captured Mark, you captured his face.
05:05And then when everybody saw it, they all thought, well, he's really handsome.
05:08And it was like, and we kept getting it.
05:10So it's like, you know, you know, Hulk's got game.
05:12He's been going on dates over the five years.
05:14I imagine that you have a computer that is just like Hulk and you have sliders for like, you know,
05:20making him smaller, making him larger, like more handsome, more handsome, more handsome.
05:25And he's like, you know, hearts all around him and everybody's like, I want that computer.
05:30I love all those little details.
05:32And I'm sure we're going to see tons more when Marvel Studios' Avengers Endgame hits digital and Blu-ray.
05:38Thanks so much for being here, Dan.
05:39Thank you.
05:39Appreciate it.
Commenti