Marvelous Effects: Fuel VFX on Captain America
Sydney-based vendor Fuel VFX completed 120 shots on Captain America: The First Avenger, consolidating its relationship with Marvel Studios and reputation as a world-class company. Miguel Gonzalez reports.
The last piece in the billion dollar Marvel Studios superhero puzzle is Captain America: The Last Avenger. Since his 1941 creation by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as a symbol of US patriotism, the character has been synonymous with the red, white and blue of the American flag, but the latest incarnation of Captain America is quite global, with a number of international vendors contributing to the creation of this visual extravaganza. One of them is Sydney-based Fuel VFX.
Most of the film is set in the 1940s and tells the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) a man who is physically unfit to join the US Army to fight in the Second World War, and instead volunteers for a military experiment that turns him into a super-soldier. As Captain America, he must fight the head of Hitler’s advanced weaponry, the Red Skull, and the terrorist organisation HYDRA.
According to Dave Morley, Fuel’s VFX supervisor on this film, the company completed 120 shots in six sequences. One of them is underwater, and involves Captain America chasing a submarine in the murky water. Another major moment is a James Bond-style motorcycle chase where the hero is chased to base by the enemy. This was Fuel’s main sequence, with the most number of shots, requiring complex plate manipulation for compositing and integration.
