In Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers becomes one of the universe’s most powerful superheroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races.
Luma was thrilled to join forces with Marvel Studios to deliver nearly 250 shots in the studio’s latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Luma’s most significant contribution to the film is the “French Connection,” sequence or the Train Fight scene. Carol Danvers fights atop a moving Los Angeles Metro train against a shape-shifting Skrull who has taken the form of an unassuming granny and who later shifts into a middle-aged man. All the while, Nick Fury and Agent Coulson race through the streets below to keep up with the train by car. While the train appears to speed by at a rapid pace with the characters fighting on top, it’s Luma’s visual effects magic working behind the scenes.
Luma's task was to keep the sequence linear and successive. While the setting looks like it takes place in one location in L.A., the scene was actually shot in four different locations throughout the streets of L.A. It travels through West L.A., East L.A., and eventually moves towards Downtown. "Chris Townsend, the overall VFX Supervisor, mentioned that Marvel Studios wanted the sequence to be done by a studio which had an office in L.A., so that if we needed to, we'd be able to access the real world location for reference," said Luma VFX Supervisor Kevin Souls.
At the start of the action sequence inside the moving train, Carol punches an elderly woman (a Skrull in disguise) in the face, but rest assured, no grandmothers were harmed in the making of this scene. Luma photo-mapped the face of a granny onto the stunt actor's body and added detailed paintwork to create the recipe that induced a jaw-dropping audience reaction.
The fight then escalates to the top of the moving train. Given the inherent danger of filming this scene, all footage was captured with Larson and stunt actors with a bluescreen backdrop and a stationary train. Luma's visual effects team mixed both actions of the actors, and for more complex action shots, Luma created a completely digital version of Carol. For safety reasons, the real-world camera was placed just above the train tracks, so the Luma team needed to refilm that scene from a higher angle to recreate the height of the train.
To achieve a consistent and realistic moving background, Luma created a CG train to plan the layout within L.A., which helped determine the speed of travel and the speed of objects moving in the background. Luma constructed poles, powerlines, and other mid-distance objects entirely in CG by hand painting the images in array footage. The array footage was then projected onto geometry to match the alignment between the foreground and background.
