Avengers Campus: Adventure with a Capital A

The story follows a father-daughter duo on an adventure throughout the park, encountering a series of Avengers in the process, finally landing in the newly minted Headquarters, coming face-to-face with Iron Man himself.

Shot at Disneyland’s Resort in California, whilst the Paris Campus was still under construction, the team had originally intended to utilize a large portion of in-camera footage for the final commercial. However, as assembly progressed in Paris it was clear that the team would need to pivot to full CG environment replacements in order to accurately match every angle of the Campus.

Taking a low resolution model from the Walt Disney Imagineering team, Framestore’s artists oriented the environment carefully, relative to each lens, ensuring that lighting which was established in the live action shoot, as well as composition, offered the most heroic coverage.

Continuous iterations to the spot as the physical location evolved allowed for additional detail to be added to CG trees, plants, and even patrons in the background of each shot. Supplemental environment work was also required to remove key indicators of Los Angeles, such as palm trees, and whilst characters including Black Panther and Captain America were shot in live action and augmented in post, Spiderman and Ironman were created in full CG.

Framestore Creative Director Alex Thomas led a team of artists alongside on set VFX Supervisor and CG Supervisor Christian Nielsen.

“We needed to constantly update our scenes as physical construction progressed in Paris, adding more and more detail along the way, which were all good opportunities to further the realism,” said Thomas. “We worked closely with both Marvel and Disney, paying attention to a library of film reference in order to bring the much loved characters out in full force.”