Captain America: The First Avenger | Behind the scenes #2

[Music] it's almost an unfair advantage we have in model studios because we've got all of the comics and the best comic cars in the world have worked on our on our comics so we have amazing inspiration to start from we also have the best artists working in film today here on staff at Marvel Studios that work from production to production and it led by Ryan miner things one of the most exciting things about Captain America was trying to find that balance of you know period to heighten marvel Ness to try and find a way to make a feel real and that he would have existed back in the day Ryan my turning is very good about going back through the old books and pulling reference and standing next to customers Energon saying this is where I started from there's thinking behind here this trap isn't here just because it looks cool there's trap is here because this is where this would go in this connects to this and once you come at it from a practical place like that everything else falls into place the original costume for Captain America has been classic there have been attempts to redesign that costume over the years and nothing has ever been as wonderful and as classic as the original it's a real tough design to be it's it's it's almost perfect the classic Captain America costume the one that has been in the comics forward for so long is a brilliant rendition of a costume and the fact that it has survived since the 40s without significant change says something about it I think every artist sort of leaves their mark on Captain America over the past three decades understands that there's sort of essential ingredients of the costume the collar motif for one the you know the Stars and Stripes for another I really feel like the stuff to be gained is look at the research and revelant and find iconic key moments that they're really making movie is [Music] one of the biggest problems will have is concept artists is that we're working in sort of a vacuum of how do we make this guy look as great as possible and that doesn't necessarily take in consideration the real actors body type it becomes a difficult challenge and I think that a lot of the stuff that we try to do is just make a really amazing looking costume [Music] initially when Captain America becomes Captain America he's not released to go off and fight right away he's used kind of as a propaganda tool he's in this very silly Captain America costume you know it's tights when you sit down and really step back and look at the cap costume in the comic books it's not a real practical costume to try to get like the two things that people always allude to are these bell-bottom pirate boots which were there for years and the wings that are on the cowl and they're not they don't work one of the things that that suit was particularly interesting for the Marvel guys was to try and actually get a full on cat version of Captain America on screen the treatment of incorporating the original and comic costume into the entertainment USO of it all into the movie it's a respectful nod to what was designed in the comic books but also put in a very realistic place and then the evolution of what that costume becomes in the movie and how it works in a practical application for someone who's fighting in an action-adventure it works really well they did a great transformation but it evolved kind of through the movie when we get to the final suit you do have the stripes you do have the red white and blue but they're you know subtle modulations to try and make it feel real and that USO suit is basically an unadulterated version of Captain America's you can't have him really step out of the pages of the comic book onto the screen you have to interpret the visual palette that you've got from the comic book and put it on the screen then there's the Bucky rescue outfit he has some of the uniform on he has the shirt with the star he has the pants but he uses barzil leather jacket he borrows a helmet he takes a gun and when he comes back after freeing all of these men that we've been imprisoned by Hydra and he's held a hero it's deciding you know this costume it's not only me they were clapping for their copy for the costume and that is the connection between his stage costume and what later happens to be his cap costume and he has some design ideas for the costume when she gives to Howard Stark and Howard Stark then implements it and you you what you see is the coolest costume the decision to keep the colors perhaps slightly cooler than that on stage is his because he sees how much it's valued by other people so we didn't just want to give him cool tech for the sake of getting a cool tech we wanted him to want it and own it for emotional reasons for character ease I think it's timeless even though it's set in the period it could be used even today that cap costume producers didn't want to have anything obviously out of Fortis not connected to reality or forties this which actually made out of mostly a nylon there's some canvas in there but it's it's made out of stuff that the military would make straps we were trying to get more of like a Kevlar weave sort of feel to it so it would feel like an actual battles [Music] the big point about the suit is that it's come from a world of work where and it's come from a world of battle dress and it really should be as functional as possible is a combination of superhero costumes and a soldier costume and that I think was the challenge to achieve that and also constructing these costumes because they have to move they have to be costumes for action here so finding a way of constructing it so it works on the actor is comfortable and looks good on the screen is difficult we're doing illustrations usually trying to figure out the look of the character up front and a lot of the functionality stuff comes you know when they actually could do prototyping and figure out what is Captain American actually have to do on screen Chris has been very aware of what he needs to get out of the suit and the minute he was into anything that was like a finish it literally jumped around and moved as much as he could and naturally quite rightly concerned about the range of his movement that went through a lot of different stages obviously there's a lot of people involved in making a suit who worked very hard on it and I would just kind of come in every couple weeks and try a new outfit on and they would poke and prod and measure and cut and I kind of stay out of it and then finally they got it where they wanted it first time putting it on you just think this is kind of cool Captain America this is fantastic the helmet design actually when we first saw it on and actually worked better than I had expected that it would and it's got a great jawline that worked out great his helmet is based on the flying helmet so you can see the leather around his face the straps are really like paratroopers helmet strides we started with a sculpt based obviously on Chris's head and then that skull was taken and it was flipped digitally on a computer to cause perfect symmetry because they in fact he's got quite an open eye area which Chris likes and I think everyone's liked in the development because it allows a lot of expression it's like designing eyewear anything else in some ways the helmet is best created bespoke on the human face which is far from symmetrical but we would end up with such an open eye area it would look very asymmetric so we flipped it on the computer it's a urethane casting the colour of the helmets actually built into the urethane there's some finishes and processes we're just trying to sort of fine-tune each helmet - Chris because I can assure you there's straps and there's doughnuts of foam and stuff on the inside of that keeping it in place it's an emblem for the whole way that the suits been developed in that with a low-tech high-tech way [Music] if Captain America's an icon then the shield is the icon of the icon much like the outfit it's not an obvious weapon it dawns on in like I don't need a gun this thing is amazing obviously aside from just being a symbolic weapon that he's there to metaphorically shield us from harm and the bad guys the shield also became a very cool weapon for Captain America especially when they went from the triangular shape to the more round shape a triangle is not a very practical thing to use as an offensive weapon in the comics realized that they went to the circular shield because you throw it like a frisbee and come back and they show that evolution through the movie making it circular gave them the opportunity to really do things visually with it bouncing off walls to throw it around to have it returned to him and in a comic this is all important the visual aspect of it 600 issues into the Capra comments he still is able to do things with the shield you've never seen before and it is always the challenge of our movies to bring that two-dimensional image to life in a three-dimensional film one of the things that tried to bring the design was some sense of realism we wanted to try and bring some depth and give the camera something to play with with reflections and really cool Battle Damage yeah she was made of vibranium which is a stronger than steel but three-quarters the weight which makes it very good in battle it's a metal which absorbs all energy it makes a bullet feel like a cotton ball what do you think I think it works believe it or not for just a circular shield we had six different sizes we had different depths we went through various metal spinnings to try and get the correct shape we had to get this so it hugged Chris's body so they actually fitted his arms they have so many different shields in this film we have the heavy shields for the shots where you need to block myself or it's gonna be a close up and it's this nice shiny metallic we have rubber shield when I'm actually knocking someone out with it max you got to hit somebody we've had a couple shields that are magnetic so when I got a slipping on my back and then we'll use no shield at all every now and then every now and then we'll have to do a shot where I have to throw and those are CGI the toughest thing about the shield was making it believable that this guy could throw this thing have it bounce off something and take some guy out and have to come back to him we tried some practical stuff where he's throwing a rubber shield nothing worked until we handed it over to Chris Evans basically until we said okay you've got this shield that's this wide and it weighs this much what would you do how would you throw it and he came up with some really interesting ways of doing it he had nothing it's hands he's just minding the action it was basically Chris Evans ability to mime throwing and catching that shield and made it work it's very underrated that kind of stuff cuz if an actor doesn't get it right there's nothing that we can do to make it work you know you can only work with what the actor gives us and he's great he just performs every time I mean always making sure not to make it look like a frisbee not to make it look like a boomerang but always giving it sort of a special arc so that it moves in a particular way it bounces off of things the last element is the sound guy comes here and he puts the sound that we feel makes even when you're holding it because it's vibranium in it it has this ring to it once you put that in there and it when it bounces off something it makes that sound totally real and it's inexplicably cool I don't know what like literally there's no reason this big round thing should be excellent looking but every time that Chris Evans walked by it with his arm I just met we're trying to do something that is right for the story and right for the character and hopefully that that comes through [Music]

Channel: Marvel Studios Movies

Views: 81,596

Keywords: Captain America, Captain America: The First Avenger, chris evans, avengers, avengers 4, avengers infinity war

Id: cMSFZmOlUpQ

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2018