Ironheart’s tactile visuals were the product of great collaboration
In Disney Plus’ Iron heart The series, a young genius with a strange talent for the construction of armored costumes finds itself immersed in a shaded criminal world which gives it a chance to really show its talents. Riri Williams is not Tony Stark, and while the Iron The films have clearly informed a lot of Iron heartThe fantastic visuals of, there is a quality anchored to the action in Haute Octane of the series which makes it unique in the Marvel cinematographic universe.
After years to see Iron Man and the other high technology superheroes of Marvel run in Nanotech combinations Iron heart Do everything possible to show you Riri (Dominique Thorne) climbing in his homemade armor is a breath of fresh air. Even if Riri’s costume is capable of zooming in the sky and doing all kinds of acrobatic stuff, Iron heart Presents it with tactility which makes him feel almost real. Riri’s armor is supposed to resemble something that really exists in the world – which, according to the director of photography Alison Kelly (who worked on episodes 4-6), required to be deeply collaborative with the whole creative team.
“Angela Barnes, our director, is incredible because she looks so strongly in the story,” said Kelly in an interview. “With Iron heartEpisode 5 begins, and the first third is the action sequences. I think some directors get lost in the thing “let’s do this cool action”, and all the punches, the kicks and the fights become a blur. But Angela really wanted to root our action in history. »»
The story of Riri takes her from MIT, where she is expelled to break the school rules, in Chicago, where her costume attracts the attention of the gang chief dressed by Magic Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos). Riri is the perfect addition to the talented inappropriate parker crew that stole the powerful Chicago technological startups. But when one of the team’s missions takes place on the side, the blame falls on Riri, and you don’t need much to decide to try to kill her in a white castle, from all the places.
Kelly explained that after spending so much time concentrating on what Riri can do when she is armored, he was important for his fight against the Parker gang in “Karma’s a Glitch” to emphasize that she is just an ordinary person outside the costume. Barnes also wanted the battle to take place as a gender change piece, while the Cascade Coordinator Danny Hernandez took care to look into the reality of the way someone without superpowers was fighting if they were jumped.
“We have reconstructed the different beats of the fight of the White Château, and Angela wanted the first part with Jeri (Zoe Terakes) and Roz (Shakira Barrera) almost feel like an increased ballet where you can see Riri panic,” said Kelly. “Then clown (Sonia Denis) enters, and the fight begins to look more like a thriller where you have a beat to breathe. Then you go out and there is Zeke (Alden Ehrenreich) and the scene becomes a super combat of Marvel.”
To visualize how they could make a part of Iron heartThe more complex technical plans involving Riri in the costume, Kelly and Barnes would become very analog. In some cases, the two would make a kind of dance around each other with Kelly holding a trombone intended to represent the costume while Barnes would act like a camera. This was enough for them to hammer the key movements of the camera of a scene, and they could then bring these ideas to the VFX team led by Greg Steele, which could develop a series of previews to give everyone an idea of how the blow would come together. Steele, Kelly told me, said the VFX team was more than open to notes.
“Angela would be really detailed by her notes because with previs, you can give a lot of comments on something that must be less brilliant or something that must be heavier and have a certain type of clicking,” Kelly said. “This process is such a gift because they can make so many revisions and it is so much cheaper than trying to repair things later once they have already finished.”
When I asked Kelly if there were special measures that the creative team had taken to ensure that Riri’s costume is interacting with the real world, she told me that, for the most part, the production process is very similar to what you would see on other heavy VFX projects. When you see Riri jump into the air and be locked in his armor, you look at a blow that has had several mounting passes to add various digital elements around a human actor. It turns out that it looks particularly good because the VFX team, the director and the director of photography have been in constant contact with each other.
“We have become very good friends in the series, and he really left on board with our aesthetic sensitivities,” said Kelly. “During some shows, you have barely a chance to speak at the VFX Teamb. But it was like a love party where we spent a lot of time hanging around, they came to talk with us, and everyone was invested to make the show cool.”
