Joss Whedon's The Avengers included an incredible action-packed scene that featured every member of the Avengers team locked in an epic battle against aliens in New York City! Watching that scene play out on the big screen gave me chills of awesomeness. For those of you who are curious how that scene was created, Industrial Light and Magic has released a behind the scenes featurette detailing how they brought that insane battle to life for the fans! Here's a description of the video from ILM's YouTube channel:
While “The Avengers” posed many visual effects challenges, one of the larger challenges was pulling together the “tie-in” shot during the third act of the film. Rather than frames, this single shot is measured in minutes on screen and is one of the longest effects shots in the film. It incorporates both practical special effects and extensive digital visual effects by ILM. The New York City environment that serves as the setting for this shot (and virtually the entire alien invasion) is computer generated by the visual effects team at ILM.
Check it out! It's pretty mind blowing to see how this scene was pieced together.