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Courtesy of Weta Digital
Capturing Natasha Romanoff in Action VFX supervisor Geoffrey Baumann offers insights into crafting the eye-popping visuals for Black Widow, Marvel’s big summer blockbuster. By Tom McLean
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mazing action and VFX wizardry is expected in any movie that bears the Marvel Studios brand, but incorporating those elements with a gritty spy story and family drama in Black Widow posed new challenges for veteran VFX supervisor Geoffrey Baumann. “We’re always chasing the best story,” he says. “If it helps make the story better, even if it isn’t necessarily on the page — especially in an action sequence — it is likely to be adopted,” Baumann says. Black Widow follows Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff from her youth living in Ohio with an undercover family of Russian agents in 1995 to just before Avengers: Infinity War, when a message from her former undercover sister, Yelena Belova, sets them on a path that reunites the “family“ and pits them against General Dreykov’s mind-controlling Red Room operation and the power-mimicking Taskmaster. The movie also stars Florence Pugh as Yelena, Rachel Weisz as Melina, David Harbour as Alexei, Ray Winstone as General Dreykov and Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster.
‘I was excited that the film was going to have a different look to it, and also potentially be touching on some different human emotions, and not just be all about CG.’ — VFX supervisor Geoffrey Baumann
Courtesy of Outpost VFX
Grounding the MCU Magic
Director Cate Shortland — working from a screenplay by Eric Pearson and a story by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson — brought a grounded approach to the familiar super-heroic action of Black Widow, along with an emo-
tional family dynamic that sets it apart from previous Marvel movies. “I was excited that the film was going to have a different look to it, and also potentially be touching on some different human emotions, and not just be all about CG,” says Baumann, whose previous Marvel VFX credits include
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august 21
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