How ILM Created a Digital New York City for The Avengers

Casey Chan

Seriously, after seeing ILM work its magic in all of its movie, I basically trust ILM with anything. If the next movie ILM works on doesn't involve real actors or real sets or even a real script, I don't care, I'm in. If ILM told me it could make a world better than real life, I'd totally sign up. Anything ILM does is gold. The visual effects wizards can even magically, er, digitally recreate New York City. Watch.
According to ILM, about a third of The Avengers was set in NYC but only a teeeeny bit was actualy filmed there. Instead, ILM photographed 250,000 pictures of 7-miles of city streets at different heights and time of the day to digitally recreate New York. You can't even tell the freaking difference between ILM's fake New York and real New York.

The crew then digitally recreated roughly 20 square blocks of mid-town Manhattan using a variety of techniques. Live action shoots were held primarily on sound stages in New Mexico and in the streets of Cleveland.

Clevelend is the New New York City. [ILMVisualFX]

via gizmodo.com