High-Flying Teamwork on Iron Man

How Animators at ILM Helped Call the Shots

When Iron Man blasted onto movie theater screens last week, director Jon Favreau's cool hands guided critically lauded performances by actor Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow as his secretary, "Pepper" Potts, Terrence Howard as buddy Jim Rhodes, and Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane through a slick script. But Iron Man would have been nothing without his full metal suit. In the beginning, Favreau was not convinced that, except for the necessary flying shots, Iron Man could be digital. In fact, a major tenet of the production was keeping things real—from the suit to the cameras. By the end of post-production, however, animators at ILM were helping to design shots, including tweaking the camera. “Production drove the bus,” says Academy Award-winning VFX supervisor John Nelson, “but everybody was involved. Jon [Favreau] and I both believe the best idea is going to win, wherever it comes from. We hired people because we thought they were good. We didn’t just want to tell them what to do.”

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