CGI Hardest Vision Shooting Explained

• Toronto-based MARZ VFX did most of the vision effects shots in “WandaVision”.
• The vision flying over Westview in episode six was the most difficult to achieve.
• MARZ had less than four months to create the 40-second streak.
• Visit the Insider home page for more stories.

While Ryan Freer had all the predictions in front of him as to how to pull off the streak, he still had sleepless nights figuring out how he and his team at the rambling visual effects house MARZ VFX were going to pull off Vision’s first flight. sequence in “WandaVision”.

Vision’s character is virtually entirely CGI (the only real things are actor Paul Bettany’s eyes, nose, and mouth). A Marvel movie is usually given around a year to set all of the effects needed to get the character ready to be photographed.

Freer’s team was less than four months old.

Coming out of CGI for the Looking Glass character on HBO’s “Watchmen,” Toronto-based MARZ (short for Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies) is now at the level of Marvel’s premier TV show.

Specifically, they were hired to take most of Vision’s shots.

In episode six (“All-New Halloween Spooktacular!”), Vision begins to realize that things are a little weird in Westview and decides to seek answers. This includes a 40-second streak where he switches from his Halloween costume to his true Vision form, flies over Westview, and then flies towards a car, which is revealed to have Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) inside.

Freer, the show’s VFX supervisor for MARZ, said it was the most difficult streak of the 400 shots they took for “WandaVision”.

“When he transforms before taking off, next to his face, everything else about him is CG,” Freer told Insider.

“He’s completely CG when he flies through the air,” Freer continued.

“There’s a reverse shot of him looking down, it’s CG,” he says.

“It overlooks the entire city, and this city was built to specification based on exactly what Marvel wanted the city’s layout to be,” Freer said. “So it’s not a drone shot, we’ve built everything.”

Freer said they started working in mid-August 2020 and finished on Christmas Eve.

“Television is very different and it’s all about speed,” MARZ COO Matt Panousis told Insider. “So with our technology, we are able to shave a day off on each shot. And then with shots that are repeatable, we find a pipeline where we can move through the shots really quickly.”

And in addition to the remarkable work MARZ has done on Vision, Freer notes that apart from a few composers, his team of about 100 people were not involved in the CG of Vision on any of the Marvel films. It was the first time they had worked on the character.

It looks like MARZ has definitely caught Marvel’s attention.

“The producers we were working with told us Kevin Feige was talking about how our Vision is like other executives,” Panousis said excitedly as the president of Marvel shouted at the company’s job. “For us it was a sensational moment.”