Avengers: Endgame is currently available on digital platforms, and that means we get to relive the action again and again (it reaches DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 4K on August 13th). To celebrate the movie's release, I recently had the opportunity to catch up with production designer Charles Wood to discuss his work on the epic superhero ensemble.
His other credits include
Avengers: Infinity War,
Thor: The Dark World,
Guardians of the Galaxy, and
Men in Black: International.
In this interview, Charles talks about what it was like to work on
Avengers: Endgame and weighs in on everything from how the movie's time-travel elements affected his work to creating key sets like The Avengers Compound and the challenges that come with ensuring that the Marvel Cinematic Universe still feels like part of our world. He also comments briefly on
Black Widow.
It was great to hear from Charles and a real pleasure to get his insights, so I'd obviously like to say a huge thank you to him for taking the time to talk to us about his work on
Avengers: Endgame!
We see a lot more of The Avengers Compound in this movie so what were the biggest challenges with expanding that base for the team, especially when there were so many characters in it?
Well, probably just the scale of the sets! [Laughs] The Avengers Compound in itself was a lot of interiors that were all connected. From the very early stages with Joe and Anthony, we needed to read the script to see where the scenes took place and they wanted to keep the scenes moving so, yes, it was a lot of models, a lot of head scratching, a lot of artwork. Then, we came up with this idea of it overhanging a river and so it was basically a lot of set building and storyboarding.
Time-travel means we revisit a lot of familiar locations from past movies; what was it like recreating those and ensuring that they followed what we'd seen previously?
It was great. Some of it was very nostalgic as we'd obviously done some of those in the past which was actually helpful. With the films I hadn't worked on, we got all the original set construction drawings and spoke to people who had worked on those films. We did our homework. When we were creating environments we'd created in past films, that was just a great journey and a slightly odd journey going back to those worlds. We always changed them up a little bit anyway because we could. [Laughs]
Were there any sets, in particular, from previous movies that you were hoping to revisit?
Do you know what, there were but I can't actually quite remember what they were! It was such a long journey. With the beginning of a film like Endgame, a lot of the stuff is there and a lot of stuff goes because the story is often being reworked and re-engineered. Stuff comes in and stuff leaves but you're always hopeful to do a few special places. It was actually really nice rebuilding parts of the Sanctum Santorum. That was great.
How involved were you with the final battle seeing as so much of that was presumably brought to life with visual effects?
We worked a lot on that. Part of our work is obviously the concept work so we did a huge amount of concepting work on the third act meaning all the artwork that brought it to life and a lot of the lighting studies and the rest of it. Surprisingly, we did actually build a lot of these destroyed landscapes where they actually are on. Dan DeLeeuw and his team did a huge amount of work on it but we were involved with the look of it and developed that together with Dan and with the studio as an art department.
Were there any sets that you worked on that didn't make it into the final cut of the movie?
It's all a bit of a blur to be honest with you! Actually, in Endgame, I think not. I think it pretty much all got in. In truth, sometimes when you watch the film, there may be a very quick shot or snap of something where typically you thought we might be on it longer and we weren't. Pretty much all of what we did ended up in the film.
Infinity War and Endgame were shot back to back so would you say that made your job harder or easier?
I think physically because you're shooting for 200+ days, it's just a long journey. Every day was important and every set was important. It's just a long time. It's a long time to manage and run an art department. I've never done that before and that was tricky but I was very lucky. We had such a strong team behind us and the studio was brilliant about it. We just kept going somehow and the directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, are very fine directors and were just very supportive and great fun to work with. They had a very clever way of keeping the energy up on the whole film and that's why people love working for them.
The five-year time-jump is a huge part of the movie, so what was your thought process when it comes to showing that passing of time?
It was actually more down to the detail I think because that's when you can sort of see it. It's down to a car number plate or clothing or the type of car or a packaged product. That's where we actually put an effort into with the time-travel. You had to be very careful with it so we laid out where we were going with the exact dates on the walls in the art department to make sure we didn't get something wrong. It can get quite confusing as well! [Laughs]
Endgame goes to a lot of crazy places so how hard is it for you to still make what we're seeing feel like it's part of our world without it becoming too far removed?
That's a great question. I think what you do is start with the real world. I was saying earlier that some of these worlds you go to, like Vormir, was based on the Atacama Desert in Chile and these beautiful sand dune formations. What we often do is look at something that exists and feels somewhat unearthly or unnatural but exist on our own planet. Then, we try and figure out how to manipulate it so that as an audience, there's enough familiarity to it but there's still a twist. I seem to remember us doing some crazy things with the sky and although there was the sky and the clouds, we wanted the clouds structures to perform in a very unnatural way. So, it's a nice way of doing something which was sort of based on reality but there was something slightly dreamy or slightly nightmarish about it which you couldn't quite put your finger on. Then, you looked up in the sky and there's these two cloud systems becoming two tall columns of clouds which would never naturally do that. That's how we do things. Basically base it in the real world.
You're working on Black Widow and we learned a fair bit about that movie during Comic-Con but what, if anything, can you tell us about what to expect from your work on that one?
Do you know what, I wish I could...but I can't! [Laughs] I'm sorry for that but I'll be more than happy to talk to you about it when the release date comes up.
I'm guessing you're excited for fans to see the movie, though?
Of course. Definitely!