SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: During the making of the film did your feelings about the character change or your feelings about this particular genre?
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, so much of what the character became is Chris Evans' interpretation, and I found out early on that Chris and I agreed on everything, down to the most minute details of who the character was. So it wasn't like I had an idea and he had an idea and they didn't mesh in any way. I've been to THAT party… but he brought so much more to it than what was on the page, he really added interesting layers to the character, and subtleties that I don't think any audience is going to be expecting coming out of Steve Rogers. I was really happy with the way he played it. When it works out this way, it's really great – you do a take and you say, “Oh that's the way that scene is supposed to be. Good!” There are a lot of pleasant surprises and I know Chris is really happy with the end result – we showed him the movie a few weeks ago and he came out of there completely beaming, and thanked me for giving him something he can be proud of. I think were definitely on the right track.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: The interesting thing about Chris is that he’s hardly ever been given the opportunity to play anything more than the wise ass.
JOE JOHNSTON: And one thing we recognized is that you have to like this guy early on, before his transformation, before the re-birth process. You have to like him as who we call Skinny Steve, and it's the whole first act of the movie, as he plays Skinny Steve, which meant we had to shrink him – we photographed him as Chris Evans, completely ripped, because he'd been working out for the second and third act. So we had to photograph him as Chris and then shrink him down and make him look like he weighs 98 pounds and is 5' 7". So the challenge there was, after all the computer graphics guys had their way with him, we still had to like him. In fact, the movie wouldn’t work if you didn't like Skinny Steve, so that was a challenge, and that was why we took so long – the last shot we finaled was a Skinny Steve shot, just a few days ago, because it's so crucial not only that you like him, but in all the 185 shots that he looks like the same guy. And that was one of the most difficult parts of the whole thing, because you can't have one artist do the 185 shots or you'd never finish, so you've got a dozen people doing all different shots, and sometimes you put two of them back to back on the screen and it looks like two different people – that happened early on until we sort of picked a frame and said, “OK this is Steve Rogers at 98 pounds – all the shots have to look like this guy.” And it was almost like a mug shot, and everyone had the reference taped up on the wall of their cubicle trying to make it look like the same guy, and it was really tough – we kept sending shots back saying no, his nose is too thick here, and his ears stick out too much – it's amazing what a couple of millimeters will do; it looked like a completely different person. We had what we called trailer finals and film finals, and we would have to always final a shot for the trailer early because they had to start making the trailer, so none of the trailer shots were finals for the movies, we kept sending them back—the guys over at Lola did most of the stuff, shrinking him down, and they really did an amazing job. They sent us shots that we were blown away by – we were looking for the digital artifacts and trying to figure out how they did it and where they shrunk him. A lot of the stuff is just invisible; it's amazing what they've done. I am completely in awe – I don't understand how they do it, and I don't really want to know or need to know – but it is really just amazing to watch.