“When you love something, you protect it”…. The highly anticipated Marvel Studios’ film Eternals features a stellar cast of new heroes in a sweeping cinematic narrative following the events of Avengers: Endgame. The Third Floor is thrilled to have contributed to the visual storytelling and technical planning of scenes throughout the film.
Collaborating closely with VFX Supervisor Stephane Ceretti, VFX Producer Susan Pickett and key departments, The Third Floor’s London and LA studios supported filmmakers across the creative process through previs, postvis and techvis. Motion capture was used to bring realism to the visualized action and characters in both previs and postvis, as scenes travel a vast scope of history, locations and sets — from the Eternals arriving in Mesopotamia in 5000 BC to battles at the Gates of Babylon to the Deviant attack on London in present day. These locations, contrasting with shots in space and with the Domo spaceship, required thorough pre-production planning to help bring out the filmmaker’s vision for both story and visual treatment.
The Eternals also come onto the screen flexing impressive powers. Visualization was utilized to conceptualize look and feel and how the characters would use their unique abilities, such as Ikaris’ lasers, Makkari’s speed and Thena’s mastery of weaponry.
Previs (Image courtesy of © 2021 MARVEL).
In one of many visualized high-concept moments, TTF artists were tasked to help explore the scale and vastness of Celestial being, Tiamut. “It was important to look at the size and orientation relationship between the central characters, the giant Celestial and the surface of the Earth,” said Visualization Supervisor Jim Baker, The Third Floor. Of working to support action designed for the film’s numerous practical locations, Baker noted: “It was both refreshing and challenging to work with a vast set of beautiful production plates where artists were tracking and rotoscoping postvis elements and creating temp comps many times without tracking markers or blue screen.”
Previs 
