Virtual airport

Although the sequence takes place at an airport near Leipzig, Germany, the filmmakers primarily worked on tarmac surrounded by greenscreen in Atlanta, Georgia. “We also shot at the airport in Leipzig,” Russell says. “But we used that mostly for reference. There’s one shot with Cap and Bucky running that’s in camera, but we replaced everything except Cap and Bucky. Mostly everything you see, the aeroplanes, the terminals, all the vehicles, are CG. Hopefully no one will know the entire airport, from onehalf-inch scale to full wide shot is completely synthetic.”

According to Russell, this was logistical and necessary for continuity: “We would say, ‘Cap was backlit here and this luggage thing was in that shot, but where was this thing? OK, you know what? Let’s just replace it all later.’”

Although the airport was fully CG, from the parking lot to the terminal, the aeroplanes to the aircraft steps, the ploughed field beyond to the control tower inside, and the skies to the tarmac, the crew at ILM still needed to match director of photography Trent Opaloch’s onset lighting.

“The DP didn’t want contrasty images,” Russell says. “He wanted a lower key fill. And the bros [directors Anthony and Joe Russo] like a flatter look. So everything was shot under silks. But, we didn’t want it all to look completely overcast like it was under a cloud, so we worked to find ways to bring in colour and sun.” But, in fact it was under a kind of CG cloud. “The TDS created a light rig with cloud shapes that we could