The first Iron Man movie was a massive hit with both critics and audiences, featuring an unexpected blend of humor, action, and drama not often seen in the superhero genre. Two years later the film’s first sequel is bringing Tony Stark back to the screen, and we recently caught up with three Full Sail graduates who worked on the project, giving us an inside look at the making of Iron Man 2.
Film grad Andrea Babineau was hired early on in development as a production assistant, and worked for nearly a year on the movie, from November 2008 to August 2009. While on set, she assisted in the day-to-day needs of the Locations and Art departments, and enjoyed being able to watch the production slowly come together as she supported the filmmakers.
“I never thought I’d get to work on something like Iron Man 2,” she says. “Just to be a part of a production that big was the reason I kept striving to do my best every day. Probably the coolest moment for me was a night shoot in Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. They had this huge party scene with a DJ, and he and (director) Jon Favreau would start up this dance party in between the set-ups, keeping the energy high. And so there was Robert Downey, Jr. dancing along with Don Cheadle in the middle of it all, and I’m just standing in the background like ‘This is my job, this is so awesome.’”
After principal photography wrapped, that excitement carried into the postproduction stage, where Computer Animation graduates Andrew Hwang and Fred Stuhrberg came on board to help create the film’s visual effects. The two worked at different stages of the effects pipeline, with Fred’s role as 3D scanning engineer coming at the very beginning, where he was responsible for making digital scans of physical models that were used to build the final characters and objects for the film.
“I did a lot of work on Iron Man 2,” Fred says. “I made digital models of the power units for Tony Stark’s chest, and the armor that Whiplash uses. They wanted to be able to track their movements and put digital effects in the gear itself. I worked on that film for quite a few months, and every time they’d tell me I was done with it, I’d get another piece to work on because they keep adding more things.”
As lead modeler at Third Floor, a popular Los Angeles effects house, Andrew Hwang worked on pre-vis and final production work for a number of the film’s characters, including Iron Man ally War Machine. His job was to take many of the initial character scans created by Stuhrberg and bring them to life by animating the way they moved and interacted with the objects and environments.
“I really liked being able to work with the mechanics of the different suits,” he says. “It was amazing how detailed the designs were, and how everything was super-integrated – it was awesome to be able to play with those kinds of models. Working with Marvel was great too, and they liked our work on Iron Man so much they actually gave us (upcoming comic adaptation) Thor as well.”
Iron Man 2 hit screens on May 7, kicking off 2010’s summer movie season. If the experiences these grads had just working on the project are any indication, fans are going to have a real treat when they pack into theaters on opening day to see the latest installment of this growing franchise.
“The first movie was just fantastic, and working on Iron Man 2 was an amazing project for me,” Fred says. “I was such a fan when I was a kid, and if you follow the comics, Robert Downey Jr. just is that character. He is Tony Stark. So this is the kind of movie you get when working in the visual effects industry that reminds you why you got into it in the first place.”
