In a interview with Comicbook.com, Thrain Shadbolt, the New Zealand-based VFX supervisor for Hawkeye, recently broke down the filming for the now iconic car chase in episode 3. It seems like this action packed scene was as fun to film as it was to watch.
Shadbolt discussed how Weta Digital, the company behind Hawkeye and other Marvel projects like Eternals, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, were meant to make the chase seem as if it was taking place in the heart of New York City, when in reality the show was actually shot in Atlanta, Georgia, using copious amounts of green screen. According to Shadbolt, the scene was filmed with three separate shots that had to be connected together to look like one long take. He added that:
"That was pretty challenging because not only was there the idea of having to stitch these things together to make them all work, but the camera rigs set up on the car also obscured, through the back window in particular, obscured large parts of the plate at various times. There was a hole cut in the ceiling of the car as well, because it was shot for real, but the stunt driver was basically sitting out the back and above the car. So there was a lot of supporting material for him to drive the car while Clint and Kate are doing their thing.”
To help make it more seamless, the Weta team went through and reconstructed most of the scene's background to make it appear as if the scene was in New York, while also reconstructing the car’s interior with CGI in order to make the sequence appear like one long take. Though CGI was used, Shadbolt made it clear that a real car was used for every shot:
"Once we get up on the bridge when you're looking at the cars, is really the mix of a real car, augmented with shadows and reflections from the CG environment back onto the cars," Shadbolt concludes. "And vice versa, shadows from the cars, real cars onto the CG environment, which we do by basically starting with a very tight match move of each vehicle in the frame along with the camera. So we could match exactly what the cars were doing on the plate and then mix and match our CG rendered cars with what was real and vice versa."
This action packed scene was a joy to watch as both Hawkeyes sprang into action for the first time as a team. We can only hope that this will be the first of many times we and other Marvel fans get to see that happen on screen.
All episodes of Hawkeye are streaming now on Disney+.