It has been more than half a decade since Avengers: Infinity War was released, but the movie continues to set precedence when it comes to VFX and graphics. One of the most spectacular Marvel movies ever made. Not only did it contain numerous memorable scenes, but its graphics were considered by many fans as Oscar-worthy.
While fans have since complained about the diminishing quality of subsequent Marvel movies, Infinity War continues to be used as a cornerstone when it comes to VFX. One brilliant example of what went behind the creation of the epic is Peter Dinklage’s cameo. And a funny BTS detail about his shot with Chris Hemsworth only proves how much of an effort it took to create the movie.
Avengers: Infinity War: Funny BTS About Peter Dinklage’s Cameo
While there are many surprising elements in Avengers: Infinity War, the cameo of Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage as a humongous dwarf was the most surprising. Starring as Eitri, the king of the Dwarves on the space forge Nidavellir, where Chris Hemsworth‘s Thor, Rocket, and Groot go to have a weapon deadly enough to kill Thanos.
Standing ten feet or more tall, Dinklage’s Eitri towers over the God of Thunder. While VFX and CGI are the obvious answer to how Marvel managed to do so, there is also a funny story about how the shots were shot.
Peter Dinklage filmed scenes in 'Avengers: Infinity War' with mini cardboard cutouts of Thor, Rocket, and Groot pic.twitter.com/aHfwUi73s0
— Marvel Facts (@MarveIFacts) March 18, 2024
If you look closely at the tweet given above, it is not hard to figure out that Dinglage was actually standing with small cardboard cutouts of Thor, Rocket, and Groot for the shot. Shot against a blue screen on the same set, having cardboard cutouts would have helped the Game of Thrones star for it is not easy acting against a blue screen, interacting with characters who are not present there in real life.
How Peter Dinklage’s Cameo Was Actually Shot
The VFX and CGI work of the movie, Avengers: Infinity War, was divided among different creative studios and involved over 2,700 shots, with just 80 of them being non-visual (via ILM). With a team of over 220 people, Method Studio was in charge of creating sequences involving Thor, Guardians, Rocket, and Groot.
The studio’s VFX supervisor, Greg Steele, explained to Art of VFX how Dinklage’s cameo was actually shot.
“For those shots, because of time challenges with the talent, the directors were willing to restrict themselves to nodal camera moves [fixed, rotating camera], which would allow us to quickly move through fairly simple forced perspective setups of the A and B sides of the shot. We would shoot the A side with Thor, then in the same place on set and in the same lighting conditions, we would bring in some portable bluescreens and shoot the Eitri plate… For wide shots of the characters moving through the environment with Thor, we used a digi-double of Eitri so we had more flexibility with the camera motion.”
Avengers: Infinity War, thus, has remained a groundbreaking movie and a testament to the incredible amount of hard work and creativity that goes into making such an impressive and awe-inspiring blockbuster.
Avengers: Infinity War can be streamed on Disney Plus.
