Chapter 814: The Nine-Million-Dollar Sports Car

For an entire week before Christmas, Duke focused on restructuring the internal operations of Marvel Comics. He held multiple discussions with members of the creative committee and Kevin Feige, and during the latest shareholders' meeting, he took on the concurrent role of chairman of the Marvel Group.

Duke's stance was absolutely clear: the creative committee would not be disbanded.

He was indeed fighting hard to keep Kevin Feige around, but if the man stubbornly insisted on dissolving the creative committee to seize more power than he was entitled to, Duke wouldn't mind accepting his resignation.

Just as Duke had said, Hollywood would keep spinning just fine without him or James Cameron, let alone Kevin Feige.

Fortunately, Kevin Feige was neither an idiot nor an egomaniac, and he refrained from doing anything too irrational.

Duke had no intention of breaking the balance of power within Marvel. After his talks with Kevin Feige, the next board meeting saw a measured increase in Feige's annual salary and stock options. The creative committee's interference with Marvel Pictures was also appropriately curtailed; any relevant proposals they put forward now required Duke's approval before implementation.

Of course, this only applied to Marvel's films. The creative committee's supervisory authority remained intact.

With the internal strife at Marvel Comics temporarily quelled, Duke stayed in New York to celebrate Christmas with his mother before rushing back to Los Angeles. With less than half a year left until the release of The Avengers, post-production had to start as soon as possible.

Aside from bringing Mike Dawson's editing team into Warner Studios, Duke focused heavily on the visual effects production at Industrial Light & Magic.

Film visual effects production was a massive, complex undertaking. It was hard to say that any single factor guaranteed success, just as it was difficult to rank the importance of the human brain, heart, and lungs—without any one of them, a person couldn't survive.

Funding, scheduling, talent, workflow, communication, and design all collectively decided the fate of a film's effects. If a movie's visual effects turned out well, it meant every link in the chain had cooperated smoothly; if the effects fell flat, at least one of those links had broken.

It was common knowledge that producing visual effects burned through cash, but specifically, where did all that money go? Just how much did a movie need to spend to deliver satisfying effects?

There were many areas that required funding in VFX production, but the largest share went to labor costs. For a Hollywood commercial blockbuster like The Avengers, Duke had to mobilize a team of thousands during post-production. It wasn't just Industrial Light & Magic—just as many big-budget films split their effects among ten or even twenty different VFX companies and studios, numerous other effects teams joined the colossal production effort at Warner Studios.

Many of these people were animators and compositors with years of industry experience, and their compensation certainly wasn't cheap.

In the budget for The Avengers, fifty percent was allocated purely for visual effects. The salaries for Duke, the actors, and the rest of the crew took up about thirty-five percent, leaving a mere fifteen percent for actual filming expenses.

Put simply, this film wasn't just selling movie stars; it was selling visual effects.

The scale of a film's investment dictated the quality of its effects. This was an unchangeable truth in any country across the world.

Duke remembered, for instance, how the notoriously cheap CGI of the web series The Lost Tomb had once sparked heated discussions among netizens. The show claimed a production cost of tens of millions per episode, yet audiences felt the visual effects couldn't have been any worse.

Assuming the producers hadn't inflated their budget claims and the money meant for effects had actually been spent, three episodes of The Lost Tomb still equaled the length of a feature film. And a film with a thirty-million-RMB investment wasn't considered a major production even on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

For a project like The Lost Tomb, which relied primarily on visual spectacle as its main selling point, such an investment was a drop in the bucket. Who could expect thirty million RMB to deliver high-quality effects?

It was a very simple truth, but not everyone could accept it.

Visual effects production was a highly industrialized sector, and a good workflow yielded twice the result with half the effort. But a good workflow didn't happen overnight; it required repeated refinement through practice.

While VFX workflows were mostly similar, major differences often arose during execution. Fortunately, mainstream Hollywood visual effects teams were currently very mature and rigorous in all aspects. They possessed complete industrial pipelines, and both their post-production management and technical capabilities were highly developed.

The prime representative among them was undoubtedly Industrial Light & Magic, which Duke had brought under his wing.

In the earliest days, Hollywood VFX companies didn't pay much attention to workflows. Industrial Light & Magic spent a massive amount of time researching the issue, and their pipeline eventually became something of an industry standard. Nowadays, every company wanted to adopt Industrial Light & Magic's workflow.

Industrial Light & Magic's work was entirely sequential. Every single step—from development and review to communication and finalization—followed a strict set of procedures.

This was also a major reason why, throughout his twenty years in Hollywood, Industrial Light & Magic had always been Duke's preferred VFX partner.

In Duke's crews, the visual effects team was a crucial component. From the very beginning of his career, he had never segregated the effects team from the rest of the production.

Any task requiring multi-person collaboration demanded communication; this wasn't limited to the film industry, much less the VFX sector.

However, due to the natural technical barriers of visual effects, many film crews split pre-production and filming away from VFX production, treating them as two separate entities with little overlap. This was a massive taboo in effects production. To achieve good results, the pre-production crew had to maintain constant, seamless communication with the VFX team from the moment the project launched.

Before production began, Duke had to ensure all the effects companies fully understood the content they were creating.

The VFX supervisors from Industrial Light & Magic held comprehensive discussions in the director's studio with Duke, editor Mike Dawson, and assistant director Anna Printz to confirm Duke's vision and the production requirements for every shot.

Then, they would communicate the specific production requirements to the other VFX companies handling individual scenes. For crucial sequences, Duke would first use simple images to confirm key elements like environment and positioning. Once the images were approved, the effects company would produce preliminary animated shots, review them with him again, and only then render the final effects.

Of course, different directors held different attitudes toward VFX production.

Directors like Duke and Steven Spielberg wouldn't micromanage the intricate details of effects creation. They simply told the VFX team exactly what they wanted, and with clear goals, the team could accurately produce the desired visuals and shots.

Another type, such as James Cameron, cared deeply about the effects production process. They wanted to see different versions and stay updated on the progress, which was also an excellent model for communication.

Then there were directors who knew very little about visual effects and couldn't accurately describe the final result they wanted to present. Alternatively, they undervalued VFX production and rarely made a conscious effort to coordinate during pre-production and filming. Consequently, the quality of the effects was hard to guarantee, and repeated revisions only drove up production costs.

Aside from the main feature, Duke continually communicated with his team regarding the film's end credits.

Much like the movie itself, Duke wanted to weave many different elements into the credits sequence, giving every character a brief appearance while highlighting their defining traits.

Ideally, they wouldn't show the actors' actual faces, but rather feature the most iconic object belonging to each character—such as Iron Man's helmet, Thor's hammer, Captain America's shield, and Hawkeye's bow and arrows.

Doing this without disjointing it from the plot posed a bit of a challenge; characters like the Hulk and Black Widow didn't have many signature objects to display.

Gathering the core post-production personnel, including the head of Industrial Light & Magic's VFX team, Duke brainstormed and found some excellent solutions.

The end credits could include Nick Fury's pistol holster and Black Widow's guns. During actual production, the staff even added her belt.

The Hulk was the most difficult character in this regard, as he had no battle suit, no armor, and no weapons.

Therefore, Duke decided to focus on his pre-transformation state, Bruce Banner. Professor Banner's glasses, his laboratory, and his clothing would all be added to the credits sequence.

Duke hoped this title sequence would not only catch the eye but also leave the audience thinking about it long after the movie ended.

The crew worked hard to guide the audience's gaze from one place to another, treating them to magnificent visuals. To achieve an impact that transcended the images themselves, the characters and the plot also needed to be more vivid and engaging.

As the release date for The Avengers approached, Marvel Pictures and Warner Brothers rolled out their promotional campaigns step by step. By mid-January, Duke had already taken the lead in finishing a thirty-second commercial, which would air right on schedule during the Super Bowl halftime in February.

Furthermore, several of the film's actors made an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival that month. Robert Downey Jr. and his on-screen ride easily stole the thunder from all the independent films. That ruby-red Acura sports car, valued at nine million dollars, burned through countless rolls of film and utterly dazzled the fans in attendance.

It sparked a massive wave of discussion afterward.

He remained busy at Warner Studios right up until the Super Bowl. When the forty-sixth Super Bowl arrived, Duke left Los Angeles and flew directly to Indianapolis to watch the game.

His Los Angeles Raiders had eliminated the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, fighting their way into the Super Bowl for the second consecutive year.