Ant-Man and the Wasp’s biggest filming challenge might surprise you
The hardest scene in the movie to shoot wasn't any of the big action sequences, but something a bit smaller…
New Marvel movie Ant-Man and the Wasp is full of impressive visual effects, from the trippy look of the mysterious Quantum Realm to the physics-defying glory of Paul Rudd’s 60-foot Giant-Man form.
However, it turns out the trickiest part of the movie to shoot wasn’t any of the massive action scenes, thrilling car chases or hand-to-hand battles – it was actually a brief visit to an elementary school where Scott Lang (Rudd) found his size-changing suit had started to malfunction.
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“The most challenging part from a filmmaking point of view, was the scene where I'm about two feet tall,” Rudd told RadioTimes.com.
“Apparently that was incredibly difficult, and it took a long time to film. It was not the most enjoyable sequence to film because it just took a long time."
“The school scene was the most difficult,” agreed director Peyton Reed.
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“In a movie filled with visual effects, that was the toughest - and when you're watching the movie you wouldn't think it, because I think it kind of breezes by, hopefully.
“But it was a scene where Scott's suit is malfunctioning, and he's two feet tall, then 15, then three, and he's interacting with Evangeline [Lilly], who's regular sized, and sometimes Wasp-sized.”
Rudd added, “We had to mix different size props, because Evangeline and I are both in the scene at the same time.
“She's handing me a backpack, I'm grabbing a backpack, I'm handing things to her, but we have to pinpoint the exact location of our hands. And that kind of thing.”
“We shot at a normal, elementary school in Georgia,” Reed said.
“First of all it was like a hundred degrees, and a hundred degrees humidity in the south, and they're both in the suits. But it was the only time we had to use this motion control camera. Which takes a lot of programming, and higher mathematics.
“So it's the most we ever had to wait around. And a big part of my job as director is to shield the actors from all the technical concerns of the movie.
“I think for that reason it was really the toughest, because it was... you were hemmed in a little bit to the motion control camera stuff.”
Funnily enough, in the finished film, you might not even think too much about the scene that gave them so much grief – but then that’s probably a sign that they did the job right.
“The work that went into that sequence, for people in the know, it's mighty impressive that we were able to put that off,” Rudd concluded.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is in cinemas now
