The 411 on the Iron Man 3 Suit with Chris Swift (Legacy Effects) #IronMan3Event
The 411 on the Iron Man 3 Suit with Chris Swift (Legacy Effects) #IronMan3Event
Although it has been over a month since I visited LA for the premiere of Iron Man 3, I still haven’t been able to write the extra posts I wanted to right after I got back. We were lucky enough to be able to interview Chris Swift, the Legacy Effects on Set Coordinator).
I will share with you Chris’s exciting job and his part in the Iron Man suits below…..
Chris: It took us about three months to work out the first prototype. But remember that one had legs to it. So after the first movie, because Iron Man’s supposed to stand about six foot — six foot four to six foot six depending on who you ask. They wanted it that tall, Robert doesn’t quite fit the bill. He is just about my height. So he’s about — he’s about ten inches too short. So we can’t really stick Robert in a full suit with those legs.
His feet end up right about where the ankle is. Right about at mid-shin or something like that. So we had stunt guys that were tall enough to fit into that suit that would utilize the legs. But after that it didn’t make much sense. So what they wanted to do is they wanted to basically just make them all around Robert. Then they would digitize the legs from waist down. So that’s the way that that works. They make the suits that go from the waist up complete, then everything from the waist down they stretch the legs digitally and just add those in.
Q : When did you start doing that?
That was on the second movie when that was implemented. So the first movie was the only movie that actually had full practical suits all the way down to the feet.
Q : You guys learned from the first one it’s much easier to do it without the legs and the flexibility of the actors and being able to do certain poses and something...
Chris answers: Sure. Well what I’ll say to that is is that everytime we’ve done the suits we make them better meaning we figure out a problem. Then we see what the problem was on that one. That first one was a nightmare. It was really heavy and it was hard to get into. It killed the actors — the stunt guys trying to get into it. If we had to make it again today we could make it and we could make it a lot better and a lot easier and a lot simpler and a lot faster to get into. It’s just there was no real reason because they didn’t wanna pay for suits to fit Robert and then pay for more suits to fit a stunt guy that was tall enough.
So it just made more sense just to make them all Robert’s size ‘cause we know he’s gotta be in it. Then the rest of them we’ll just digitally add that in. That just seemed to be a better way of doing it. That way they weren’t paying a lot of extra money for different sized suits.
Q : And in the new movie, how long does it take you guys to make them? Kinda explain the process that you guys do to make the suits?
Oh, if we were building it from scratch and it’s a brand new design, it’s hard to it’s hard to answer that. The reason why it’s hard to answer that is because every time they do an Iron Man suit, they redesign it. The wonderful designers here at Marvel, uh, mainly Ryan who’s been — been designing the suits from the very beginning. He does the most awesome job of designing things. But they’re designers, not practical builders…..Chris goes on to say…
The practicality to building a suit to make it work and functional that necessarily isn’t taken in consideration if you don’t understand what that’s all about and you don’t do it, when you’re designing something. So then we have to take the design that’s given to us that looks so great and go, ooh, wow, and how do we make this move? You’ve got bars going right across where something would move. So now we’ve got to re-engineer this and refigure it out how to make and how to maintain that look and still make it practical to where somebody can wear it and move around in it.
So the reason why that’s a hard question is because we don’t know what the design depending on what the design is. So if we took the 42 which is in the newest movie, that one, it took us a little bit to calculate how to make it a practical moving suit. I would say we spent more time in the computer trying to figure out how to make it move and engineer it from the design then we did actually building it. So, it’s probably a good two months — two months in the computer.
Then once we started actually physically building them we worked all the problems out there. They went together pretty quick. You know, I sit with the computer guys and engineer them so they come out and we rapid prototype those; meaning what that is, is we’ll design it in the computer and build it in the computer. Then we send that computer file out. There’s machines that will actually take those pieces that we’ve engineered and build it. They’ll actually cut them out. Then they’ll come back with full finished pieces.
So then we have to take those, clean them up and make them all and go through the whole process. But they all fit together like a puzzle at that point. So if you’ve done your job right meaning me, then all those pieces should fit together really easy. It should come together like a little toy, you know what I’m saying? So that’s kind of the way it works. Then putting them together was — was quite — quite quick.
Q : So does Gwyneth actually put on a suit?
No, she put on Robert’s suit. Believe it or not, Gwyneth fit the suit really well because Gwyneth’s actually quite tall. She’s really — really super built and strong and all that kinda stuff. So, the suit actually was — I was really surprised that it fit on her. Funny story with that is is that everyone bet me that Gwyneth — I was not gonna get Gwyneth in the suit because, you know, just — just the fact that it’s a big iron lung kinda suit, kinda funny. But I was like I was determined ‘cause that was like everyone — every fan wanted to see Gwyneth in the suit.
So I was like I’m determined to get her in the suit. I went and talked to her about it. She was so cool. She was really cool about the whole thing. It’s like well I’m kinda — kinda hesitant. Let’s — let’s see. But once she got in it, she had a ball. I couldn’t get her out of it. She was running around and fighting with her kids. She didn’t wanna come out. It was funny ‘cause she was the belle of the ball in the suit. So it’s wonderful. So it was a fun moment.
I really enjoyed this interview as it gave you a ‘behind the scenes’ look at just how these suits are made. When we watch a movie sometimes we do not think about what goes into the making of the ‘parts’ so to speak. I appreciated Chris Swift taking time out of his busy day to talk to myself and the other 24 bloggers!
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