8 Comments | Add

 

Rate & Share:

 

Related Links:

 

Info:

• Series: Avengers (Marvel Studios' The Avengers)

AVENGERS Finishing Cleveland Shoot

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) in battle on the set of Marvel's THE AVENGERS(2011).
© Walt Disney, Marvel

As expected from Kevin Feige's comments at their D23 Expo panel, director Joss Whedon is wrapping up his production for The Avengers in Cleveland over the next few days. But not before some last tidbits of information from one of the sources who provided a ton of set videos and photos over the last month or so. With the shoot's last days ahead of them, The Plain Dealer reflected on what they saw happening in the streets of Cleveland, which is doubling for NYC in the film. And a producer out of Marvel Studios thanked them for lending their streets for the action.

"It was great to see them come out every day," said Jeremy Latcham, co-producer of the movie for Marvel Studios. "They took tons of pictures and put them up on the Internet, which is just great.

"Cleveland has been amazing. We wanted a real street feeling to the scenes, and we got that," he said.

For a few weeks, East Ninth Street was turned into a war zone where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Christopher Evans) battled Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and other bad guys amid pickup-truck-size hunks of rubble.

The battles continued on Public Square, which was turned into a Stuttgart, Germany, beer garden and opera house. Captain America and Iron Man fought Loki in front of a large number of extras dressed in formal wear on Thursday and Friday night. The "Iron Man" in those scenes was a stunt double in full costume augmented with computer-generated software.

On Friday and Saturday night, Scarlett Johansson filmed scenes at an old warehouse on Ashland Road near Longfellow Avenue, off Cedar Road near the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. The warehouse was the site of top secret filming and doubled as a Russian facility. Trailers for the stars and temporary food preparation and wardrobe stations were set up in a base camp there.

Other filming sites included the old DHL facility in Wilmington, Ohio, and NASA's Plum Brook facility in Sandusky, where Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Clark Gregg (SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson) were seen. That location, and the availability of state tax credits, were crucial factors in bringing the film to Ohio from Michigan.

Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/The Hulk) and Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) did not come to Cleveland.

The old Chevrolet plant in Parma was used to film fireball explosions that will be spliced into other scenes. The Lakeside Courthouse building will be the stage of a scene to be shot Monday night.

Latcham said some members of the cast will travel to New York for two days to wrap up the filming.

"After that Joss takes it all back to L.A. and creates the movie," he said.

Check out the rest of the details here and sound off with your opinions.

Marvel's The Avengers invades theaters May 4, 2011.