Looking Back at The Avengers Shoot: Appetite for Destruction

Cleveland’s exploding. The cinema scene this summer is bringing numerous movie productions to N.E. Ohio. The Greater Cleveland Film Commission has worked tirelessly to attract these projects, including Fun Size, Boot Tracks, Falling Backwards and I, Alex Cross. Of all the movies coming to town, though, there’s one that got everyone’s attention: The Avengers.

During the past several weeks, for anyone living, working, touristing or just walking in Downtown, we witnessed a fantastic exterior set on East 9th Street, between Euclid and Prospect. Faux store fronts, real billboards and turned-over cars created a blown-up New York street block.

The magic of movies happens because of hard work and The Avengers production, including crew members, extras and A-listers such as Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans, is world class.

The excitement this big-budget action franchise had generated was evident by the daily crowds stopping to watch, take photos and, at least temporarily, get lost in the moment.

And, one weekday morning, Jen Poland, of Invasion Films, and I got incredibly lost by finding ourselves watching an action scene sequence set-up and shooting, complete with pyrotechnics. We watched it from street level, from inside a building, from down the alley and, eventually, from the rooftop, gaining perspective on the magnitude of the process.

Here’s what we saw.

Reprinted with permission and gratitude from CoolCleveland.com.