'Hawkeye': How the Composition Team recreated and destroyed, 30 hits for the series

"What's bigger and what's more bizarre than Rockefeller Center?"

If you've ever been to New York City for Christmas, you know that you must stop by the famous Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. The 50-foot-tall Norwegian spruce with hundreds of twinkling lights beckons residents and visitors alike during the holiday season, becoming a must-see. (Hey, even Yelena wanted to add it to her sightseeing list!) And here's why it's shocking that Marvel Studios' Hawkeye not only toppled the tree in the season finale, but caused chaos on the iconic ice rink below it.

"I take my hat off to Kevin Feige because he wants to be big, and what's bigger, and what's more surprising than Rockefeller Center?" Executive producer Rhys Thomas, who also directed the episode, explained to Marvel.com. "It's something everyone has."

In episode 6, "So This Is Christmas?", Clint Barton and Kate Bishop end up at 30 Rock for the Bishop Security holiday party - which Wilson Fisk was aiming for after he and Eleanor Bishop unexpectedly broke up. Clint knew the Kingpin would want to flaunt his strength and organize an attack, and what better and bigger location than in New York City?

Although the commotion began inside the party, the chaos quickly spilled into the street, and the nearby ice rink, leaving the two archers to try to fend off the Mafia Tracksuit on the ice. Part of the episode was actually filmed on location over Christmas 2020, however, considering the events of the episode, not all could be filmed there. That means the rink has actually been recreated on a soundstage in Atlanta.

Thomas, who has actually worked at 30 Rock for nearly two decades, found it to be "a kind of weird valley" because he knew the location well before Marvel Studios' Hawkeye.

“Walk into the back yard [in Atlanta], which was basically just a bunch of shipping containers on a parking lot right in the middle of nowhere, and saw this floating up. It was crazy. The level of detail in the street down to the weathering on the granite and imitation granite walls. ”

Initially, the production team assigned to recreate a corner of the skating rink to shoot in Atlanta. But that was quickly dropped for the whole thing.

“Initially I remember having this idea that maybe we just need a portion of the rink… then you start looking at the sequence and it doesn't seem like we need the whole thing,” Thomas recalls. “We built the ice rink and the entire bottom floor of Rockefeller Center. It's one of the most thrilling; I have never entered a studio like that. ”

Not only was the entire rink created, but two very important things were also built: a replica of the Christmas tree and its top. In a daring escape, Clint actually got inside the tree before Kate toppled it, which means yes, Jeremy Renner actually climbed into a version of the fake tree.

“It was one of our last days [of filming],” Thomas continued. “We brought the tree onto the stage and surrounded it with a green screen, and we put Jeremy on the tree. The funny thing is we did part of it, and then a few days later, realized we needed a little more. But at that point, the tree was basically cut down and it was in a trash can in the back. ”

To complete Hawkeye Episode 6, someone had to scuba dive. “It was just the funnest thing because it was a dream come true. We were saying like, 'we hope it's still in the trash!' That's the message I got when I said I needed to do a little more work and someone just pulled in the old tree. this and it suddenly became something. It's pretty funny, [but] I'm embarrassed. I was like OK, Jeremy, you have to stand here [with] this shabby log, but he had fun with it. "

With the tree from the trash can, Thomas created, "this little branch is right in front of Jeremy and so he's standing on the ground with this weird tree around him pretending he's stuck in there." In the end, most of the scene where Clint gets stuck in a tree is actually “from when we took this little deadly thing out of the trash. It can shatter the Hollywood illusion. "

Before long, however, Clint found himself on the tree from which he had to descend. With an acid arrow in place, Kate sends the fallen tree down the rink - along with the giant tree-topper, something else that was recreated just for the episode. Considering Clint and Kate used the object for cover from the approaching Tracking Suit, it needed to be large enough for them to hide behind.

"It's very well documented," said Maya Shimoguchi, artistic director of the Disney+ series. “There are a lot of pictures of it that we can see, not of the tree. You can find really cool photos