For those of you who can't get enough of Marvel's The Avengers, or peeks behind the scenes of movies, visual-effects powerhouse Industrial Light & Magic has released a video explaining how a key "tie-in" shot was created for the big New York City battle that brought the heroes together to fight as a team.

"While The Avengers posed many visual-efffects challenges, one of the larger challenges was pulling together the 'tie-in' shot during the third act of the film," ILM states. "Rather than frames, this single shot is measured in minutes on screen and is one of the longest effects shots in the film. It incorporates both practical special effects and extensive digital visual effects by ILM. The New York City environment that serves as the setting for this shot (and virtually the entire alien invasion) is computer generated by the visual effects team at ILM."

A division of Lucasfilm, ILM also worked on Marvel's Iron Man and Iron Man 2. With Disney's $4.05 billion purchase of Lucasfilm, ILM and Marvel are now corporate siblings.