Four Hundred and Eighty-1 Surprise

Whether it is the planned "Lord of the Rings" or "King Kong", they are not projects that will be launched in a short time. At least they will not be until the release of the second part of "The Matrix", so when it comes to funding issues, the temporary pressure is not considered. To go to college and maintain Wayne's living expenses, there is basically no need to worry about not having enough money.

As a billionaire, Wayne's consumption habits are conservative to the extreme. After becoming financially free, he did not make extensive real estate investments, endless luxury cars, boat shows and yacht associations. I always call the manor, but always to no avail.

He had no interest in the luxury yachts used by the rich to show off their wealth. Because he had a luxury charter flight from Warner Bros., the matter of private jets was temporarily forgotten. It can be said that he had no major expenses at all in terms of personal living expenses.

Wayne knew very well in his heart that he was still at his most energetic age, far from the time when he needed to just sit back and enjoy his grades. Those days were still far away from him.

However, Nina's reminder was also very important. He returned to the bedroom and carefully considered his plans for the next few years in his mind. At the very least, he had to make sure that financial reasons would not affect his plans after the turn of the century. .

The filming of "The Dark Knight" is proceeding in an orderly manner. Just a few days after December, the film's literary scenes were successfully shot. Next, the more tedious and annoying work of shooting action scenes and explosion shots will begin.

Due to the dark horse popularity of "The Matrix", North American audiences saw another fighting method for the first time. Therefore, adding kung fu elements to action scenes has become a common sight in Hollywood action science fiction films this year and even in the next few years. Elements.

Before "The Matrix", the mainstream fighting methods in Hollywood were all close to reality. Action scenes where you punch and kick me also caused aesthetic fatigue for the audience.

Compared with the popular trend in the following years, Wayne went against the norm and strongly requested that the action scenes be designed in a powerful style. He didn't even think about the high-speed slow motion and fast-slow transition shots that appeared in "The Matrix".

While filming, he was also communicating with editor Julia and the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic. When editing and splicing the shots and adding special effects in the later stage, his request was to allow the audience to see every action shot clearly, and to give Come up with a convincing and destructive reason.

Relatively speaking, action scenes look very exciting on the big screen, but the opposite is true when shooting. The duration of each shot is very short, and it is so detailed that it takes a headache to shoot shot after shot before editing it together. Forming continuous fighting scenes and camera switching.

"As the cost of special effects gradually decreases, one day, the effects that now cost a lot of money to add will become a way for some directors to show off their skills, and they may even become mainstream. Who knows."

In a studio in the suburbs of New York near New Jersey, Gilmour and the action team were in charge of filming. Wayne sat on a prop box, staring at the ongoing filming, chatting with producer Charles Rowan next to him.

"It's hard."

Charles Rowan shook his head. Movies that can add a lot of special effects are all large projects with investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. Even if the cost in this area is indeed decreasing year by year, the progress of computer special effects has been getting faster and faster in the past two years, but the director wants It’s still very difficult to show off your skills with expensive special effects.

He glanced at the young people around him. Unless the director was at their level, no production company would give the director such great rights and creative freedom to use special effects to show off his skills? In his opinion, it was just the successful person next to him who did not realize the hardships of low-level directors in Hollywood.

"Wayne, everyone knows that the special effects of big scenes attract audiences. Even if the tracking renderings on the big screen will look fake, most of the audience will accept this. If one day, the special effects of Hollywood movies will overwhelm you, To say that, it can only be a good thing for the production company.”

Wayne nodded slightly. He basically agreed with the other party's point of view. Audiences love to watch big scenes and exquisite special effects. This is understandable. Even after twenty years, this is still the case, even in the hearts of many movie fans. , I feel that there are enough big scenes to make the movie worth the ticket price.

This is a big trend. As image carriers began to develop from film, video tapes gradually became available, and then VCDs and DVDs with clearer images became part of the income of Hollywood movie channels.

However, with the rapid development of the Internet and the emergence of streaming media platforms from scratch, the cost for people to obtain video entertainment is getting lower and lower, and the acquisition methods are becoming simpler and simpler. Going to the theater to watch movies will inevitably require stronger reasons to support it, and theaters What cannot be replaced is the sensory stimulation brought by extraordinary visual enjoyment and the audio-visual stimulation that far exceeds that of home equipment.

What follows is nothing but death-defying special effects. Marvel has been invincible in the later stages, and there are many elements of excellent special effects, because only by walking into the theater can you better enjoy the big scenes in the movie.

And this is the reason why Wayne suddenly recalled those movies in his previous life on a whim. When the cost of special effects becomes very low, directors seem to regard adding special effects as an instinctive reaction.

"Technology is advancing rapidly, but technology is ultimately just an auxiliary means for telling stories..."

Charles Rowan heard some of his mumblings, looked at the young man next to him with some confusion, shook his head and walked away.

"Steven, the lights are being dimmed!"

Wayne, who had been sitting aside and watching, suddenly frowned slightly and shouted to the lighting supervisor Steve Wilson. Then he saw the change in the light tube and nodded with satisfaction.

For the action scenes that he was not good at, he did not hesitate to hand over the control of the crew to the assistant director Gilmore and the action team, but this did not mean that he would relax his requirements, as long as there were things that he was not satisfied with during the filming. If necessary, work will be stopped immediately to make adjustments. In the dialogue-based literary drama, several actors performed very steadily, especially Nicolas Cage, who played the clown. Faced with his performance, even though Wayne kept a deadpan expression on his work style, he was very satisfied in his heart.

But when it came to scenes that were not intended for the drama, several of the main actors showed more or less discomfort. Christian Bale is the easiest one. In those scenes where he is driving the Batmobile, driving a motorcycle, and climbing up and down various heights, he actually only needs to show his face, and the stunt team will do the rest.

The smooth shooting work in the early stage left plenty of time now, so Wayne simply asked Gilmore to take his time while ensuring quality. Anyway, there was enough time left for them.

Time slowly came to mid-December. As the scenes in New York became less and less, the working atmosphere in the crew also began to change. It was like impetuosity was contagious. Even Ralph, who had performed very well at one time - Fiennes began to make frequent low-level mistakes.

However, the harsh criticism he imagined did not appear. Wayne seemed to have a good temper, looking at the camera over and over again, and there was no scene where he called the actor over and talked with a cold face.

"Chris, Boss, has he changed his gender?!"

When Wayne announced the end of work, Ralph Fiennes approached Christian Bale and looked in the direction of the director's trailer in confusion.

"no."

Batman shook his head and didn't show off. He explained directly: "Don't you watch the news? After the man in the White House was successfully re-elected, the first thing he did was to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the leader. He will probably do it in the future. Before we leave New York.”

"Hey, I have inside information."

Nicolas Cage had just finished taking off his makeup, and when he heard the two chatting about this matter, he immediately approached them with a look of gossip. "Do you want to hear it?"

His words not only aroused the interest of the two of them, Gary Oldman and Samuel Jackson also gathered around with curious expressions on their faces. The Congressional Gold Medal is not a popular honor. Although there are no criteria for judging this thing, one thing is certain, that is, the efforts and contributions far exceed those of ordinary people.

Seeing that he had attracted everyone's attention, Nicolas Cage blinked proudly, as if he had not escaped from the play. “I heard that the man in the White House managed the House and Senate in two days, obtained the consent of more than two-thirds of both houses, and then quickly signed the resolution.

You may not know that for this honor to be successfully awarded to Wayne, a recommender is needed. Logically speaking, it must be a senior military general or a witness to an honorable act. It is said that the recommender this time was a reporter from the New York Times. He was outside the bank that day and watched the whole thing. "

Speaking of this, Nicolas Cage paused and deliberately lowered his voice. "Moreover, this medal not only requires recommenders, the medal is formed by personal sponsorship. And this time the sponsor is the former CEO of Warner Bros. and current CEO of Time Warner, Kevin Tetsuhara. Look at it this way Come on, this whole thing is going to be interesting! There have been rumors for a long time that the commander-in-chief and Time Warner..."

"F**K!"

Gary Oldman cursed in a low voice, interrupting Nicolas Cage's speculation. "Don't tell me the following speculation. I would rather believe that it was the leader's knight-like spirit and gentleman-like tough guy performance that earned him this honor. He deserves it, doesn't he?"

Several people nodded thoughtfully. After reacting, they lowered their heads and got into the car silently. Compared to dirty political exchanges, they were more willing to believe in other things, even if this group of people could guess what happened. What happened, no one wanted to say it.

As the motorcade began to head towards the hotel in the cold weather, Wayne's car was at the back as usual.

"a surprise!"

Nina covered her mouth and hung up the phone. While they were alone in the back of the car, she raised her eyebrows and teased: "I bet, boss, you will never guess."

Wayne glanced at her, then closed his eyes again, leaning back on his seat and closing his eyes to meditate. He knew his little assistant so well that he could guess by looking at his expression that this was not a serious matter at work.

"Okay." Nina twitched the corner of her mouth twice and said happily: "The call just now was from Angelina Jolie. She has already arrived at the hotel and said she wants to visit your class. You'd better pray. Nami won’t fight with her..."