Chapter 1034 Chapter 109 Pressure

2005, March.

The southern outskirts of Shuntian Prefecture.

Minghu film and television base, No. 3 studio.

Holding a folder in her arms, Sun Yuting stood behind Li Qian's director's chair, watching the screen with him on the monitor. Not far from her and Li Qian, there were as many as a dozen computers. Various data are being collected and initially processed.

In the filming of "Avatar", except for a small number of indoor scenes, more than 80% of the whole film was shot with green screen, and more than 80% of the character performance shots were shot through the current data The collection method collects the expressions and performances of the actors, and finally completes them through post-production.

To put it simply, if you look at it from the academic point of view, this movie really has little to do with the so-called "performing art", it is more about a "technique".

And considering that although the technology needed for this movie has basically taken shape, but still lacks the necessary relevant shooting and production experience and running-in, Li Qian even made a long shooting cycle of ten months for this movie. , and a year-long post-production time.

Almost every second is burning a lot of money.

Frankly speaking, if the director is not Li Qian, Sun Yuting will basically not have any confidence in this film with an investment of up to 500 million yuan-although among the directors of Minghu Culture, Sun Yuting is already considered a relatively modernist, The use of various film technologies is also the one that I like the most.

But even she, from the beginning of participating in the pre-production to the official shooting of the film, still has a question in her heart that cannot be driven away-will such an "alien scenery film" with a simple plot really be produced, will it be good? ? Can the so-called 3D really attract movie fans to pay for it? Can it really open up a new era and a new era in the film production industry as Li Qian described?

She believed in Li Qian, believed in his talent, believed in his ability, and believed in his vision. If she changed to another movie casually, she would not hesitate to believe that Li Qian would definitely be able to make it well. He can make stunning, commercial films, and he can sell them all over the world.

Even if it's a niche film that burns brains, she has no doubt that Li Qian can make an exceptionally good film!

But... new technology, 3D, 500 million investment, simple movie content and old-fashioned themes... a mixed Chinese and foreign film shooting team, and a cast team that is also Chinese and foreign, and even foreign actors... It seems a bit strange ...

Of course, who told that person to be Li Qian!

Despite all kinds of hesitation and worries in his heart, Li Qian said to do it, so he did it.

In the past six months, she followed Li Qian, running around on the saddle. As the assistant director of the crew and Li Qian's most important assistant, she almost shared half of Li Qian's workload by herself.

In fact, although it has only been four and a half to five years since she graduated from university, and so far there is only one and the third part of "Princess Returning the Pearl", but in fact, Sun Yuting's reputation and status in the industry The ranking among the batch of signed directors within Minghu Culture is not low. As long as she is willing, she can actually shoot one or two TV series to accumulate experience like Lu Lingxi, and then try to transform into movies—— Minghu Culture For the bottom line, there is Li Qian's script for the bottom line. This road has been verified by several directors of Minghu Culture, and it is almost 100% guaranteed to succeed.

However, after Sun Yuting directed and produced the third part of "Princess Returning the Pearl", she resolutely chose to return to Li Qian's side and continued to be his assistant director and an errand assistant for him.

She feels that she still has a lot to learn.

And now, although she has a lot of worries about the filming and production of the film "Avatar", in fact, as a filmmaker who has participated in the research and development of 3D shooting technology and the pre-production of this film, Sun Yuting herself is very concerned about this new film. The filming and production methods of the film are actually full of interest.

She just doesn't have as much faith in the technique and the film as Li Qian does.

Li Qian suddenly stopped the filming.

Even Sun Yuting couldn't help frowning for him—3D is a new technology, and 3D-IMAX shooting is not familiar to anyone, so all the shooting can only be done by groping, and it is really normal for problems to occur .

As of now, it is the third day of filming, and dozens of nearly a hundred people, including the crew and actors, are busy at the same time. However, after the first two days, only six simple shots that were finally passed were shot—and Not sure if it will be preserved in post-editing.

The reason why it was slow to such a heinous level was mainly due to the unskilled use of technology.

With the shooting experience of "The Matrix", the current top-level shooting team in Minghu Culture is quite proficient in how to shoot and make green screen movies, but even with some experience in "The Matrix", motion capture Technology is still a bit raw.

The actor's motion capture technology has always been Hollywood's forte in recent years. Minghu Culture is unwilling to buy technology from Hollywood, let alone spend a lot of money to hire a team, so it develops it by itself and tries it out in "The Matrix". Now, the technology in the hands of Minghu Culture has even surpassed the top level of Hollywood in theory, but in actual use and shooting, it is still somewhat unsatisfactory.

But this is the most important thing in the whole film shooting.

Therefore, the crew, team, actors, and directors can only try again and again, experiment a little bit, practice, adapt, and master.

It's funny to say that Tom Allen, who plays the leading role, has some experience in motion capture shooting because he has participated in the shooting of two Hollywood-related movies before. At this time, he can actually provide a lot of experience to the shooting team. And suggestions - this is probably something that even Li Qian didn't think of during the audition before.

But from this, we can better understand how much China's current film production lags behind Hollywood in terms of technology alone.

For movies, technology is of course not the only one, but it is an indispensable means and confidence for filmmakers to let their imaginations fly and expand the space for film expression.

No one in the country followed the previous special effects production. Minghu Culture spent a lot of money to keep up with it. Now it has the world's top special effects production ability, which is simply incomparable to those small domestic workshops that followed suit. . The current motion capture technology is still not followed by anyone in China. Minghu Culture continues to spend a lot of money on its own technology, and is currently striving to become the world's top.

And the new technology direction in the future, Li Qian said, will be 3D.

If his prediction proves to be correct in the end, if "Avatar" is finally a success, and 3D movies are sought after as Li Qian predicted, then Minghu Culture will stand at the forefront of the world's film production technology, The group of people who are currently participating in the filming and production of "Avatar", including myself as the assistant director, will become the first batch of people in the world with experience in 3D film shooting and production.

Li Qian got up and left the director's area, walking towards the group of technicians.

Sun Yuting followed.

Since the filming started, she has been like this almost every time. She has worked extremely hard to participate in this shooting, trying to keep up with Li Qian as much as possible, and to understand and master advanced shooting such as 3D shooting and motion capture shooting as soon as possible. Technical shooting methods and techniques.

Li Qian went to communicate with the technicians for a while, and Sun Yuting was thoughtful. Then, several people walked together to the front of the green screen in the center of the venue. Li Qian, Sun Yuting, and several technicians discussed with the actors. In the shot just now, the discrepancy between the actor's performance and the final "Avatar" action after capture and technical rendering.

Just such a stop, just such a discussion, ten minutes passed.

After the discussion was over, everyone quickly returned to their respective positions, and the actors contemplated for a while before filming started again.

This time it went smoothly, and Tom Allen completed several designated actions more satisfactorily. After shouting "click", Li Qian got up and went over, exchanged a few words with the on-site technicians, and then communicated with the chief photographer Fu Xuelong, and after getting everyone's unanimous approval, he finally shouted: "This one is over! "

It's that cumbersome.

In fact, the crew has started filming for three days now, and all they are shooting are the simplest and most basic actions that will appear in the movie. The actors who appear on the scene are currently only the leading actor Tom Allen and the leading actress Michelle El Saldana—In fact, in Sun Yuting's opinion, the filming during this period should not even be called filming, it should be regarded as the running-in and internship period of the crew.

This time, even the director needs an internship before he can work.

The next action shot requires the cooperation of horses - anyone who is familiar with film shooting knows that there are two kinds of actors in film shooting, which cause the director the most headaches. One is a child and the other is an animal.

The horse selected by the crew is well-trained, but even so, the breeder and rider are still assisting in the shooting. After discussing the shooting plan of this type of shot in advance, Li Qian finally adopted Sun Yuting's idea. Here, only The horse is used as a prop. After the shooting is completed, all the shots of the horse are directly wiped out through post-production, and replaced with the "horse" of Pandora.

It's a shoot plan that makes shooting as easy as possible.

The horse is very tame, and the camera is very simple, just an action of getting on the horse, but unfortunately, after the camera passes by, Li Qian shouted to stop, but the technician shook his head at him, and then explained to him, "I'm afraid it won't work, Although the characters and horses will be enlarged to a certain extent in the same proportion, it may be difficult to achieve a particularly harmonious special effect in the later stage, and it is difficult to achieve perfection in the range of motion of the characters and the size of the people and horses."

Li Qian put his hips on his hips, with a helpless expression on his face.

There is no way, this plan can only be rejected. This time, without waiting for Li Qian to say anything, Sun Yuting directly picked up the loudspeaker and yelled, "Props master, bring up prop No. 13! The horse can be taken away."

So the horse was taken away, and several prop masters pushed the cart together, pulled up the pre-made all-green painted plastic props, and placed them in the middle of the shooting site according to Fu Xuelong's request.

This is a prop that has been moderately modified according to the figure of actor Tom Allen and has been carefully calculated. It is relatively easy to replace it with the "horse" of Pandora in the later stage.

This prop is to die for.

So in fact, in such a shot, it is necessary to use motion capture technology to shoot a corresponding movement of the horse, so that the technicians can use special effects to create an action scene that can be replaced—this shooting plan , a little more complicated than before. However, for the nearly two thousand shots of the movie "Avatar", this is only the most basic difficulty.

For actors, this shot is simpler.

According to the director's request, he stretched his hand forward and got on the horse - but this time, after Li Qian yelled "click", Fu Xuelong walked over with a frown.

He said a little more light was needed.

Hedge light.

Today's film technology is almost omnipotent in post-production, and everything can be modified, but for a powerful photographer, no matter how good the light adjustment in post-production is, it is not as natural and beautiful as the light adjusted during live shooting—— Although "Avatar" is almost an all-green-screen film, Fu Xuelong still has his own extremely high requirements for his works. He does not allow unreasonable and careless lighting and shadows in the shots he is in charge of.

Photography is all about light.

If it was the brown horse that he was in charge of selecting just now, the reflection of the actor's legs formed by the color of the horse's coat would be almost invisible under the strong light of the scene, but now, when the horse becomes For the green horse of the prop, this reflection has changed.

Although it is still almost undetectable, and after post-processing and replacement, the background, horse and actors in this shot are almost changed, and it is almost completely undetectable.

But Li Qian thought about it, went over and looked at the shot just now, and nodded in agreement.

From the beginning of the film preparation, Li Qian has been emphasizing the first point: 3D movies will appear on the big screen in the future. If the effect is to be good, light must be enough!

For 3D movies, once the brightness and color saturation of the screen are insufficient, it will easily cause visual fatigue and a decrease in the viewing effect. At this time, the light and shadow shift in the shooting seems insignificant, and it will not really affect the quality of the movie. Quality, but since shooting, of course we have to shoot for perfection. But now pay attention, adding a light is always more delicate than the post-processed picture.

Therefore, Fu Xuelong quickly directed the lighting engineer to temporarily add a light. This delay, another few minutes passed-afterwards, Tom Allen repeated this extremely simple action again.

It was already past five o'clock in the afternoon, and Sun Yuting didn't care. Suddenly, after shooting a shot, before Sun Yuting went to adjust the next shot, Li Qian turned to her and said, "Today is not bad, I have already shot today." Four shots have been taken!"

Sun Yuting smiled.

This is probably the slowest movie shooting progress ever, but yes, the overall shooting progress is indeed gradually speeding up a little bit-everyone is making progress.

Only lead actor Tom Allen is a bit pathetic.

After all, he is a Hollywood action star who can get a salary of three million US dollars. For the name of "Li Qian", he was finally selected, and he needs to pay a ten-month shooting cycle-you know, ordinary Hollywood movies , Even if it is a blockbuster movie or leading actor, three or four months is enough—but after entering the crew, he has been shooting some of the most basic movements over and over again for the director to practice.

However, looking at his appearance, there is no dissatisfaction or impatience.

You can say that his professionalism is high enough, and since he signed the film contract, he will do what the director says. It can also be said that he is full of expectations for this sci-fi blockbuster after the "Matrix" by the great director Li Qian.

Among the Hollywood actors, not to mention the two superstars, even if they are first-tier and quasi-first-tier, when they heard that the filming of "Avatar" should focus on motion capture, and the live-action scenes are limited, they all politely declined. , but for Tom Allen, who has just stepped into the second line with one foot, it must be a good opportunity to continue to climb up.

…………

At about 6:30, Li Qian announced the end of the afternoon's shooting, and then walked over in person, and told Tom Allen in English about his hard work. Tom Allen shrugged and said, "The director decides everything."

Li Qian smiled and patted his shoulder.

…………

The studio director, Lu Bin, was in charge of tidying up the studio after each day's shooting, but Sun Yuting still had to keep an eye on it, otherwise she was a little worried.

The technicians over there copied today's shooting materials and handed them over to the dedicated staff to bring them back to the Minghu Cultural Archives. The two actors who participated in the shooting this afternoon didn't need to remove their makeup, so they walked out with their assistants comfortably, and Several European and American actors who had no shooting plans also dispersed at this time. Li Qian stood in the studio and watched for a while, then turned and walked out.

Bai Yujing was holding a cup at the door, looking thoughtful.

Li Qian walked over, took her cup subconsciously, and didn't care whether she had drunk it, unscrewed the lid, took two sips, and then returned the cup to her.

The two walked out side by side.

Bai Yujing said: "I feel like this shooting..."

Li Qian said: "I told you, you don't have to come so early, you have time to rejoin the group in May! There are very few motion capture shots of your scenes that are finally cut into the film, and most of them are indoor scenes." .You even have time to join the group in June, enough for you to film a TV series outside."

Bai Yujing was very upset by what he said, "I'll come and have a look ahead of time!"

Li Qian heard her dissatisfaction, turned to look at her, and realized that he had not thought carefully when he was tired, and his words were annoying, so he smiled and waved his hands, saying, "Okay! Okay! You can watch it if you want!"

But Bai Yujing was still not very happy, "In a big production of 500 million yuan, I was the only one who got an important role. You don't know, it's a lot of pressure!"

Li Qian laughed, "What pressure do you have! The pressure is all on my side!"