Siheyuan: I am a trader in both worlds!

Chapter 568 The worse the movie, the more important the special effects!

"Hey, wait a minute."

After confirming with Simon Lang about purchasing another batch of photography equipment, Lao Luo was just about to report to his superiors with the principal, hoping to finalize the matter today and avoid delaying Simon Lang's schedule.

They had just stood up when Ximen Lang called them back.

Amidst the bewildered gazes of Lao Luo and the others, Ximen Lang pointed to the scene where the reaction was not just enthusiastic, but absolutely explosive, with laughter that hadn't stopped since the start of the movie, and asked.

"We said we'd see the results, but how are they? It's been so long, the movie's almost over, is it really as good as I said?"

He was surprised to find that Ximen Lang had called him over just for this matter.

Knowing that Ximen Lang loved to hear flattering words, he must have wanted to hear them flattering words when he stopped them this time.

"That's incredibly straightforward," Lao Luo said directly.

"Is there even a question? The masses have discerning eyes. The response has been so enthusiastic. Whether it's a good film or not, whether it's really as good as you say, isn't it obvious? A good film is a good film, and it won't go wrong anywhere. Do I need to say it?"

Sure enough, after a series of counter-questions, Ximen Lang was so happy that his face lit up with a wide grin, his eyes almost disappearing from his gaze.

feel
Since I'm going to praise him anyway, I'm not worried about him getting arrogant. I might as well just praise him to the end.

Ignoring Bai Ling's constant hints from the beginning to be gentle and not to praise him too much, lest the kid get cocky again, Lao Luo gave a thumbs up and praised him generously.

"Not at all, Ah Lang, your taste and judgment are simply amazing! If anyone ever says you have bad taste or poor judgment again, I'll be the first to disagree!"

Moved, Ximen Lang grasped Lao Luo's hands and shouted out in unison.
"As expected of my favorite male god, you really understand me."

Then, before Bai Ling, who was staring in disbelief, could react, Lao Luo, along with the principal who hadn't stopped smiling from beginning to end, decisively made a run for it and disappeared.

And then.
Unsurprisingly, after receiving such high praise from Lao Luo, Ximen Lang immediately turned around and started showing off to Bai Ling.

"Look at him, and then look at yourself. You've been with me for so long, yet you don't understand me as well as Lao Luo! Xiao Bai, you really should reflect on yourself and learn from Lao Luo."

As he spoke, Ximen Lang's wicked little hand reached directly onto Bai Ling's head.

Bai Ling was so angry at his frivolous behavior that she immediately snapped at him with an icy expression.
"hand!"

Sure enough, Bai Ling's icy demeanor instantly cooled down Ximen Lang's previously arrogant attitude.

She was genuinely too lazy to argue with Ximen Lang any longer. With some time left before the movie ended, Bai Ling asked the question that had been bothering her.

"What's with that special effect? ​​I see you really like it. What is it? Is it really as good and important as you say?"

"Is it as good or as important as I say? If you remove the word 'busy' and repeat what I said, you'll understand just how important special effects are to movies, especially the kind of movies we just discussed that can be infinitely copied and pasted!"

"How can I describe it to you? It's like a lubricant, or adhesive, for movies. If the plot isn't good enough, you can make up for it with special effects. If the acting isn't good enough, you can make up for it with special effects too! It's practically omnipotent. Even in terms of publicity, you can use special effects as a gimmick!"

"After the audience gets tired of the aesthetics, it's hard to say whether special effects will still have such a great appeal! But in the first hundred or so years when special effects were just emerging, special effects were absolutely amazing and extremely important to movies! And the less profound the movie was, the more important the special effects became!"

She was so stunned that Bai Ling didn't know what to say for a moment.

Ximen Lang excitedly explained the special effects to Bai Ling.

"Special effects can be traced back to the 90s. That's right, the late 19th century, more than half a century before Beijing! At that time, the Lumière brothers used the technique of stopping the camera and then filming again to create the effect of a train disappearing. This was the earliest application of special effects."

"Stop filming and then resume?"

"It's basically turning off the camera, removing whatever's in the frame, and then turning the camera back on to create the effect of objects disappearing into thin air. To be honest, it's worthless. But because it was the first time this special effects technique had been used, and nobody had ever seen it before, it was an instant huge success, making them a fortune!"

"By the 1920s, around 1920, this technique had become so commonplace that it no longer stimulated the audience's senses. More advanced physical effects, far superior to stopping the camera and reshooting, were directly employed! As for what those physical effects were..."

"You know what a model is? You make a small model, then shoot it up close, and add stop-motion animation that's not much better than stopping the camera and shooting again, mirror reflections, and that's what you call a more advanced physical effects. Like 'Cosmopolis' and the famous 'King Kong,' they were all made using this kind of physical effects."

"They made a fortune relying on physical special effects for decades, but for the same reason: audiences got tired of it. Now, optical and mechanical special effects, which are much more sophisticated and powerful than physical effects, have arrived! Take, for example, the well-known chroma keying, rear projection technology, and optical compositing—these are typical examples of the new generation of special effects!"

"Then, just as optical and mechanical special effects were flourishing, full CG (3D animation) came along! After that, full CG didn't stay popular for long before modern digital special effects completely replaced it and dominated the entire market! New talents emerge in every generation, each leading the way for a few decades. This is roughly the history of the development of special effects."

As for what constitutes modern special effects
"Let's take the Black Monkey game, which I play every day and never get tired of, as an example. You don't really think those scenes were filmed on location, do you? And those moves in the game, you don't really think they're real, do you? There aren't that many real ones. They're all fake, all rendered in real time. That's what we were talking about earlier—modern special effects."

Bai Ling was immediately enlightened by what he said and couldn't help but start complaining.
"I was wondering how those images were created, they looked so real. So that's how they were made, no wonder."

Ximen Lang summarized by explaining everything about the special effects to Bai Ling in detail.

"Have you noticed that, regardless of the stage, viewers eventually experience aesthetic fatigue and become bored? But as long as your technology keeps up and you can continuously provide viewers with new experiences, they are willing to pay for it! And ours is so far ahead of ours! Do you know what that means?"

(End of this chapter)