Perfect Life

2005, March.

The southern suburb of Shuntian Prefecture.

Minghu Film and Television Base, Studio No. 3.

Holding a folder in her arms, Sun Yuting stood behind Li Qian's director's chair and watched 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 preliminarily processed.

In the shooting of "Avatar", except for a small number of indoor scenes, more than 80% of the entire film was shot with green screen, and there were also more than 80% of the characters' performance shots, which were obtained 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, according to the academic point of view, this film has really little to do with the so-called "performing art", it is more about a "technology".

Considering that although the technology required for this film has been basically formed, it still lacks the necessary relevant shooting and production experience and running-in, so Li Qian even formulated a long shooting cycle of up to ten months for this film. , and a year-long post-production time.

Almost every second is burning a lot of money.

Frankly speaking, if the director was not Li Qian, Sun Yuting would not have any confidence in this film with an investment of up to 500 million Chinese yuan-although Sun Yuting is already considered a relatively modernist among the directors of Minghu Culture. It is also one of the most favorable for the use of various film technologies.

But even she, from the initial participation in the preliminary preparations to the official start of the film, still has a question in her heart that cannot be driven away - will such a simple "alien scenery film" really be produced, will it look good? ? Can the so-called 3D really attract fans to pay for it? Can it really open up a new era and create a new era in the film production industry as Li Qian described it?

She believed in Li Qian, his talent, his ability, and his vision. If she changed another film at random, she did not hesitate to believe that Li Qian must be able to make it well, to make a literary film. He can shoot impressive, commercial films, and he can sell well all over the world.

Even if it is to shoot a brain-burning niche film, she has no doubt that Li Qian can shoot very well!

But... new technology, 3D, 500 million investment, simple movie content and old-fashioned themes... a mixed Chinese and foreign film shooting team, and an equally mixed Chinese and foreign actor team, even mainly foreign actors... It seems a bit ...

Of course, who let that person be Li Qian!

Despite all kinds of hesitations and worries in his heart, Li Qian said he would do it, then do it.

In the past six months, she has followed behind Li Qian, running around in front of and behind the horse. As the assistant director of the crew and Li Qian's most important assistant, she almost divided half of Li Qian's workload by herself.

In fact, although it has only been four and a half to five years since graduating from university, and so far, there is only one "Huanzhu Princess", the third part of the work, but in fact Sun Yuting's reputation and status in the industry, The ranking of these contracted directors within Minghu Culture is not low. As long as she is willing, in fact, she can make one or two more TV series like Lu Lingxi to gain experience, and then try to transform into movies - Minghu Culture The bottom line is that there is Li Qian's script for the bottom line. This path has been verified by several directors of Minghu Culture, and it is almost 100% guaranteed to succeed.

However, Sun Yuting resolutely chose to return to Li Qian's side after directing and producing the third part of "Princess Princess Huanzhu" and continued to be his assistant director and an errand assistant for him.

She felt that she still had a lot to learn.

Now, although she has a lot of worries about the filming and production of the movie "Avatar", in fact, as a filmmaker who participated in the development of 3D shooting technology and the preparatory work of the film, Sun Yuting herself is very concerned about this new type of film. The way the film is shot and produced is actually full of interest.

She just doesn't have as much confidence in this technique and this movie as Li Qian does.

Li Qian suddenly stopped 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 shooting can only be done by groping, and problems are really normal. .

As of now, it’s the third day of filming. The filming crew, including the staff and actors, are busy at the same time, with dozens or hundreds of people busy at the same time. However, after the first two days, only six simple shots that were finally passed were filmed—and Not sure if it will be retained when editing later.

The reason why it is slow to such an outrageous level is mainly due to the unskilled use of technology.

With the filming experience of "The Matrix", the current top-level filming team in Minghu Culture is quite proficient in how to shoot and produce green screen movies, but even with some experience in "The Matrix", motion capture Technology is still somewhat hand-made.

Actors' motion capture technology has always been Hollywood's specialty in recent years. Minghu Culture is unwilling to buy technology from Hollywood, and even more unwilling to hire a team at a high cost. Now, the technology in the hands of Minghu Culture has even surpassed the top level of Hollywood in theory, but it is still somewhat difficult to achieve when it is used and filmed.

But it happened to be the top priority of the entire film.

Therefore, the crew, the team, the actors, and the director can only try again and again, experiment little by little, practice, run in, and master.

It's funny. Alan Tom, who plays the male lead, has a certain experience in motion capture because he has participated in the shooting of two Hollywood-related movies before. At this time, he can in turn provide a lot of experience to the shooting team. And suggestions - this is probably something even Li Qian didn't think of when he auditioned before.

But from this, we can also know that China's current film production is far behind Hollywood in terms of technology.

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

In the previous special effects production, no one in China followed. Minghu Culture invested a lot of money to keep up. At present, it has the top special effects production ability in the world. It is not comparable to those small workshops that have followed the trend in China. . The current motion capture technology is still not followed in China. Minghu Culture continues to spend a lot of money to develop its own technology, and is currently striving to become the world's top.

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

If his prediction turns out to be correct, if "Avatar" is finally successful, and 3D movies are as popular as Li Qian expected, 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 shooting and production of this "Avatar", including myself, the assistant director, will become the first group 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 start of filming, she has been like this almost every time. She has worked extremely hard to participate in this filming, trying to keep up with Li Qian's pace as much as possible, and to understand and master 3D shooting, motion capture shooting and other advanced shooting as soon as possible. Technical shooting methods and techniques.

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

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

After the discussion, everyone quickly returned to their places, the actors brewed for a while, and then started shooting again.

This time it went smoothly, and Alan Tom completed a few designated movements satisfactorily. After shouting "Ka", Li Qian got up and went over, exchanged a few words with the technicians on the scene, and exchanged with the main photographer Xuelong, which was unanimously approved by everyone, and finally shouted: "This one is over! "

It's so complicated.

As a matter of fact, the crew has been filming for three days now, and they are shooting some of the simplest and most basic actions that will appear in the movie. The actors who appear in the film are currently only the actor Alan Tom and the heroine Michelle. El Saldana - In fact, in Sun Yuting's opinion, the filming during this period should not even be called filming, but should be regarded as the run-in and internship period of the crew.

This time, even the director needs an internship before he can take up the job.

The next action filming requires a horse to appear and cooperate. Anyone who is familiar with film shooting knows that there are two kinds of actors in film shooting, which are the most headaches for the director. 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 were assisted in the shooting. The shooting plan for this type of scene was discussed in advance, and 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 brushed out through post-production, and replaced with the "horse" of Pandora.

This is a shooting plan that makes shooting as easy as possible.

The horse is very tame, and the camera is very simple, it's just an action of getting on the horse, but unfortunately, after the camera went through once, Li Qian called to stop, but the technician shook his head at him, and then explained to him, "I'm afraid not, Although the characters and horses will be enlarged in equal proportions, it is difficult to achieve special harmony in the special effects in the later stage.

Li Qian akimbo, a look of helplessness.

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

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

This is a prop that has been moderately modified according to the figure of actor Alan Tom, and after careful calculation, it is relatively easy to replace it with the "horse" of Pandora's planet as a whole in the later stage.

This prop is dead.

So in fact, in such a shot, the next step must be to use motion capture technology to shoot the corresponding movement of a horse, so that technicians can use special effects to create action pictures that can be replaced - this shooting plan , a little more complicated than before. However, for the nearly 2,000 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 mounted the horse - but this time, after Li Qian shouted "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 the later stage, and everything can be modified, but for a great photographer, no matter how well the light is adjusted in the later stage, it is not as natural and beautiful as the light adjusted during live shooting—— Although "Avatar" is almost a full green screen film, Fu Xuelong still has his own extremely high requirements for the work. He does not allow the unreasonable and unreasonable light and shadow of the lens he is in charge of.

Photography is all about light.

If it was the brown horse he was in charge of selecting just now, the reflection on the actor's legs caused by the color of the horse's coat would be almost invisible under the strong lights of the scene, but now, when the horse becomes The green horse of the prop, this reflection changes.

Although it is still almost invisible, and after post-processing and replacement, the background, horses and actors in this shot will almost be changed over and over again, and it is almost completely imperceptible.

But Li Qian thought about it, and after watching the footage just now, he nodded in agreement.

The first point that Li Qian has been emphasizing ever since the movie was just starting to prepare is: 3D movies will appear on the big screen in the future. To be effective, light must be enough!

3D movies, once the brightness and color saturation of the picture are insufficient, it will easily cause visual fatigue and reduce the viewing effect. Quality, but since shooting, of course, we have to shoot for perfection. But now pay attention, filling a light is always more delicate than the post-processing picture.

So, Fu Xuelong quickly instructed the lighting engineer to temporarily add a light. This delay, another few minutes passed-then, Alan Tom repeated this extremely simple action again.

When it was already after five o'clock in the afternoon, Sun Yuting didn't care. Suddenly, after taking a shot, before Sun Yuting went to adjust the next shot, Li Qian turned his head and said to her, "It's a good day, it's already shot today. Four shots!"

Sun Yuting smiled.

This is probably the slowest filming schedule ever, but, yes, the overall filming schedule is indeed picking up little by little—everyone is improving.

Only the hero, Alan Tom, is a little pitiful.

After all, he is also 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 needed to pay a ten-month shooting cycle - you know, ordinary Hollywood movies , even if it is a blockbuster and a leading actor, three or four months is enough - but after entering the crew, he has been shooting some of the most basic actions repeatedly for the director to practice.

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

You can say that his professionalism is high enough. Now that he has signed a film contract, he will say what the director says. It can also be said that he is full of expectations for the big director Li Qian's sci-fi blockbuster after "The Matrix".

Among Hollywood actors, not to mention the two super-first-line celebrities, even the first-line and quasi-first-line actors, as soon as they heard that the filming of "Avatar" should be based on motion capture, and the live performance footage was limited, they all politely declined. , but for Alan Tom, who has just stepped into the second line with one foot, it must be a good opportunity to continue to climb.

…………

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

Li Qian smiled and patted his shoulder.

…………

Lu Bin, the studio director, was in charge of tidying up the studio after every 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 back to the Minghu Cultural Archives. The two actors who participated in the shooting this afternoon did not need to remove their makeup, so they walked out with their respective assistants freely, while 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 around and walked out.

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

Li Qian walked over to ~www.wuxiaspot.com~ and subconsciously brought her cup over, not caring whether she had drank it or not, 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 this shooting..."

Li Qian said: "I told you, you don't have to come so early, you will have time to join the group again in May! Your scenes, the motion capture shots that were finally cut into the film, are very few, but a lot of them are indoor scenes. .Even if you joined the group in June, it's enough time for you to shoot a TV series outside."

Bai Yujing was very unhappy when he said, "I'll come over in advance to take a look!"

Li Qian heard her dissatisfaction, turned his head to look at her, realized that he didn't think carefully because he was tired, and his words were disgusting, so he smiled and waved his hands, saying, "Okay! Good! You can watch it if you want!"

But Bai Yujing was still not very happy, "In a big production of 500 million, I am 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!"