From the various films adapted from the theme of "Journey to the West" in previous years, to the later "Red Sea Action" and "The Wandering Earth", the most important thing in the Spring Festival file is the visual effects blockbuster.
In this year's Spring Festival file, the two films "Assassination of a Novelist" and "Samurai Shodown" were both promoted in the early stages, showing the audience their progress in visual effects production and process industrialization in the current Chinese film market.
Especially in "Assassination of a Novelist", whether it is director Lu Yang or special effects supervisor Xu Jian, they all said that this time it is very difficult - 100% of the film's main creators are domestic teams, and for the first time in a domestic film, they integrate special effects processes such as motion capture, face capture, virtual shooting, and virtual and real combination.
In fact, even in realist movies such as "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Surging Crowds", it is also inseparable from film special effects.
When "The Wandering Earth" was released, director Guo Fan said bluntly that the current Chinese film industry is still a hundred years away from Hollywood. However, judging from these films in the Spring Festival file, the Chinese film industry, especially the special effects industry, may have entered the stage of overtaking in curves.
Digital characters
After carefully studying the propaganda ideas of "Assassination of the Novelist" and "Samurai Shodown", we can find that "digital characters" are the proudest "special effects weapons" of the two films.
In 2019, the grand scenes that appeared repeatedly in the movie "The Wandering Earth" shocked many audiences, but in Guo Fan's words, the visual effect difficulty was between A and B+ levels. In the movie, using special effects to make biological characters is the real S-class, such as the Hulk in "Avengers" and Caesar in "Rise of the Apes".
This is the case with the various gods in "Samurai Order" and the red-haired ghosts in "Assassination of the Novelist".
For example, in "Samurai Shodown", director Li Weiran believes that the skin state of the little ghost red should be closer to the skin texture of the baby, in order to make the digital character team more clear to understand the director's intentions, he also specially filmed a video of his own child as an example to highlight the innocent and innocent mood of the ghost red.
This is just one of the 28 vivid examples of the 28 digital characters in the film.
"Assassination of a Novelist" is more difficult, and "Red Haired Ghost" is the first digital character that the Chinese team has completed on its own — more than 100 million faces, 48,000 pores, and more than 900,000 hairs. A single frame of rendering takes more than 16-30 hours.
Xu Jian's MORE VFX is the team responsible for the visual effects of "Assassination of a Novelist", and it took two years to complete the production of the red-haired ghost role alone.
"He has four hands and two feet, the bones are different from ordinary people, the bone design is reasonable, his movement can conform to the basic common sense of people." Including whether the spine is one or two, and are the shoulder blades four or two? How long are the arms? "The team kept trying and constantly pushing itself up.
Xu Jian participated in the special effects work of "Crazy Alien", but the alien played by Xu Zheng was limited to "facial capture". The team's previous attempt at "digital characters" were the three monsters in the movie Journey, "but it didn't involve character performances."
Movie "The Journey"
With the successful experience of these films in the past, the problem can always be solved. Xu Jian said: "We have conquered for a long time, and the most difficult place is to truly restore the pores of the creature. In some less elaborate movies, pores can be painted. We also drew at first, but then how to look at it felt awkward, and finally suddenly reacted to the problem of pores, because the pores of the face have different squeezing and stretching according to the change of expression, which can produce different textures on the face. ”
Guo Fan also said on a forum a few years ago that Hollywood usually subdivides many special effects companies, some people make bones, some people make skin, some people make muscles, and all of them must be done together in China.
"Assassinate" Hollywood
"Samurai Shodown" was completed by 7 domestic and foreign special effects companies, including Tiangong And TAU FLIMS, which completed the digital characters and environmental assets; "Assassination of a Novelist" was completed by MORE VFX, 95% of the visual effects work, and the remaining 5% was also completed by the domestic special effects team.
The filmmakers behind these films seem to be using their own efforts to "declare" to Hollywood that visual effects blockbusters are not unique to them.
Interestingly, the directors of these two films, Li Weiran and Lu Yang, and the director of "The Wandering Earth", Guo Fan, before directing these visual effects blockbusters, they mostly shot small and medium-budget films.
These stories begin with the "Hollywood trip" of the group of directors. In 2014, young directors such as Lu Yang, Guo Fan, Ning Hao, and Chen Sicheng were selected by the Film Bureau to visit and study at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood.
In Guo Fan's view, after that exchange and learning, they felt the gap in film industrialization for the first time, "from creativity to shooting to post-production, and then to the final publicity and distribution of the whole process, after understanding, they will feel that there are great differences in each link." ”
After returning to China, Lu Yang joined Ning Hao's "Bad Monkey Project", Ning Hao began to invest in the creation of "Crazy Alien", Guo Fan also began the preparation of "The Wandering Earth", and Chen Sicheng directed "Detective Chinatown", opening the "Tang Detective Universe".
Science fiction, reasoning, suspense... These fantasy genre works have become the journey of this group of filmmakers in the second half. And the most inseparable from these films is visual effects work.
During the production of "The Wandering Earth", Guo Fan and producer Gong Geer once again went to Hollywood to study. In their industrial light and magic exchanges with special effects blockbusters such as "Star Wars", "Transformers", "Harry Potter" and so on, they found that there is a decades-long gap in the Chinese and American film markets, and this gap is in some way extremely necessary to support a complete industrial system.
Different from Hollywood's special effects work, the most basic chinese special effects blockbusters still have "Chinese characteristics". In particular, the connection between special effects and art cannot be empty, and there must be content to support, so that it is possible for Chinese audiences to find empathy.
Lu Yang said, "When making visual effects movies, many viewers will immediately think of Hollywood movies. First of all, we don't have to imitate aesthetics and needs, we want to tell Chinese stories, we have to do what Hollywood can't do, and we can't compare them with them in places where Hollywood is very powerful. Hollywood also does oriental themes, but what we see is fur, it has oriental elements and looks, but it is very superficial, and it cannot be oriental in its bones. ”
Hello, "Reality"
Xu Jian's team was responsible for the special effects work of "Detective Chinatown 3", "Hello, Li Huanying", "Samurai Order" and "Assassination of a Novelist" in the Spring Festival file. Responsible for the special effects of "The Crowd" is the orange visual team that also participated in "The Wandering Earth".
It can be seen that since "The Wandering Earth", the special effects of Chinese films have become increasingly brilliant. To some extent, these films are also increasingly dependent on domestic special effects companies.
Xu Jian revealed that at present, many of the underlying technologies in Hollywood are bought from China. It's just that the development of China's visual effects blockbusters has just started, and the demand for the entire industry is not strong, which has led to Chinese companies not being able to afford Chinese technology. However, whether it is cloud technology or aerial photography technology, China's local technology is the most advanced in the world.
In fact, special effects aren't just used in fantasy blockbusters. As mentioned earlier in "Hello, Li Huanying", it also involves a lot of special effects work.
With the development of the film industry, realist films need to assist the storytelling of stories through special effects and restore the emergence of film scenes, such as the previous "A Good Play", the number of special effects shots is not less than that of "The Wandering Earth", "This kind of hidden special effects will not be placed in the front to perform, because this kind of film still relies on stories and characters to express emotions." ”
Lu Yang also said that in the future, if filmmakers want to open their minds, technology will eventually affect content creation, such as virtual shooting and the emergence of high frame rates, which will change the traditional audiovisual language presentation method.
Talent Call "Order"
In addition to digital characters and regular special effects work, the most eye-catching thing about "Assassination of a Novelist" is the "virtual shooting" technology that Guo Fan, Lu Yang, Xu Jian and others tried to use.
Virtual shooting involves many links, and these links have been experimented with in past movies or games, but such a systematic integration is the first attempt of Chinese cinema.
This kind of more planned team work is very focused on the integration of talents. Many teams may work on a project for 2 or 3 years, and brain drain will affect communication within the team.
But unfortunately, domestic film special effects talents are rapidly draining. Xu Jian once spoke out in the circle of friends, "Due to the crushing talent plunder of the game industry, the film visual effects industry is facing the embarrassing situation that no one can use in the next year", and even director Lu Yang sighed: "If the people in the special effects industry are lost, how can we engage in film industrialization?" ”
The heads of many special effects companies have said that the talent pools of film and television special effects, animation and games are the same in these three industries.
The quality of these personnel is uneven, and many students can get started by simply learning the software, but those jobs are very basic, that is, wiping Weiya and doing some simple synthesis. "After half a year of training, you can complete 80% of the tracking matching, as for doing some model asset work, you may have 5 or 6 years of work experience." Xu Jian told us that the real training model is difficult to have real appeal to the company or the employees themselves, "and considering the cost problem, these jobs of wiping weiya and cutting pictures are currently outsourced to North Korea." ”
In the case of Xu Jian, "all of our links need experienced people to do it in order to generate value and complete the project." ”
But at present, this problem is not insoluble, Lu Yang also said that if the film industry model is upgraded, the linkage business model will also be improved, so that the entire industry chain of personnel can have a good impact.
In particular, the science fiction movies represented by "The Wandering Earth" have brought good enlightenment to the industry.
In August 2020, the National Film Administration and the China Association for Science and Technology issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the Development of Science Fiction Films" (hereinafter referred to as "Several Opinions"), proposing to build science fiction films into an important growth point and new momentum for the high-quality development of films, take the creation of excellent films as the central link, and promote China's progress from a film power to a film power.
Among them, "Several Opinions" requires that the development of science fiction film special effects technology should be used to lead the overall improvement of the level of film special effects. Xu Jian told us that they are doing post-visual effects work for Chen Sicheng's "Mozart in Outer Space" and "LoneLy Moon" by Happy Twist.
As for "The Wandering Earth 2", which fans are more concerned about, "the details of the film cannot be discussed too much, but the visual effects work has been prepared in advance." ”
With policy support and follow-up project support, Xu Jian told us that the team plans to attract foreign special effects artists to join, and at the same time open up the cultivation of new talents to provide more powerful support for film industrialization.
/ Draws /
congratulations
Peach drunk; Suo Yin; Swan
Get the Crowds voucher
Share, like and watch
As long as you order, we are good friends