Film and television technology makes making movies easier

Original title: Since June this year, the monthly income of film and television studio rent and digital scenery in Yongchuan District alone has exceeded 3 million yuan, and filmmaking has become a new industry in Yongchuan——

Film and television technology makes making movies easier (theme)

Chongqing Daily reporter Zhou Yu

Today's Yongchuan has become a new hot "film and television city" in China.

In June this year, Miha Games, the second largest game company in the mainland, filmed the online concert of "Honkai" in Yongchuan, which lasted for more than 20 days; In July, the theatrical movie "The Abyss" was filmed in Yongchuan; In August, the action comedy movie "Plan P" starring Jackie Chan was filmed in Yongchuan...

Film and television crews who came to Yongchuan to do test shooting also followed, and large-scale investment and large-scale production film and television works such as "Virtual Fear", "Skyfire", "Mortal Immortal Cultivator", "The King of Escape" and "Forger" came to test shoot.

Since June this year, Yongchuan District's monthly income from film and television studio rent and digital scenery alone has exceeded 3 million yuan, and filmmaking has become a new industry in Yongchuan.

Why do these crews come to Yongchuan to shoot film and television dramas?

"Yongchuan does not have a traditional real-life 'film and television city', they value Yongchuan's film and television technology." Lu Qi, the operator of Yongchuan Technology Studio and founder of Dawa Future (Chongqing) Image Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with reporters a few days ago that the film and television technology provided by Yongchuan makes making movies simpler, not only saves money and time, but also greatly reduces the difficulty of shooting.

Virtual shooting and digital scenery technology is leading in China

The core film and television technology that attracts film and television crews in Yongchuan is LED virtual shooting. Since the completion and use of the Yongchuan Science and Technology Studio in May this year, its LED virtual shooting screen has hardly been idle for a day.

With an arc length of 42 meters and a height of 7 meters, this LED virtual shooting screen has 800 square meters of virtual shooting space, the largest in Asia.

Lu Qi said that using the LED virtual shooting screen to shoot movies can achieve "what you see is what you get", that is, the actors perform with the screen virtual picture as the background, and can directly achieve the film effect through intelligent synthesis and real-time rendering, unlike conventional green screen shooting, which also requires a lot of manpower to cut. Compared with traditional shooting, LED virtual shooting can reduce production costs by about 30% to 40% and save 60% of production time.

It is worth mentioning that this LED virtual shooting technology can not only use this screen to shoot science fiction themes, but also perform hyper-realistic shooting and one-shot shooting, which opens up a broader application scenario for LED virtual shooting.

When the crew comes to Yongchuan Science and Technology to shoot film and television dramas, only need to provide scripts, art design, etc., Dawa Company can carry out digital scenery in advance. After the start of shooting, Dawa will send a technical team such as executive producer, video director, virtual shooting engineer, virtual asset engineer, virtual lighting engineer, etc., to complete the shooting work together with the crew photographer, lighting engineer, service road, etc.

Lu Qi told reporters that the key to undertaking these film and television drama shooting business lies in its two leading core technologies in China: first, virtual shooting technology, they not only have the development of full-process independent technology, but also virtual lighting and on-site lighting fusion joint debugging technology, virtual camera and camera fusion technology are leading the country; At present, they have the core technology of system research and development and process research and development, and the digital scene of the company's digital asset library has reached tens of thousands.

The commissioning of Yongchuan Science and Technology Studio has made a new breakthrough in mainland film fiction shooting technology: first, the shooting of an entire film can be completed in one film and television studio, and various transitions are no longer needed; The second is the use of digital scenes, which can shoot scenes that cannot be filmed in real scenes, such as science fiction, disappeared buildings, etc.; The third is real-time filming, which greatly reduces the post-production process.

At present, Dawa has a technical team specializing in film and television drama shooting services, with 150 people.

Aiming at the "new track" of intelligence and automation

"Film is the most technical and artistic representation of the digital content production industry." Lu Qi said that Dawa can quickly occupy the commanding heights of domestic virtual shooting technology based on the company's victory over a number of "stuck neck" core technologies such as rapid generation of digital humans, high-speed real-time rendering of special effects, XR extended reality shooting, LED virtual shooting, etc., and has been successfully applied to digital content production fields such as film and television, animation, variety shows, dramas, games, advertising, simulation, and digital twins.

In recent years, Dawa has participated in the production of 11 well-known theatrical films such as "Changjin Lake" and nearly 20 well-known online games such as "Watch Dogs: Legion".

In fact, before founding Dawa Company, Lu Qi had already tasted the sweetness of digital technology. In 2011, Lu Qi, who was still in her junior year, saw that most of the cultural walls of primary and secondary schools in Beijing were relatively dull and unattractive, so she used digital technology to design 3D cultural walls, which were very popular. With this design concept, he made a lot of money in just one year, which further stimulated his passion for researching digital technology.

In the process of research, he found that China's digital content production technology is relatively backward, and the special effects that cannot be made must be produced in the United States and other foreign countries, subject to the technological monopoly of other countries, and counting the communication costs, the cost of mainland film special effects production is very high.

As a result, Lu Qi decided to build a universal technology platform for visual digital content production, which greatly lowered the threshold for digital content production and benefited China's digital content production enterprises.

Lu Qi hired 20 professional and technical "masters" with high salaries, and recruited dozens of doctoral and master's students, forming a research team of 70 people. On the basis of summarizing foreign advanced technology, he aims at visual digital content production technology with intelligence and automation as the main direction, and strives to open up a "new track" to achieve "overtaking on curves".

At present, he is leading the team to build the first digital content cloud production platform in China, through this platform, all technologies will be free and open source and provide a technical pipeline, attracting the majority of entrepreneurial teams to the platform to carry out technology research and development, business transactions, digital asset transactions and other businesses, thereby promoting the progress of the mainland digital content industry and big data industry.

Take root in Yongchuan to build a film and television technology industry ecology

"If it weren't for the support of the Yongchuan government, I might not be able to realize my movie dream!" This "post-90s" from Beijing has now chosen to take root in Chongqing and the Yongchuan film and television technology industry.

Lu Qi said that in fact, in the first few years of founding the company, he encountered many difficulties, one was to "burn money" in technology research and development without producing benefits; Second, the construction of a general technology platform requires the integration of various resources such as "production, education, research and investment", and it is too difficult to rely on a single enterprise. To this end, he approached many local governments to discuss cooperation, but most of them did not believe that Dawa could do this. But in Yongchuan, he gained support.

In 2017, Deng Wen, member of the Standing Committee of the Yongchuan District Party Committee, led a team to Beijing to attract investment, and after discussing with Lu Qi, the two sides hit it off. At the beginning of 2018, Dawa Company officially settled in Yongchuan.

Since then, Yongchuan District has taken a series of measures to support Dawa Company: in 2019, it supported Dawa Company to build a motion capture studio; In 2021, after Lu Qi proposed to the Yongchuan District Government to build a science and technology film and television studio, the district immediately took action and built 3 film and television studios in 2 years.

With the strong support of Yongchuan District, Dawa Company has achieved rapid development, quickly led the country in visual digital content production, and created one "domestic lead" after another:

In 2019, Lu Qi led the team to stand out from more than 1,000 bidding companies, and participated in the construction of the simulation system for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in the whole process and all elements, helping the mainland realize the digital military parade for the first time, and also breaking through a number of "stuck neck" technologies in the field of digital twins;

In the same year, Lu Qi's team released the first real-time digital human independently developed by the whole process in China, building a complete technical platform from pre-design modeling, virtual shooting to post-real-time rendering output, filling the domestic gap and reaching the world-class technical level;

In 2020, Lu Qi led the team to participate in the research and development of the world's first virtual idol variety show - "Cross-dimensional New Star", breaking through a number of "stuck neck" technologies in real-time motion capture technology, making up for domestic shortcomings, and open-sourcing core technologies, promoting mainland motion capture technology to reach the world-class level;

In 2021, Dawa Company produced and released China's first all-LED virtual shooting movie concept film "Unknown Planet", which set off a wave of intelligent film and television technology in Chongqing;

At the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Dawa pioneered the comprehensive use of artificial intelligence, 5G, AR, glasses-free 3D and other scientific and technological achievements to ensure the construction of the digital twin system for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

In March this year, Dawa Company's two scientific and technological achievements, such as "Key Technology and Application of Virtual Shooting Lighting Control System" and "Remote Blocking Shooting Training Virtual Simulation System", were recognized by the Ministry of Science and Technology as reaching the international advanced level...

Driven by Dawa Company, Yongchuan has successively introduced more than 100 digital cultural and creative enterprises such as Flame Mountain, Shanghai Yingmo, Ruiyun Technology, and Jiuzi Culture, basically building an integrated industrial ecology of "technology + talents, platforms + services", which can fully undertake large-scale crews to shoot in Chongqing, and efficiently undertake diversified digital content of film and television dramas, radio and television, advertising, and variety shows.

At present, Dawa has become the first "industry-university-research-investment" complex and "unicorn" enterprise integrating film and television, animation, games, virtual reality, intelligent imaging and big data in China, with a market valuation of more than 30 billion yuan.

Source: Chongqing Daily