Before looking forward to Wu Jing Guo Fan's monster film, let's discuss the value of "Megalodon 2"
"Hopefully, we can make technical preparations for the Chinese Ocean Monster movie in the future."
"Megalodon 2" starring Jason Statham and Wu Jing is currently in the Chinese mainland film market for 6 days, with a total box office of nearly 500 million, although the box office results in the Chinese mainland market are not the first echelon, but the results of this Chinese-dominated and globally distributed blockbuster are still surprising in the world: after its release last Friday, the global box office exceeded 142 million US dollars in the first weekend, winning the global box office champion in the first weekend.
"Megalodon 2" is a monster blockbuster with a very typical story, structure and rhythm, in the three main scenes of the deep sea, cruise ship and island, the expedition team led by Jason Statham and Wu Jing staged a thrilling escape from the sea, dismantling the villain conspiracy, and fighting against prehistoric monsters, bringing the audience the refreshing feeling of a visual effects blockbuster.
"Megalodon 2" is a win-win work for many parties, not only the audience can gain the pleasure of watching popcorn commercial blockbusters, but more importantly, the Chinese filmmakers involved in it have gained valuable monster film production experience.
How does China's dominance of global blockbusters bridge cultural differences?
"Megalodon 2" is a monster blockbuster that looks very orthodox overall, but Chinese audiences don't feel too obvious about distance, not only because Wu Jing is the leading actor, but also because the film bridges cultural differences in the details.
In this process, the Chinese team in front of and behind the scenes are trying to find ways to make "Megalodon 2" closer to Chinese audiences and Chinese characters in the film look closer to contemporary Chinese.
In the original setting, Wu Jing played by Zhang Jiuming is a rich man with his own island, after an action scene will fly directly back to Shanghai in a helicopter, and even occasionally wear Tang costumes, such a character is obviously not real enough, after the advice of the Chinese creator, this character is set to be a very sports-loving, adventurous person, and has a very good knowledge background, the company is located in a science and technology park in Hainan. The history set by the crew for Zhang Jiuming is that he may be a college entrance examination champion or an Olympiad winner in a certain year, so in the office furnishings in the film, you can see the trophy certificate of the competition displayed behind him.
Not only does the character character show a more realistic Chinese, but the film's presentation of the relationship between the characters is also Chinese.
Wu Jing believes that the relationship between Zhang Jiuming and his father in the movie is a very typical Chinese father and son: he has had a misunderstanding with his father since he was a child, and after going to college, he did not contact his father with his family and went to start a business alone, he always thought that his father was too strict and did not love him, but in fact, Chinese-style fathers often hide love in their hearts, and do not say it, but just put it into action. But when he woke up, he was eager to raise his son, so he merged his father's company with his own, continued to explore the ocean, the unknown world, and carried forward the spirit of exploring the unknown world Chinese.
After a good character background is established, the main creators have to repeatedly figure out every detail in the movie, which will involve some changes to the original script.
Wu Jing revealed that the filming of "Megalodon 2" allowed him to gain a very valuable experience, before he thought that changing the script only required the consent of the on-site director and the consent of the staff present to shoot directly, but when he arrived at the crew, he found that Hollywood's film industry system is a producer-centric system, and this process takes ten days and a half months: "The process this time is, after I and the script consultant Mr. Yu Baimei have changed it, we have to give it to the main controller Chinese culture, they translated it and handed it to Warner's senior management, and the senior management gave it to the producer, The producer then told the screenwriter to change, and after the screenwriter finished changing it to the producer, he returned to the director. ”
Of course, the set also allows some "hanging" and detailed line adjustments, as long as everyone on the scene votes to pass.
For example, in the scene in the movie where Wu Jing delays time to create a sneak attack opportunity for his teammates, he says "I know you don't understand Chinese..." The long list of lines is the "current hanging" temporarily added on the scene.
For example, there is a scene where everyone thinks that Zhang Jiuming was eaten by megalodon, and he said to everyone after he came back, "Thrill dear", and the original script required him to speak English here. The crew assigned Wu Jing a line teacher and helped Wu Jing complete a large number of English performance clips, but it also brought a problem to his performance, "When we perform in our native language, there will be seven emotions on it, but when I am engaged in the performance but not speaking the native language, I have to pay attention to pronunciation, and the spirit will be withdrawn." In this scene, Wu Jing needs to speak English that was exciting, but he believes that "I have just experienced life and death, and my first sentence should be my mother tongue."
Megalodon 2 also needs to find a balance between Chinese and Western cultures.
For example, the movie has a scene where Wu Jing calls Jason Statham "grandson", which is talked about by the audience. Wu Jing revealed that the original line was translated as "slut": "The script wants to express the meaning of joking between brothers, but from the expression of Chinese, it is necessary to ridicule, and be friendly, and be soft and kind, you translate it as a slut seems to be a little hard, Chinese especially understand this meaning, I also try to make audiences in other countries understand this meaning, but in fact, it is very uncomfortable to translate, if translated into grandson it is not right, So the last line subtitle translates very funny, which is very interesting, and let everyone feel what this sentence means with their own culture. I especially hope that there will be more such Chinese slang in our films, such as the phrase 'you will be punished', which actually reflects some of the ideas unique to our Chinese culture. ”
What Wu Jing learned in the crew of "Megalodon 2"
In the film, Zhang Jiuming's father gave him a calligraphy painting and wrote "Dragons in the Four Seas", expressing Chinese's yearning to explore the unknown world.
This is also the spirit of Chinese filmmakers outside the play, in recent years Chinese films continue to expand the boundaries of genre, especially Wu Jing's participation in the "Wolf Warrior" and "The Wandering Earth" series, respectively, are domestic military action and domestic science fiction film milestones, this time Wu Jing's participation in "Megalodon 2" is his exploration of monster films, and he also came with a mission:
"After getting the script, my first thought was that this picture would go through several processes to shoot, especially the part of the seabed, fighting monsters on the seabed, how to make hair and water. I want to understand the process of making sea monster movies, including the film industry here, and hope to prepare us technically for the future of Chinese sea monster movies. ”
The technology of deep-sea scene production of "Megalodon 2" is worth learning from and learning——
In terms of the scenes of deep-sea wonders, the crew used VFX special effects to create a realistic deep-sea environment, restoring details such as the shaking of plants in the water, various fish, underwater particles, bubbles, and sand kicked up as you walked, in order to increase the concept of "going underwater" in the scene.
The deep-sea hiking scene is a combination of cutting-edge technology and traditional technology, abandoning full CG shooting, combining real shooting with CG, using the production method of "dry for wet", using waterless scenes to create underwater effects, in order to create a more realistic and immersive shooting environment for the director and actors to interact with each other, to achieve a more realistic shooting effect, this method can also avoid the safety hazards of wearing heavy wetsuits underwater.
In traditional "wet film" shooting, the distortion of the actor's hair, skin and muscles, as well as the feeling of weightlessness, are common technical difficulties. To this end, the crew made an "exoskeleton wetsuit" that restricts the actions of the actors to a certain extent, and builds a universal scene so that all actors can face each other in the same environment. The film also enhances the weight of the wetsuit with high-frame photography, which refers to the fact that the film is shot using a high frame rate of 36 or 40 frames per second, giving the impression that the actors are pushing something, or a little floating, but not too much, it looks like slow motion. Finally, through the synergy of new and old technologies, the overall visual effect of deep-sea hiking with high fidelity and strong immersion was completed.
In addition to learning the experience of deep-sea shooting, Wu Jing's exchange experience permeates all aspects of the crew's shooting. For example, the scene hanging on the helicopter, Wu Jing revealed that although he is married and has children now, he will pay more attention to safety, but once he sees such a wonderful scene on the set, he will be reluctant to give up such a good opportunity, and he must personally experience how such a scene was filmed, how the safety process of the international team was, how to do safety measures, and what kind of shooting technology and tools and machines were used.
"There was a tool that I wanted to buy back, it was a radome in front of a military helicopter, put it on a civilian helicopter, put the camera in, and then get another wire through the bottom keel, from the rear cabin to the inside of the helicopter, the staff is a few people, one to adjust the direction, one to adjust the focus... If you don't experience it yourself, you won't know how people shoot it, so this time I also want to fully understand the attitude of these excellent filmmakers around the world to their work, and their methods of shooting the most brilliant shots, which itself is very meaningful. ”
There is a Weibo hot search called #Megalodon 2 is the task sent by Guo Fan to Wu Jing#, Wu Jing said that this exchange of advanced technology of "Megalodon 2" is also to prepare for the all-Chinese monster film that will be cooperated with Guo Fan later. This monster film plans to shoot a very cute and fun monster, as for whether it can be filmed after "The Wandering Earth 3", Wu Jing's answer is "not necessarily".
"In fact, after I arrived on the set of Warner, my first feeling was how to return to the crew of Qingdao's "The Wandering Earth 2", if I encounter problems, such as bad props, I also use strong glue, 502 glue, needle and thread, and distinguishing needles, which are all the same, and all of us are thinking in every possible way about how to bring a good movie to our audience."