The 74th Venice Film Festival opened on August 30, local time, as a veteran film festival, this year's new initiative is to set up a VR competition unit for the first time. Among the 22 shortlisted works, there are 4 Chinese works, namely "Self-Travel" by Sandma Studio, "Dream Picking Old Man" by Pinta Studio, "Window" by Shanghai Weitang Film and Television, and "Home in Lanruo Temple" cooperated by Cai Mingming with HTC and Jaunt.
Pinta Studio's "Dream Picker" is one of the most "commercial sales" one, the animation style and image design are very Westernized, the film announced the "fixing date" on the popularity of Venice, a trailer was made very early on the Internet, a street scene was set up in the film to "ambush" advertising space, and the surrounding dolls were also launched to sell on the Network.
"Dream Picker" final poster
This is probably related to the background of the main creator's resume. Pinta Studio was founded in June 2016, CEO Lei Zhengmeng and CMO Ah Yu before working at Ali Digital Entertainment, director Melee has been in the animation circle for more than 10 years, has participated in the creation of "Kuiba", "The Return of the Great Sage", "Rock Tibetan Mastiff" and "Little Door God" and other well-known works.
Photo of the founding team of Pinta Studio. From left: Ahhh, Raymond, grain of rice
The entire 11-minute film tells the story of an old man who picks up garbage and his puppy, in a huge garbage dump, day after day to pick up the dreams of others and "repair" them.
Director Mi Grain comes from an artistic family, and his father and uncle are both teachers at the Academy of Fine Arts. When he went to college, Melee realized that CG animation would become the mainstream and computer technology was crucial to the development of animation, so he chose the Department of New Media Art of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where the computer major was stronger.
"I learned about technology because I loved animation." Rice grain has always been a "technical emperor", from "Kuiba" to "The Return of the Great Sage", until the recent release of "The Adventure of Atang", rice grain has experienced the experience of "the best" in animation works over the years from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, and now it has entered the updated field, VR animation.
"The Old Man Who Picked Up Dreams"
The 11-minute "Dream Picker" was done for half a year, and the team was almost from scratch for new technologies and workflows. Learning how to operate the core technology Unity engine alone took a lot of time.
Doing VR movies faces many challenges, in addition to super money, VR also needs to establish a new audiovisual language specification, the traditional film audiovisual language is almost invalid in the virtual reality picture, the director needs to consider how to guide the audience to actively watch and interact. The lens cannot be pushed and panned like a traditional movie.
In order to experiment with how the shots are expressed, Melee said that the studio's friends would even line up to take turns testing how different people's degrees of halo under the same shot were different. Sometimes, trying to move a shot will "faint all morning and can't work."
"The Old Man Who Picked Up Dreams" was officially unveiled in Venice on August 31. It is understood that the short film was originally scheduled to go online in May, but due to the "world premiere" requirements of the Venice Film Festival, the launch date was postponed to September 13 after the festival. At that time, the works will be simultaneously released on mainstream VR platforms at home and abroad, including VR Apps that can play videos on mobile phones and immersive headsets that support spatial displacement and interaction.
Before the "expedition" to Venice, director Mi Lian was interviewed by the surging news.
Director of grains of rice
【Dialogue】
VR cultivates the creative habit of "starting from the perspective of the audience"
The Paper: What kind of original intention was "Old Man Picking Dreams" based on? What are some interesting points about combining with VR?
Rice grain: Short stories have a function, it is difficult to have a very complex conflict, just to tell a story in a short period of time. It was a concept I had in college, when there was no VR yet, and it was a story for normal animated shorts.
We're an animation company. If we had thought about what VR could do in the first place, we would probably have told a ghost story. This is what everyone in the market thinks VR is good at.
"The Old Man Who Picked Up Dreams" is not designed for VR, but the role is simple, it is easy for the director to design the picture, if there are many characters, it is easy to disperse, and it will look left and right in the novel world.
In addition, when conceiving the story, it also meets the basic visual needs, and the final scene is very suitable for VR display, all emotions are rendered transpositional thinking, and the audience will be very excited and happy.
The Paper: Judging from your resume, you have done two-dimensional animation and three-dimensional animation, and this time you have turned to a newer field, what is the difference in the way you work?
Rice Grain: Actually, I was also responsible for the three-dimensional part of "Kuiba". Compared with the previous work, the biggest difference is in the nature of the project, before the film was done, relatively long, used to tell a more complete, complex story. But the idea of creating VR short films is different, it pays more attention to emotions, the story is actually laying out one emotional point after another, and finally shaking out that baggage, just like telling crosstalk.
There is no huge difference between VR and traditional filmmaking, except that all the stories take place under a long shot, and there is no traditional film production technique. All stories need to be shot in a very concise shot.
Concept art of "The Old Man Who Picked Up Dreams"
The Paper: But because of the different visual habits, does the director need to have a different idea in the design of the lens?
Rice Grain: Yes, just like when 3D appeared in the past, directors were asked to add to the visual design such as flying to the audience and skipping such shots in front of the audience to reflect the characteristics of stereoscopic films. But VR's stimulation points for the audience are not as clear as traditional movies, and we must now look for some points to stimulate the audience.
While you tell a story well, you must let the audience enter the story, have a strong sense of immersion, how to make the actor's performance and the special effects of the scene make the audience have a sense of proximity. If this is not done, the advantages of VR movies will not be so obvious.
The Paper: In this way of constructing a new audiovisual language, do you think it opens up space or creates constraints for storytelling?
Rice Grain: We set ourselves a small principle, trying to make ourselves think less about "what VR can do" when creating, and not being kidnapped by the limitations of this new media in the creative stage. If you list these points first, you won't let your creation go. If we think about the technique first, it means that we are acting with the experience and rules of others that we already have, which is very limited to our shooting effect.
Many times, we decide the story first, and then we do our best to show the story in VR to the extreme. We have also summed up some lessons ourselves, more about how the audience can be more fluent in the VR story, because VR can easily make the audience feel uncomfortable. You say what kind of visual way to make the audience more exciting, we don't think much about this, we only care about what kind of story we want to tell this time.
The Paper: All VR movie creators seem to have to face a new problem, that is, the role that the audience brings into the movie, how to solve this problem in "The Dream Picker"?
Melee: This is really a very tangled problem for the creators at the beginning of a project. We're going to set the audience up for "Who the hell am I?" If the character can't see me, how will he react? But after doing two stories, I found that this question may not be so important when I actually watch it, most of the stories in which the audience is spying on the lives of others as bystanders, which has penetrated into the instincts of all people who watch film and television. Only if your story is attractive enough, enough to make people curious and expectant, it will not distract too much attention to think.
Of course this will always be a problem, and I can't say that I have solved this problem, but only that at this stage I have put this problem on hold through interesting stories. If you want to solve it, the easiest way is to shoot the first person, you are the protagonist, it is all subjective perspective, but the story will become very narrow.
The Paper: With your resume in the animation industry, the projects you have participated in are very top-notch. With this experience, I can also get in touch with many good animation projects in the future. Why did you choose to "change careers" to do VR? Is it because even high-quality animation has not received good returns since "The Return of the Great Sage", so it is more optimistic about the emerging "blue ocean"?
Rice grain: In fact, no matter what you do, you still have to tell a good story in the end. The audience still has to look at the beautiful picture and be able to see the touching story. I didn't feel like I was changing careers, and our company has been positioning itself as an animation company. It's just that we put the story we want to tell the most in the most appropriate way to show it.
VR is a novel technology, and I chose it because it has its innate advantages for my ability to create art and the cultivation of the team. It forces us to create a story that must be from the perspective of the audience.
In the vr world, you don't have any means to force the audience to see a certain part, if you don't start from the audience's point of view, you can't grasp the audience's viewing needs, and your creation and effort are not attached. And this kind of training in the creative angle is also very conducive to the creation of any film and television works.
The Paper: For this new technology, is there anything fun for the team when working?
Melee: Because this was the first work, when the overall project started, almost everyone wouldn't use the most important software, which was the Unity engine.
It is very important to guide the audience in VR, but there is no interaction in our work, some places really don't want to think about it, I feel that there is no other way to force the audience to keep up with this role, I will be lazy to say "then we use the lens to turn the direction to attract the audience's attention." Everyone still argues, thinks well, says it must be okay, and then tries, directly faints, and some people may not be able to work all morning.
Hopefully, before the big players go in, get a foothold
The Paper: I did 11 minutes in half a year, is this efficiency high in VR movies? How about the time and capital consumption of this carrier compared to ordinary animation?
Rice grains: Coupled with the cost of learning, this is a very efficient work.
Actually, this is a very interesting thing. You see, the first CG animation "Toy Story" took three years, so many years of technology evolution, software and hardware progress, an animated movie consumption time or three years, time has not improved at all. Doing content is like that, and no matter how advanced our tools are, it doesn't speed up the time for content creation.
VR is exponentially more expensive than traditional animation. We make a short film that is also million-level, far larger than a normal CG animation. All the objects in the picture must be 360 degrees without dead angles. All directions must be accurate, not just the parts that the lens will capture, as was the case before.
So someone asks us if we want a feature film, we will be very cautious, whether we have this ability, and whether we have a very good, non-essential story, no matter what, we have to make it to present to the audience, this is still what we explore and find. Now I can only say that I have this expectation, but I will not do it easily. Because that would be a very big expense.
The Paper: There are four Chinese VR works shortlisted for Venice this time, and VR is a new thing for the whole world. We often say that our special effects movies and animated movies have a big gap from Hollywood, is VR on the same starting line?
Rice grain: I can only say that the gap will be smaller. VR animation also belongs to computer animation, and there is still a strong binding relationship with technology. The picture is a very important part of the work, and the technology determines how good the picture is, just like the stereoscopic film to "Avatar", the maturity of the technology can be regarded as the real completion of the revolution of the film.
What we're doing now is relatively short, focusing on resources, and we can do it close to Hollywood. Even if we look at Western companies, they will feel that we are on the same level as them. But we know that behind the scenes, there are still many gaps.
China has Hollywood-level people in talent, a single point, but when it becomes a team, the larger the volume, the advantages of Hollywood will be obvious. Because team collaboration is superimposed. The time of the animation film is very long, the process is very much, if any one point is a little behind, the final effect will be quite worse. Now in a short time, we desperately try to make the picture that we think is the best.
The Paper: Several of the works shortlisted this time are from small companies, but VR, as an emerging industry, is also being laid out by many large film companies. Will there be a sense of urgency that if some industry giants enter, will you small boats be difficult to compete? After all, this variety is so "burning money".
Grains of rice: As the content gets longer, there will be (worry). Not for short content. Something especially new is always small teams can make big. It is difficult for large teams to be flexible in decision-making structure and process. We are very entangled in this industry that changes every day, because we often have to change and add new technologies, but it is difficult for large companies to change flexibly in their processes.
If you do a feature film, it is two orders of magnitude to do a short film, and a small company cannot afford it. Once there is a mature business model, there will be big players coming in. So we also want to be able to reserve enough technology and knowledge when there is a strong opponent coming.
In fact, now the opponent is already very strong, foreign countries are Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, these Oscar-winning animation directors and teams, are "old drivers". But we think that if their limits have been reflected in their works, our sense of crisis can be said to be not too strong.
The Paper: Chasing VR capital in the past two years, this year seems to have some "fever", what are your expectations for the future?
Rice grain: I still hope that everyone will do it seriously. If you don't do it well, it will hurt the industry. We often say that there was a three-dimensional animation in early China, and we always say how much it contributed to Chinese animation and how many talents it cultivated. But let's not talk about how much damage the failure of that project has brought to Chinese animation, because of that kind of pain, there will be no more three-dimensional animation films for several years. Making movies is a business act, and sometimes the harm is greater than the benefit, and I hope that everyone will seriously do things well.