Coquettish Rebirth

After some thinking, the idea of ​​such a film and television city was temporarily put on hold for the sake of speeding up the progress.Although Jia Hongjian really wanted to use the film and television city to make more money, no matter how he planned it, he found that the archaeological restoration, design and construction, plus recruitment, etc., could not keep up with the shooting.You must know that if this kind of film and television city is to be fully restored archaeologically, the difficulty is really not small. It may take several months and half a year just to restore a drawing and turn it into a design drawing, plus various investigations and site selection, plus construction. .Finally, when the overall construction is completed, it will probably take at least a year, and at this time, people have not been hired and trained to play the ancients!If the overall operation is to be carried out, about one and a half years is a feasible plan.Can a quick-tempered person like Jia Hongjian suspend the film for a year and a half before shooting?Obviously impossible, even if he is willing, he is not willing to waste the remuneration paid to the actors - the contract is signed, if the filming is not done within this period, then the consequence is that the money is given to the actors for nothing, and they will have to pay for it later. If you shoot, you have to pay another sum of money!Would Jia Hongjian be happy with this kind of thing?

So in the end, it was still necessary to build a simple set for this matter, but that was fine. After thinking about it for a while, Jia Hongjian gave up the idea of ​​making money from "waste".However, after Jia Hongjian gave up, Nolan started looking for trouble again—this Nolan is a fundamentalist of film special effects, and he is resistant to various new technologies.Originally, before Jia Hongjian made him a regular, this guy still had some scruples, honestly.Now it's straightened out.That's when he really started to look for trouble - what kind of motion capture and expression capture did Jia Hongjian want to do? It was too expensive and unnecessary!Although the motion capture equipment already exists, and it can even be said to be mature, it is only placed on various joints for large-scale motion capture. If you want to capture facial expressions, although it is not impossible, those sensing equipment To do it all over again, the sensitivity must be adjusted higher, so it is equivalent to ordering a batch of equipment.The price is not low.A conservative estimate would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.Even the high price of the manufacturer, millions of dollars is not impossible!

For this, Nolan said that he can save money compared to the Chinese, of course.Saving money was just an excuse he used to persuade Jia Hongjian.In fact he just doesn't like using new technology!in his persuasion.He told Jia Hongjian that if he could find a special effects makeup artist to do Jiang Wen's makeup, tens of thousands of dollars would be ok!And special effects makeup down.Let Jiang Wen wear an orangutan-like costume, which can take more close-up shots, and it's not very good at dressing up!You should know that the eye sockets of monkeys and orangutans protrude a little bit more than humans, so a little processing in this place to reveal the real eyes of humans looks natural.At the same time, the monkey's nose is more prominent than that of humans, and the mouth is also more prominent, so just put a special mask on Jiang Wen and it will be done!

The mask of the monkey's nose and mouth, if it is cheaper, can be made of foamed latex, but it will be thicker and it will not be easy to move.If you want to be able to do movements, you need to make it out of silicone, which is more expensive, but you can do some simple movements—such as opening and closing your mouth, for example, you can make a slight curling movement of your mouth.In this way, in order to match Monkey King's character of not talking much, it can really save a lot of money.At most, where Sun Wukong is required to have detailed expressions or dialogues, the special effects team will be asked to add some expressions and lip movements temporarily, and the work will be over.Simple, cheap and time-saving, it is simply a must-have method at home!

Hearing what Nolan said, Jia Hongjian was really tempted.Because no matter what he said, Jia Hongjian was a businessman at heart, and even if a businessman was interested in technological progress, it was to make money.When you can make money by relying on stupid people, who would consider any technological progress?It's like before the Americans came to China to start, it has been rumored for many years that they want to build automatic production lines or something, mainly because of the high labor force in the United States!A worker will be paid 24 to [-] US dollars a year, and he is not willing to work overtime and may go on strike.If this is to be replaced with a fully automatic robot production line, there will be no overtime pay, and there will be no strikes!How wonderful!It's like when automatic ticket vending machines were installed in the subway in the UK, and the conductors were about to go on strike, thinking that the ticket vending machines had robbed them of their jobs.As a result, after such a strike, the subway company suddenly discovered that the ticket vending machines can be operated at high intensity for [-] hours, and maintenance is rarely required, and then there will be no overtime pay and strikes!

Later, after the Americans came to China, I saw that your sister's China is cheaper than automatic production lines. How many American capitalists are still thinking about automatic production lines?Just let the automated production line go to hell, okay?As long as the cost can be greatly reduced, they don't care whether the technology progresses or not!If it weren't for the fact that technology can be used as a gimmick to seize the market, they wouldn't even improve their own products!As long as the yield rate is high, you can make money!You can play with any skill or level!

So, as a glorious capitalist, Jia Hongjian certainly inherited this unscrupulous tradition.Although he really wants to rely on technology to put on a show, let himself be included in the annals of film history in the future, and add a glorious page of his own among the technical leaders inside.But the problem is that this use of advanced technology is just a false honor, not real money!And to be honest, according to the results calculated by Nolan's "abacus", if motion capture or even facial expression capture technology is used, it doesn't mean that it's over after the capture is over, and then we have to do CG special effects, It takes a lot of effort and money to make the collected data into "skeletons" and then bind it to the outermost "skin", and to render various textures!Just talking about capturing facial expressions in this way, the time and investment for the overall special effects will be several times more expensive than the partial special effects method proposed by Nolan!

After thinking about it, in the end Jia Hongjian still chose to do what Nolan said, but he did not give up his desire for technology - although he would not use it in the movie, he would let his dream factory Its special effects team, that is, Pixar, asked them to study this technology.Although Pixar has actually reached the pinnacle in the field of animation cg, but in fact they are still a little bit worse in real-life film and television cg.So, Jia Hongjian will let them study this technology in the future, and then gradually transform into the field of real people.Although generally speaking, Pixar will still make money by doing 3D animation in the future, but who said that it can't make some small money by doing special effects for film and television?However, Jia Hongjian did not plan to fully transform Pixar into a live-action film and television special effects industry, because it is really difficult to make a living as a real-life person!

Why do you say that?Because even in Hollywood, it seems that Hollywood's movie special effects lead the world, but the bankruptcy rate of Hollywood's special effects companies is frighteningly high!In 2012, the so-called "Digital Field", one of the four major Hollywood special effects companies, began to go bankrupt and liquidated. The old special effects company ital, which had done special effects for "Titanic", officially closed its doors in August 2012. Australia Fuel-vfx, which once did special effects for "Prometheus", also entered the road of bankruptcy and liquidation in 8!Even after 2012, even god-level units such as Industrial Light and Magic have undergone large-scale layoffs. Countless special effects engineers who used to have high salaries have become temporary workers. It's possible to get an email telling them they won't be coming on Monday!

Why is this so?Of course, the financial crisis that started in 2008 is an inducement, but the bigger reason lies in the high price of human resources in the United States!After the financial crisis, capitalists suddenly discovered that it is not impossible to outsource the so-called special effects to cheap Asians!Why use Americans whose salaries are several times higher?However, this does not mean that after opening in Asia, the business of every company here in Asia is very good-because the overall financial situation is not good, the companies that Americans open in Asia are actually not large in scale, basically It is also the scale of only one piece of business at a time.In this way, it can be as short as a few months and half a year, and as long as a year or two, you can only make one film. Working overtime every day is considered happiness. The problem is that after this film is over, you may not receive new business for half a year or a year. of!Because it is impossible to take on two businesses at the same time, and there are a large number of new companies from similar Americans running over to grab the market, everyone has become a situation of not starting work for half a year, and working for half a year, so life in Asia is not good. It's so messy!

For a young man like Jia Hongjian with long-term ideas, it is naturally impossible to say that he wants to make a big deal in the United States and recruit many people when there is no future in the wise United States.In fact, he can maintain Pixar's scale of only a few dozen people in the United States, as a "R&D center", specializing in the research and development of various new technologies, and then gradually expand the special effects team in Huamei Animation, which cooperates with Meiying Studio, in the future. , so that in the future, with the old brand and low labor, we can compete with the United States for the market!After robbing the market, when the economic environment in the United States deteriorates, is our Huamei animation an old brand in the United States?That day is always much easier to mess with than all kinds of new companies?And after many years of operation, we have worked hard to develop to the point where we can receive several movies at a time, will life be much easier after all? (To be continued..)