Coquettish Rebirth

Since this was going to be filmed in the Huaxia Hi-Tech building, Cheng Long took his small house and lived here temporarily in Shanghai for a few days to think about how to use the Huaxia Hi-Tech building to make a movie. ￠, first of all, there must be something like a flying squirrel suit flying inside the building. Besides, the little house will crawl on the glass curtain wall of the building in the future. Lots and lots!However, after thinking about it, Jia Hongjian didn't follow Cheng Long's habit to call it a day or prepare to start filming. He had to find another person to come over to confirm some things.Who are you looking for?Lighting engineer and special effects artist!In such a year, according to the latest Hollywood habit, lighting engineers and special effects artists should be involved in the pre-production of the film, so that people can know from the beginning what shots in the movie need special effects, and then people It's ready!

Needless to say, the special effects artist prepares, what does the lighting engineer prepare?In fact, the lighting engineer plays a very important role!To put it simply, in a sci-fi scene or a scene made entirely of CG, a monster, a robot, and the material reflection on the body can be adjusted through a computer, but what about the character?Such an image of a character was shot in real scene!At that time, it can be adjusted in the later stage, and it cannot be adjusted at will like a fully produced virtual cg. There must be a boundary and scope for adjustment!For example, why are many special effects in the 8090s and [-]s so obvious that they are fake at a glance?The main reason is that in that era, "paper special effects" were mainly used, that is, to "cut out" and "stick" the characters on one film to another film - of course, in fact, the special effects in such an ancient era were not shot like this Yes, that era was actually playing with prisms.

How to do it with a prism?In fact, it means that the lens is divided into close-up and long-range. The close-up may be an environmental shot in the studio, and the long-range may be a very large background image on the other side of the studio.In this way, by putting a prism in front of the lens and adjusting it to a suitable position, the near view and distant view can enter the lens of the camera together.That is tantamount to "synthesis".However, when the background photo and the real person are shot in the studio, the lighting conditions cannot be exactly the same, so after such synthesis, the close-up characters may appear brighter or darker than they should be. It is easy to see the problem.However, these are still foreign technologies. In the early days in China, we actually didn’t even know how to do image keying and this kind of prism shooting!In the 80s, a batch of American machines were imported, and that would be it!

At that time, few people in China had heard of blue screen keying.I have never seen it.CCTV imported an ado stunt machine from the United States, and the crew of "Journey to the West" used it to test shoot the scene of Monkey King turning into a little monkey and jumping on the table to have a secret conversation with the prince in "The Kingdom of Black Chicken".Take pictures of Liu Xiaolingtong's jumping movements in front of the blue screen, and then combine them with the background that was taken beforehand.It is to use the ADO machine to shrink Monkey King, lift it up according to the rhythm of the movement, and then get on the table. This is really not difficult.But later the crew discovered that all the people were like pieces of paper, not three-dimensional, and they didn't dare to turn them at all.What's going on here? There are a few scenes in "Ji Shou Ba Jie" and "Three Beats of the Bone Demon" that are particularly obvious.The crew tried repeatedly but could not find a solution. Later, they found out that the three-dimensional effect could not be realized because there was a software that was not purchased, and this software cost 5 US dollars.There is no time or money to fix it, so many scenes in "Journey to the West" are paper figures.

Color conflicts are the most taboo for blue-screen keying, and this truth can only be known by shooting.But the people in "Journey to the West" wear colorful clothes, and the background curtain can only be made of various colors.For replacement options.Sometimes the colors are too complex and need to be synthesized multiple times.For example, in the last episode, the scene where the old tortoise crosses the Tongtian River with four people on his back is a composite of the four people.The compositing work must be done back in the station, and cannot be seen on site.This kind of efficiency is extremely low, and I don't know how the shooting effect will be, so many special effects shots are useless, even if they are barely usable, there are various flaws.There are even many scenes of flying on the clouds in Journey to the West.At that time, the crew did not have special aerial photography equipment, and the background of the sky and clouds was discussed with the captain when flying, and the cameraman was asked to shoot in the cockpit.In addition, when taking a car, a train, a cable car and other means of transportation, pay attention to shooting various backgrounds.

Then Jia Hongjian still remembers watching an interview with the crew of CCTV’s Journey to the West, which said that it was not easy to do special effects in the early years—with the characters and the background, it seems that you can be in "adores" "Is the stunt machine synthesized into a perfect picture? But the problem is far from over, and there is a lot of knowledge in it.First of all, the body of the character must absolutely avoid having the same color as the background curtain.Otherwise, there will be holes in the picture, exposing the background.They originally thought that as long as there is a blue screen, all problems can be solved, but in fact it can't! Any color on the actor's body to be "keyed" must be taboo to be the same as the background.They made many curtains of various colors, because many of the costumes have already been made, so it is a troublesome problem to avoid that color. The characters in "Journey to the West" are all colorful, and different clothes need different The curtain, including the color on the face.

When making clothing in the future, the first consideration is whether to use it for "keying".If so, that color should be avoided... If multiple characters are to appear in one screen, the colors of their clothing must be different, so it cannot be done in front of a single curtain, and the only way to do it is to combine multiple times.When shooting images of people in front of the curtain, you should also pay attention to the absolute flatness of the clothes and no wrinkles. Otherwise, you can’t remove those wrinkles when you “key” and there will be traces... From the perspective of light effect , When shooting the characters in the "key image", try to use smooth light as much as possible, and add outline outlines. The more uniform the light, the better.When synthesizing the characters and the background, the angles should be exactly the same. If the background is at a depression angle, the characters should also be at a depression angle.Sometimes it is impossible to achieve perfect agreement, because the size of the curtain will restrict the angle of the characters.But this problem is not too big, because of the size of the characters, it can be solved on the stunt stage! All these problems were gradually discovered in their work, and they gradually groped for solutions to the problems, so they also had a lot of failures.Of course, all these problems are no longer a problem now, but at that time they were indeed hit by nails one by one.

And when such a thing evolved to computer special effects for production, the lighting engineer set up the mask to shoot the close-up when shooting, and then the computer-made long-range can design the light according to the light points of the close-up, so that the light of the overall long-range It's almost like a close-up!Isn't it easy to see this way?For example, when the industry is doing special effects now, it is also necessary to collect the position of the real light shot by the lighting engineer during the shooting, so as to save trouble in production!So now Jia Hongjian and the others let the lighting engineer and special effects artist join the pre-production.It is to speed up the overall production process, and also to avoid unnecessary troubles-because we are not in special effects, so many times the ideas we come up with may not look good when made into special effects!

For example, if we insist on making the captured scene into a rainy night scene on a night without rain, then we want to put the camera on the seaside or something, so that the water surface of the seaside will reflect neon lights or something. , if these have to be done by post-production special effects.That would be very difficult to do, because it involves weak light and weak reflection... In short, it can cause headaches for special effects artists!So now that we think about the action, we have to say hello to the special effects artist, and ask them to come over and have a look and discuss whether the action we designed is particularly difficult to make in their opinion, right?

And on the other hand, how much money is going to be spent on special effects depends on the advice of lighting and special effects engineers.Because some places are designed to really save money. For example, in "Pacific Rim", a movie where robots beat up little monsters, why are many scenes at night?Because there are relatively few things to be rendered at night, the cost of special effects production can be saved!This crew definitely put a lot of scenes at night to save money!Doesn't the overall blackness save computer memory during rendering?Anyone who plays the game should be able to understand it!And the monster never saw clearly.Can't see clearly!No details!No close view!There is no sense of realism, no sense of fear, no matter what technology is used to change whose life, how those cg technology fans blow nb, the monster and its mother really can't tell who is the three plastic blocks swimming back and forth during the submarine war who.

Of course, if you save money on the dark night, the funds may be used in various other places in the night scene—for example, Jia Hongjian feels that the night scene and sea water effects are really beautiful, and he can’t tell how difficult it is. .But it is estimated that a lot of money was spent, but I don't know if it is worth the money.This is a bit convoluted.On the one hand, it is said that people’s night scenes save money, and they also say that they spend money on night scenes... So in the end, I can only say that maybe the main creator wants to save money, but after saving money, I feel that I can’t explain it without some special effects!However, what fascinated Jia Hongjian the most was the sense of mechanics and metal. He even felt that there was nothing wrong with the "Transformers" series after "Pacific Rim".

The design of this Pacific Rim mecha is very good, from draft to cgi rendering, the details of the cockpit, operating parts, equipped weapons, power equipment, painting and so on are very well done.The feeling that Gundam and Eva finally materialized.Moreover, various styles have been designed according to different countries, which are full of international style, especially the crimson storm and gipsy danger, especially the crimson storm of the Celestial Dynasty. Such a majestic mech is too stealthy.The 3D movie produced by Industrial Light and Magic is several times more realistic than the Japanese 2D animation. Unfortunately, the way of getting out of the cabin, the helicopter hoisting is really too bad. Look at Gundam, eva How did they get out of the cabin!Orbital catapult exploded, okay?It is said that the initial design of the mecha weighed 7000-8000 tons, and then it was reduced by 70%. According to its height and shape, is this weight just for the convenience of lifting?The biggest advantage of the helicopter's appearance is the lighting. When the lights are on the top of the sea with black lights and blazing waves, the meaning of the fateful confrontation will come out, and even the sacrifice will be extraordinarily tragic. (To be continued..)