Huayu: This producer has no bottom line.

Chapter 126 Making a TV Series

5 month 15 day.

The shoot has been over for several days, but the studio lights are still on later than they were then.

The post-production of "Li Xianji" got stuck on the most critical part: special effects compositing.

"Director Ren, I really can't figure this out."

With dark circles under his eyes, Kong Lianshun pointed at the screen, his tone full of frustration.

The screen showed footage of that rain scene.

This is the most crucial part of the entire film, the starting point and the end point of the story, the most direct visual expression of time lag, and also the highlight of this sci-fi film's dazzling special effects.

If this place is destroyed, everyone will be criticized for a bad ending. Ren Pingsheng stared at the frozen image on the screen.

Bullet time isn't difficult. You just need to do a good job of synchronized shooting in the early stages, align the timeline in post-production, and combine footage from different angles into a surround shot to create an effect similar to "The Matrix".

The challenge is to make those raindrops actually stay in the air.

Raindrops are complexly distributed, and each drop is affected by light, shadow, and refraction differently. To make them look realistic while suspended in the air, it is not something that can be achieved by simply masking or erasing them.

Ren Pingsheng has great ambitions; he wants the kind of visual spectacle seen in Now You See Me 2.

In a decade or so, this could be accomplished in no time with real-time rendering technology.

But it was 2010, and After Effects' RotoBrush had only just been released as version 1.0. Even if you worked Kong Lianshun to exhaustion, you could only produce a cheap special effect at best.

His gaze swept across the email list and stopped on a reply he had just received.

Sender: BaseFX.

This is a visual effects company that was only established four years ago, and its headquarters are located in Yanjing.

He has just begun to make a name for himself in the industry with his work on more than eighty challenging shots for the HBO miniseries "The Pacific".

They excel at creature character animation and digital matte painting, but what Ren Pingsheng valued most were the complex battlefield environment simulations they created in "The Pacific War".

Explosions, fires, and smoke—their control over fluid and particle systems has reached a top-tier level in the industry.

In the email, Xie Ning, co-founder of BaseFX, expressed great interest in Ren Pingsheng's idea of ​​raindrop time-stopping and replied that it could be achieved by using layered fluid particle overlay combined with digital matte painting.

However, we need to see the complete footage and storyboards before we can assess whether it's feasible to do it.

Without hesitation, Ren Pingsheng sent over a short clip of rain scene footage and storyboard.

Less than half an hour later, Xie Ning called.

"Director Ren, I've reviewed the footage and storyboards. The practical shooting is very solid, which will save a lot of trouble in post-production," Xie Ning replied directly. "But achieving the effect you want will be quite difficult."

He spoke quickly and clearly, "To make the raindrops completely still while maintaining natural lighting, there are two approaches. One is to use a high-speed camera to capture images against a green screen, then erase the unwanted raindrops frame by frame in post-production, and finally use a particle system to regenerate still raindrops and composite them in. The other is to use full CG generation to simulate the shape and refraction of real water droplets."

Which one works better?

"Live-action footage combined with compositing creates a strong sense of realism and more natural lighting, but frame-by-frame post-production is costly and time-consuming. Full CG can directly erase the live-action rain layer and generate static raindrops using CG, but it is easy to look fake, especially the highlight reflection and caustic effect on the surface of the raindrops, which is difficult to make look convincing."

"What about the cost?"

"If we go for a live-action shoot, the budget will be at least 800,000. A full CG shoot can be reduced to around 400,000, but I can't guarantee the quality."

""

Ren Pingsheng was silent for a few seconds. 80 was almost a quarter of the total budget for "Li Xianji". 40 might compromise the effect.

"Mr. Xie," he began, "is there a third option? Use live-action footage as a base, enhance keyframes with CG, and then use digital matte painting to add depth to the raindrops in the rest?"

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. "Yes, the cost is between the two, around 50 to 60. The timeframe will have to wait for me to work with my team to determine."

Just as Ren Pingsheng was racing against time to finish "Li Xianji".

In the battlefield of the internet, the online gaming industry is in a state of gloom and despair.

The highly anticipated martial arts masterpiece, "JX3," has once again fallen into a quagmire of both revenue and reputation after the initial novice phase.

The point card payment model seems out of place in the wave of free-to-play online games.

"Spending money to suffer is pointless; I'd rather play Tianlong next door!"

Slow updates, reskinned dungeons, and terrible optimization—similar complaints can be found everywhere on various forums.

Even worse, the recent server merge triggered a large-scale civil war, with the world chat being flooded with profanity, and neutral players being inexplicably killed as soon as they stepped outside, causing the game experience to plummet.

Seasun Entertainment Headquarters.

"Mr. Guo, the user churn rate has increased again this week," the operations manager said, looking at Guo Weiwei with a furrowed brow.

"I saw Director Ren's new drama for 'Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils 2,' and the ratings are pretty good. Maybe we should talk to him and ask for another collaboration? I heard the company is planning to adapt 'The Legend of the Condor Heroes' into a TV series; if we could get him to direct it..."

Guo Weiwei rubbed her temples and interrupted him, "Do you think I don't want to? The group is negotiating with Hairun about the TV series. Nicholas Tse has already made his decision. It's not our place to interfere."

Life is tough for those playing JX3 (Sword Net 3), but some people are having it even tougher.

The conference room at Perfect World headquarters.

A dozen or so people sat on either side of the long table, surrounded by swirling smoke.

"I suggest increasing the penalties for account bans to thoroughly purify the gaming environment."

"Go up the blockade? If we keep blocking them, the servers will be full of NPCs."

"The economic system has collapsed; it has to be shut down! Those gold farming studios are producing the equivalent of a normal player's monthly income in a single day. If this isn't addressed, the entire trading system will collapse!"

"Then tell me how to distinguish between studio players and regular players? How many people have been wrongly banned in the past two weeks?"

CEO Chi Yufeng remained silent with a somber expression.

Ultimately, the cause of this account suspension incident was the immense pressure exerted by competitors.

The traffic-driving effect of "Wanwan" on "Tianlong" and "Diaosi" on "JX3" some time ago was terrifying.

With this shift in momentum, both the number of online players and revenue for "Jade Dynasty 2" are facing enormous pressure.

In an effort to retain players, the operations team increased the item drop rate, leading to severe inflation within the game and bringing the economic system to the brink of collapse.

In an effort to stabilize prices, they resorted to a blanket ban on accounts, hoping to control resource sources by shutting down high-profile accounts.

As a result, things went awry.

"Stop arguing," Chi Yufeng tapped the table. "Tell me, besides the usual compensation, what other ways are there to divert the players' attention?"

"President Chi," the head of Perfect World Pictures spoke up at the right moment, "The short film we made for 'Fantasy Zhu Xian' before, with Hu Ge and Liu Shishi, received a very good response. Why don't we continue to work on this and ask them to make a TV series based on 'Zhu Xian'?"

The proposal immediately caused an uproar in the meeting room, with arguments erupting everywhere.