Chapter 577 A new method of shooting special effects
"Oh, this filming was really hard. I finished the filming two weeks beyond the scheduled filming schedule. Yes... I know the budget has been exceeded, but the spirits of the protagonists and I urgently need a rest, otherwise we won't be able to
Maybe we can continue filming.”
The filming of Forrest Gump, after completing the DC scenes, entered into big trouble that exceeded everyone's expectations.
After Forrest Gump returned home for the filming scene, he kept his agreement with his late comrade Barb and went to his hometown of Bayou La Bartley in Alabama to catch shrimp. Because South Carolina has preferential treatment for film shooting.
Conditions, so the scenes here were moved to Lucy Point Creek in South Carolina.
There is really a fishing company here, and the owners, Bob and Hilda, were very generous and allowed the crew to borrow their fishing boat and dock for filming.
But no one had told Ronald before about the pain of shooting on a boat. When the boat entered the real body of water, the wave reaction was very large, and the camera could not be placed stably.
The entire crew was caught up in endless shooting. A shot that was shot well would have to be scrapped due to shaking. Back and forth, after Ronald had found a way to deal with the shaking, there was a more troublesome storm.
Drama.
The entire filming was exhausting, and Ronald himself was able to sustain it, but Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise, who played Lieutenant Dan, were physically and mentally exhausted to the limit.
In the end, Ronald made the decision and resisted the pressure from Paramount CEO Shirley Lansing, allowing them to rest for three days to reunite with their families and wait for recovery from mental exhaustion.
Ronald himself also took a day off with his family, but he had many things to do. He went to the Paramount studio in Los Angeles and watched the preparations of the stunt team there.
Because of Ken Ralston's excellent work at the Washington Monument, he now handles all the on-set aspects of the special effects shooting.
The special effects staff here have done a lot of preparation work. Before Forrest Gump accidentally entered the anti-war rally at the Washington Monument, he was awarded the Medal of Honor by Commander-in-Chief Johnson. This shot is a combination of computer special effects and real photography.
They first found a video of Commander-in-Chief Johnson back in the day, in which the commander-in-chief was smiling happily, leaning forward and back. Then they used the computer to capture the smile for later use.
At the scene, all the backgrounds in the images were restored, including furniture, clothing of other personnel, etc. They also found an actor who looked like Commander Johnson, put on his clothes from that time, and walked in the green
They shook hands with Forrest Gump (Hanks didn't come back, so they found a colleague to play the role) in front of the screen.
After repeated tests, as long as the actor reaches out his hand accurately when shaking hands, reaches the marked position, and then shakes it there a few times, a satisfactory picture can be synthesized.
In addition to Commander Johnson, Forrest Gump also has footage of shaking hands with several commanders such as JFK and Richard. Because the latter two were able to find footage of them shaking hands with people of similar stature to Forrest Gump, it would be more difficult to replace him with Forrest Gump.
It's much simpler than Johnson awarding Forrest a medal.
After seeing the test footage of the special effects team, Ronald said he was very satisfied. Next, as long as Tom Hanks can complete these simple object-free performances, these finishing touches of the movie and the shots that embed Forrest Gump in history can work.
to the function for which they were designed.
Ronald had full confidence in the time-tested special effects team. Then he relaxed and ran to the set of James Cameron's "True Lies" to play with him.
"Ah, Ronald. I'm about to start shooting a difficult scene here. You came just in time..."
Cameron was just about to start filming, and it was also a rare free time after months of intense preparations. The two old friends, both directors, had a rare opportunity to exchange their experiences on this kind of movie that uses a lot of special effects.
"This movie is like a bull with two heads, one head is comedy and the other is action. These days, I have been preparing how to allocate the weight between the two. The final conclusion is that I can only add more of what is missing.
Therefore, this is probably the film with the most intensive special effects and the most action since I became a director."
It turns out that the movie "True Lies" has a variety of tough special effects shots, which are almost twice as many as Cameron's previous Terminator 2. He made a list of the things he wanted to shoot before but never did.
I want to put all the special effects shots into this movie.
This list made Ronald scratch his head, such as riding a horse into an elevator and going to the top floor of a skyscraper to chase bad guys. Another example was being on a helicopter and pulling his wife out of the roof of a car that was about to crash into a bridge.
But what makes people feel the most difficult to shoot is undoubtedly the Harrier fighter jet hovering next to a skyscraper, using machine guns to shoot the terrorists in the building to rescue the daughter. And riding on a mountain road with thick snow.
Fighting on a snowmobile with a large group of bad guys coming in helicopters, killing them one by one...
If the former only requires a lot of money and a lot of preparation work, but is difficult but not impossible, Ronald frowned when he saw the scene of fighting in the snow-covered mountains.
"What's wrong? Which scene do you think is problematic?" Cameron saw his old friend's expression and felt a little nervous, so he asked.
"It's this snow scene scene..."
"This? I thought you were going to say it was a Harrier fighter jet. The relationship you introduced to me was very strong. Those Marine Corps pilots are great and their work style is very tough. They never mentioned difficulties. As long as I made a request, they would do it.
It can be done.
The snow scene scene is actually nothing. Helicopters are something I am familiar with. Arnold (Schwarzenegger)’s skills are a small problem in dealing with a fight of this level."
"That's not what I'm worried about, Jim. I'm worried about the snow..."
"What's wrong with the snow?" Cameron didn't understand at all.
"Let me tell you about the boat scene I just filmed..."
Ronald told Cameron about all the difficulties he encountered while filming Forrest Gump fishing for shrimp.
Just like Cameron's idea of the snow scene, the shrimp boat scene seemed very simple. But the seemingly problem-free water brought him endless troubles.
At first, the shaking of the ship caused by the water surface was out of sync with the shaking of the camera and the shaking of the actors, making the sample completely unusable.
Among them, there is a shot of Forrest Gump climbing up from under the boat and smiling and talking to Lieutenant Dan, and another scene where after hearing the news that his mother was ill, he couldn't help but jump into the sea and swim back to the shore. Due to climbing up and down, the boat was more damaged.
Due to the shaking, I had to do a lot of experiments. Finally, I found a non-shaking filming platform by using a tower crane to fix the camera and separate it from the ship.
The subsequent storm scene was even more miserable. Ronald specially received a jet fighter engine from the US military base and came to the scene to use it as a blower to simulate the trouble caused to Lieutenant Dan and Forrest when a hurricane came.
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But the blower increased the difficulty of filming, and it was difficult for the two leading actors to perform in this harsh climate. If the jet engine was close, the actor's face would be deformed by the strong wind, and he could not speak. If it was far away,
The power of the wind and rain is not enough, and the sample looks like an ordinary wind and wave, without the sense of challenge on the edge of life and death.
In the end, I tried for a full week before I found a solution. The wind and rain were dealt with separately. The jet engine created some strong winds in the distance and stirred up the waves on the water. A traditional large blower was used nearby to face the problem under the tower crane.
Blow on the fire hose, causing a heavy rain that blows across your face.
Due to the difficulty of filming, the two actors suffered greatly. The filming was finally completed, and the last scene of rain and sunshine was very simple compared to the previous scenes. After the filming was completed, many staff members
I drank too much at the party. Some people were so drunk that they yelled that if they kept filming for one more day, they would join forces and go on strike.
"If I learned anything from this, it is to remain in awe of natural water bodies when shooting outdoors. If you shoot scenes on boats in the future, you will either build a model ship to keep it stable, or use computer special effects to synthesize it in post-production. In natural water bodies
The scenes on the boat were filmed there, it really wasn’t done by humans.”
"Yeah, yeah, what you said makes sense. I'm also a little worried now about whether there will be any problems on the mountain road. The snow is too thick and the helicopter will lift the snow..."
"Or maybe it's too cold. When I was filming the hurricane scene, I had to take a break after ten minutes, otherwise the staff and actors wouldn't be able to bear it. Once soaked in water and coupled with the strong wind, the whole person would lose body temperature very quickly..."
"Damn, what you said makes sense. I have to think of alternatives. Do you have any suggestions?" Cameron thought of those people fighting in the snow, grabbing helicopters, scuffling, exploding, and jumping from helicopters.
The stunt of jumping onto the snowmobile and then driving off made me feel a little excited.
Such an intensive action scene, if the temperature is low and there is strong wind, let alone Schwarzenegger, even if the real T-800 humanoid robot comes, it may not be able to complete it.
"Let me tell you, I really don't know. At that time, I wanted to follow Roger Corman's teachings and tear out the whole scene of catching shrimps in the storm from the script. It would be over and no longer filmed..."
Ronald still has lingering fears when he thinks of the difficult shooting days.
"Hahaha, if it doesn't work, I have to do this." Cameron thought of Roger Corman's typical action. If there is not enough time to shoot, the difficulty is too high to shoot, or the actor's performance is not up to standard, he will
On the spot, the pages that exceeded the plan and budget were torn out, and the scene was deleted on the spot.
However, I heard that Ronald was going to use blue-screen real-life shooting and post-processing of computer effects to shoot many of Forrest Gump’s special effects scenes. I was very interested and asked Ronald a lot about the content.
This method of combining real-life shots of actors with historical archival images, or special effects models and computer-generated images, has become a new direction for Hollywood commercial blockbusters since Jurassic Park.
This big dinosaur, in particular, has been devastating in all distribution markets around the world. Ambitious commercial film directors in Hollywood are all focusing on the visual spectacle that this kind of special effects can create to do research on whether they can combine it with their own strengths to create unprecedented
image comes out.
…
After Cameron visited Ronald's special effects studio, he also found it novel and decided to think about the special effects of Forrest Gump after filming True Lies.
By the time work started the next day, Tom Hanks had generally recovered his energy and ran to Paramount's studio to listen to the special effects engineers' introduction to the shooting method.
"So that's it? How do you want me to make a movie? How do you make this?"
Tom Hanks didn't expect that Forrest Gump would require him to perform such a strange performance. Since he started in the industry, he has never done such a weird special effect.
On the TV nearby, there was a video of General Johnson conferring a medal on a soldier. This was a sergeant major named Sammy L. Davis. His family experience was more like Lieutenant Dan than Forrest Gump.
This person’s grandfather served in the Spanish-American War, his father served in World War II, his brother served in the Korean War, and he participated in the Vietnam War. When the other party was only 25 meters away from his artillery position, he still fired artillery and artillery fire against the opponent’s artillery position.
Cannon fire versus bombardment.
Later, he also used an inflatable boat to rescue three injured American soldiers along the Mekong River (this section is more similar to Forrest Gump). For this, he won the highest honor of the US military, the Congressional Medal of Honor (he was among a group of others who were awarded the Johnson Medal).
Only four people).
He was selected because he is about the same height as Tom Hanks. When the time comes, the head of Sammy L. Davis in the scenes such as holding hands and receiving awards will be replaced by Tom Hanks's head.
Just fine.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Because the heroic deeds of the two people coincided, when the crew contacted Sammy L. Davis, the other party was very happy to authorize them to use this footage.
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"That's it, Tom. Look at this footage of their testing." Ronald showed Tom Hanks the footage of the sergeant major and the engineer from the special effects team changing their heads.
"Oh, it's really surprising. This effect can be achieved just like this?" Tom Hanks was really surprised.
"Yes, the effect is very good. But the premise is that you must completely listen to the special effects team's arrangements. You have to shoot how they say."
"OK, you don't mind, I'll just listen to them." Tom Hanks glanced at Ronald.
According to the tradition of Hollywood, on the set, the director is a general who speaks his mind. Whatever he says, the people below will do it. How to shoot the shot, how to place the camera, how to perform the actors, everything is based on the director's decision.
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Some actors can put forward their own performance opinions, and the director of photography may also be able to express his own ideas. But after the director makes a decision, everyone must abide by it. No director will give up the final decision-making power on the set.
In this kind of special effects shooting, it was the special effects team instead of the director who told the actors how to shoot, which made Tom and Hanks feel strange.
"That's not it, director!"
As soon as the first shot was taken, the special effects team came over to discuss with Ronald. Tom Hanks stood aside, stretched out his hand, shook hands with the stuntman opposite, and then the two started talking.
"I heard that you were injured. Where was the injury?"
"On the ass."
"Oh, that must be very beautiful, I would like to take a look."
But this handshake and conversation scene must be strictly based on the images from that year. There can be no mistakes.
It was the first time for Tom Hanks to shoot this kind of scene. He had no experience, and he always got the wrong rhythm with the actor who played Commander Johnson.
"I'm thinking about it, maybe we can synchronize the images from that year here so that the actors can see the actions on TV, so that they can match the rhythm." Ken Ralston, the head of special effects shooting, quietly talked to Rona
De expressed his thoughts.
"Just follow what you said...you will direct the next step..." Ronald thought it was feasible.
When people at the scene heard this, they all looked over and wondered what happened to the director. He had handed over all the director's power.
"Action!"
Ronald watched Ken Ralston finish his explanation, and he just asked to start. Sure enough, after his command, this shooting went much smoother.