If the inherent culture of film and television has national boundaries, then the art under the language of film and television lenses is adaptable to the world regardless of national boundaries.
This stereoscopic shot in "Hope" shocked all the teachers and students when it was first screened at Beijing Film Academy. Now it is shown at the Cannes screening, and without exception, it also amazed the foreigners present.
Chazelle suppressed the extreme surprise in his heart and lowered his head to record the movie on his laptop.
He deleted the movie-watching essay he had just written. Invalid scenes? Delayed plot? None of these exist.
Without these "invalid lenses", the shock of the stereoscopic lens in front of you would drop by a notch.
“This is a combined shot-to-shot movement without post-synthesising,” the companion next to me exclaimed.
"Yes." Chazelle nodded repeatedly. It was clear to them as directors whether the shot was a single shot or a post-production collaboration.
He recalled the shot just now and made a viewing report in the document: [This is a one-shot combination shot, starting from an establishing shot, vertically shooting the door on the "wall", reflecting the normality of going out on the "wall".
Senses.]
The establishing shot refers to the beginning or end of a scene, when only a small fixed frame appears in the shot. The frame can be people or props, and it mainly reflects the inversion of the subject of the frame.
For example, in "Hope", an establishing shot tells the audience that there is a door on the wall, a very ordinary door.
All viewers thought that when the male and female protagonists finally found the exit, the camera made other movements to tell the audience that the door was originally on the ground.
Just like in a suspense film, the establishing shot freezes a person's back.
When all the viewers thought that this person was the murderer, however, when the camera captured the murderer's face, he was not the murderer that the audience thought.
Therefore, the effect of the establishing shot is to reverse the scene before and after to break the audience's perception.
Such shots rarely appear in film and television, because the establishing shot must follow the plot and reasonably "deceive" the audience. It must break the audience's perception and at the same time have strong logic to make the audience recognize the lens language.
This places high demands on the script, as well as the screenwriter's imagination and logical thinking ability.
Chazelle believed that the establishing shot just now was undoubtedly a great success, and it simply "deceived" the audience to the point that even he and nearby professionals did not find anything unusual.
This lens is really powerful and crucial.
He continued his report: [Then there is an arc motion shot...]
Chazelle suddenly stopped, realizing that his brain was running out.
In his understanding, the arc-shaped movement lens generally refers to the horizontal arc-shaped movement of the lens. There are generally three ways to move the lens.
One is to place the camera on a ground slide rail and use the paved slide rail path to move, which is called a slide rail lens.
One is to place the camera on a pulley stabilizer, and push the stabilizer to move freely. The world's first camera stabilizer was invented by a camera called Steadicam. This kind of lens is also called a Steadicam lens.
One is that the cameraman holds the camera in his hand and moves it in an arc around the subject completely artificially, which is also a conventional arc motion lens.
Michael Bay, the director of "Transformers", is the originator of this type of lens, and Christopher Nolan, a young director who has become famous, also has a special liking for arc-shaped movement lenses, which shows the importance of this type of lens in science fiction.
But no matter what kind of arc lens it is, it is completely different from the arc lens in "Hope" just now.
People understand that the curved lens is horizontal, but the lens just now is vertical.
How is this done?
Chazelle was filled with questions and shock, but as a professional director, his rich knowledge allowed him to quickly make a guess.
He can make up a picture in his mind.
The cameraman is in front of the crane machine console and operates the crane camera with his left hand to make vertical arc movements, and must keep the focus of the moving lens consistent to reflect the subject's sense of space.
Then, the right hand remotely adjusts the focal length of the camera on the instrument screen, allowing the camera to zoom, so that the picture slowly becomes larger, showing a dynamic three-dimensional sense of the entire space.
When operating with your left and right hands, keep your eyes firmly on the screen on the monitor to see if there are any mistakes in the movement of the camera.
At the same time, the headphones worn by the cameraman must also follow the director's instructions to determine whether the camera movement meets the requirements.
In other words, the camera operator operating this lens needs to be multi-tasking!
In addition, the shot script corresponding to this super "3D" lens also needs to provide lens standards.
"What kind of team is this? It's incredible." Chazelle said with emotion.
If he hadn't known that "Hope" was China's first science fiction film, and if he hadn't known that the team members of "Hope" were all internationally unknown, he would have thought that the team came from Hollywood.
This shot alone is comparable to any classic shot in Hollywood science fiction films.
He made a report: [The subsequent arc shot revealed the mystery of the establishing shot, showing that the entire space was tilted.
The curved lens moves in the panoramic direction, keeping the focus consistent during the movement, and the inlay continuously slides the zoom lens.
Finally, the camera freezes horizontally, with the main subject being the painting on the wall, the male and female protagonists on the wall with their backs to the camera, and the door on the wall at the feet of the male and female protagonists, forming a locked picture shot containing a double lens, completing the 3D space with a high degree of completion.
Lens rendering of the picture.]
A two-person shot means that two people appear in the camera.
The lock shot is similar to the establishing shot. They both freeze a picture for a few seconds or longer. The difference lies in the size and role of the scene in the shot.
The establishing shot is a small scene, only highlighting the particularity of people or props, and represents the beginning of a reversal.
The lock-frame scene is a large scene, usually a large panorama, which contains all the people and objects in the scene in front of you and reveals all the answers to the suspense, which represents the end of the reversal.
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! Chazelle concluded at the end of this lens report: [It starts with an establishing shot, the process is a vertical arc movement lens and a sliding zoom lens with consistent focus, and ends with
Large panoramic lock-frame lens including two-person lens.】
"A one-shot shot that lasts only about ten seconds is composed of five changing motion shots. It's incredible."
He expressed his second "unbelievable" experience since watching the movie. Compared with the audience who were shocked by the visual impact of the reversal of the scene, he admired the sci-fi lens imagination of the "Hope" crew even more.
force.
"Oh!" Before he had time to think more, he heard the audience exclaim.
The hero and heroine opened the door. Due to the strong air pressure inside and outside, the hero was instantly sucked into the dark passage and disappeared. This caught the entire audience off guard.
Chazelle looked at this scene and expected that the original passage behind the door was a vacuum, which would create a pressure difference and cause the airflow to flow back into the space that originally contained oxygen.
He praised "Hope" for complying with this scientific logic setting. Even if he is not an observer who reports based on the script, this is worthy of his praise as a director.
He made a report: [Subjective perspective shot, using the female protagonist’s perspective as the main lens, watching the male protagonist being sucked into the dark passage, and watching the subject’s condition worsen from the perspective of others, highlighting the weird atmosphere in the suspense, and increasing the tension. 】
Immediately afterwards, another thin rustling sound came from the auditorium. Due to the damage to the gravity system, the objects in the scene began to float slowly. This is also a scientific phenomenon under weightlessness.
Chazelle made a report: [Money shots and large panoramic views of floating objects further increase the suspenseful atmosphere.]
Money shots, also known as special effects shots, were jokingly called money shots by Hollywood directors in the mid-20th century because special effects were too expensive and are still used today.
Chazelle looked at the screen and first revealed the toppling pattern of the scene, which solved the suspense of a scene, but also increased the suspense of the plot - why did the scene toppled?
Then the male protagonist is sucked into the passage, and this sense of suspense spreads the emotional value of tension.
The sudden weightlessness worsened the environment of the male and female protagonists, inspiring the audience's strong desire for the male and female protagonists to escape as soon as possible, which raised the emotional value of tension to a higher level.
"The hero and heroine should be on the Hope Project spaceship." The companion next to him said.
Chazelle nodded. When the spaceship carrying the Hope Project was shown through the library lens, he had a guess. The male and female protagonists were most likely on this spaceship, otherwise the spaceship in the plot would not have been shot.
value and significance.
But seeing it now, this short film seemed to have a lot of twists and turns, and he wasn't quite sure.
But when he saw the phenomenon of weightlessness, he felt a little more confident.
If it is on the earth, there is no need to use a gravity system to balance gravity. Only when the spacecraft is sailing in the universe, does it need to rely on the gravity system to maintain the balance of people and objects.
This is also what he and most people think is a known scientific concept.
Just as he was thinking about it, Chazelle was completely shocked, and everyone in the audience let out disbelieving exclamations.
There is another establishing shot in the picture. Just like the opening of the 3D shot just now, the camera vertically shows the dark passage. The entrance of the passage was originally embedded in the ground. Due to the vertical shooting of the lens, the passage that comes into view becomes horizontal.
The male protagonist slowly walked out of this horizontal passage that looked normal. He walked very slowly and drifted from time to time. This is a normal behavior in a weightless situation.
However, at this moment.
The camera flipped from its original vertical state to a low-angle, horizontal shot before the audience could react, and the heroine was in the frame.
In the picture, the passage turned into the original shape of a "deep well". The female protagonist stood on the edge of the "deep well" and looked down at the male protagonist walking sideways along the "deep well".
"Oh my God!"
“So handsome!”
"how did you do that?"
"Oh My God……"
Chazelle listened to the audience's exclamations. He held his head in his hands and felt a little numb.
The scene in the picture is like the female protagonist looking down at the edge of the rooftop of a high-rise building, while the male protagonist is walking upright on the outer wall of the building and looking at the female protagonist, and the male protagonist and the female protagonist are in a straight line.
direction.
The lens zooms out and the scene becomes larger.
But in the scene that looks bigger, except for the light and shadow of the male and female protagonists, the nearby lighting environment is gray and black.
Chazelle knew that this was a deliberate light and shadow design by the production team of "Hope", but the picture effect presented by this design is simply breathtaking.
Like the audience, he was confused for a moment.
In the environment where the male and female protagonists are located, which one is the normal space? Which one is the split-level space?
"That's so cool!" The companion next to him punched him a few times and said again excitedly: "This shot is so cool!"
Chazelle came back to his senses and nodded repeatedly.
The explosion effect of this lens is by no means weaker than the 3D lens just now.
However, this shot is very simple.
He could imagine that the male protagonist was walking on the ground normally when filming on the set, but during post-production, the normal walking scene was flipped through the software function, making it look like the male protagonist was walking down a deep well in the picture.
Just like coming out.
The female protagonist only needs to stand on the ground and look down. In fact, there is no passage at all on the ground. She only needs to cover it with a piece of green cloth. During post-production, the flipped image of the male protagonist walking will be replaced by the green cloth and spliced with the female protagonist's image.
enough.
If the 3D shot just now requires a top director to research and complete it, the shot in front of me can be easily done by any director in the world, including directing students at the school.
But why has such a simple shot not been made in any movie in the past few decades?
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Why has no director imagined that a simple shot that can produce such an explosive effect has not been imagined before?
Why does such a scene with a full sense of science fiction come from China, and is it the first science fiction film in China?
Chazelle raised three very strong questions in his heart. Recalling that his colleagues in Europe and the United States often laughed at China for not having science fiction in the past, he felt ridiculous now.
Just the 3D shot just now, and the split-level shot now.
These two shots, one before the other, told him what Chinese science fiction is! They told him what China’s science fiction art was! They told him what China’s science fiction lens language is!
Chazelle quickly typed on the keyboard, trying to write a viewing report for this shot.
It was just that he couldn't calm down, and he didn't know how to better explain the beauty of this shot.
He gave up his plan to write a report on this shot immediately and decided to go back and think it through before describing it.
But when it came to his evaluation of this lens, he said two words with admiration: [Perfect.]
Remembering that the 3D lens just now had not yet been evaluated, he slid the document upwards and received the same evaluation: [Perfect.]
Nothing is perfect in the world, and these two words are obviously not rigorous when they appear in the report.
But Chazelle doesn't care about being rigorous or not. The language of these two shots has completely conquered him, and he is sincerely willing to give his highest praise.
He turned his head and looked around. The shock on the faces of many viewers had not subsided for a long time. They were obviously shocked by the explosive visual effects presented by this simple shot.
Under such a mood, when the male and female protagonists met and the shots became routine, everyone in the audience gradually calmed down from the surprise and enjoyment brought by the visual effects.
On the screen, the male and female protagonists go deep into the tunnel in a weightless state, trying to escape as the oxygen gradually depletes over time.
As the scenes became more and more urgent, an atmosphere of urgency and tension enveloped the entire scene, and the audience's hearts became anxious and uneasy following the escape perspectives of the male and female protagonists.
While watching, Chazelle made a report: [During the escape process, the male and female protagonists kept shooting from behind to advance the camera, and the value output of tension reached a very high threshold. 】
The push shot is a commonly used method of moving the camera in film and television dramas. It can push the subject forward from various directions and angles. Among them is the back shot push motion.
Back-shooting is a propulsive movement that follows the direction in which the subject is moving. It does not take pictures of the side or the front, but only the back.
Under this lens language, the effect is as if something is tracking the subject.
"Hope" uses such a lens to give the male and female protagonist an escape plot. In addition, the environment of the passage is dark and deep, the background music is mysterious and eerie, corpses occasionally appear in the room, and the oxygen is getting less and less. It seems that something is following the camera language.
Male and female protagonist.
This simply made the entire audience watch on tenterhooks, and the tense atmosphere reached its peak.
"Excellent." Chazelle gave an excellent evaluation of this lens design.
During this period, the third library scene that appeared in the film also confirmed his suspicion.
In this shot, the last shot of CG editing, the spaceship carrying hope successfully flies into the universe.
"I guessed it right." Chazelle smiled.
He had already speculated on the main line of the story.
It's nothing more than a disaster on the earth. Scientists develop a spacecraft that carries human hope, intending to find a planet for human survival in the universe.
A scientist father was grieving for his son and daughter who died in the disaster, and used genetic engineering technology to clone his son and daughter. However, something happened to the spaceship in the universe, and all the scientists on board died. The cloned son and daughter became the male and female protagonists, and also became human beings.
hope.
In other words, the male and female protagonists are definitely on the spaceship at present, and the spaceship is in the universe.
The reason why it was determined that the spacecraft was in the universe was not only due to the damage to the gravity system causing the object to lose weight, but also an inadvertent lens, through which the starry sky outside could be seen through the window.
This made him more confident in his speculation, and he believed that many people present had the same speculation.
However, when the short film came to the end and the male and female protagonists opened a hatch at the last moment, the scene outside made the audience burst into incredible exclamations.
"Oh my god, you said the spaceship was in the universe, you guessed it wrong!"
"My God, where is this, an alien planet?"
"This is so shocking. It turned out to be a spaceship crashing into the sea. Who would have imagined this?"
"..."
As the camera slowly rises to the top of the camera, the truth about the scene in the "Hope" short film is revealed.
Under the starry sky and Milky Way that envelopes the universe, this is a planet entirely covered with oceans. A huge spaceship is inserted upside down in the ocean. The male and female protagonists are looking up at the stars outside a hatch platform at the rear.
They took off their protective shields and breathed oxygen freely. This shows that this planet has oxygen, and it also shows that this is the "hope" of mankind.
Chazelle and his companion looked at each other, each with a wry smile and surprise in their eyes.
"Did you expect this to be the ending?"
"I want to get a ghost!"
Chazelle shook his head, this was another big reversal.
He recalled the entire short film and detailed the twists and turns in it.
The first twist is that the male and female protagonists are clones.
The second reversal, the scene is a dumping pattern.
In the third twist, the spaceship has an accident and people die. The male and female clones are the hope of mankind.
The fourth reversal is that the spaceship is not in the universe, but on an alien planet. The male and female protagonists still seem to be floating after opening the hatch. Although there are no lines to explain, this detail tells everyone the connection between this alien planet and the earth.
The difference in gravity caused the spacecraft to crash into the planet. Even with the strong gravity of the planet, weightlessness would occur.
The fifth reversal is this alien planet full of oceans.
A 20-minute short film can present five surprising or shocking reversals, and there are various details to fill in the underlying scientific logic.
Chazelle sighed with emotion: "Unless a miracle happens, this is the Palme d'Or for short films at Cannes."
The companion nodded in approval: "This is the best science fiction short film I have ever seen. Whether it is the story, rhythm or shots, it has a rich imagination that can connect logic."
At this time, the words of producers Chu Xuan and Liu Yifei appeared on the screen, indicating that the short film was over.
With a "wow" sound, the audience burst into very warm applause. Some foreigners even stood up and expressed their deep love for "Hope".