"Twelve Zodiac Signs" will be finalized in May and is expected to be released near the end of this year. And Fang Yi's new film will start preparations now, because it is a war film after all.
The preparation period for a movie ranges from days to weeks to months, and war movies happen to be one of the longest. Sometimes a few months is not enough, and it takes a year or two, because it needs to be combined with historical materials.
consistent.
According to historical data, the volunteers entered the country to participate in combat operations in October 1950. At that time, there was heavy snowfall in North Korea, and a series of influential combat operations also took place during the winter, such as the Battle of Changjin Lake from November 27 to December 24.
, the temperature was as low as more than 30 degrees below zero. During the Battle of Shangganling from October 14 to November 25, 1952, the temperature was also more than 20 degrees below zero.
There is an introductory novel about the Korean war called "Black Snow". The author describes the scene at that time: "Snowflakes were falling from time to time in the sky, and the sky and the earth were vast. But under the bombardment of artillery shells all over the mountains and fields, even the snowflakes on the ground were black."
——Now from a technical point of view, there are two ways to shoot this kind of scene. One is to go to the northeastern plains and wait until winter and find a local location with similar terrain. The other is to build a snow scene in a video studio.
Fang Yi chose the latter.
The filming of "Zodiac" lasted five months. If the preparation time is included, the filming period must be longer. Once spring arrives, the crew can only stare at the melting snow in a daze. According to the rules of the industry, it
It will most likely take two winters to shoot, which means it will take at least nearly two years.
Fang Yi is not willing to do such things like the King of Sunglasses and Chen Kaige.
However, despite early booking of a giant video studio as the filming location for the Battle of Changjin Lake, Fang Yi still needs to put it into practice to see how far Base's technology can simulate it and whether it can completely replace real-life shooting.
Decided to do a small project to verify it first.
Lao Ke and William took the lead in the technical preparatory work, and soon produced preliminary results:
Base spent three days building a small-scale scene, and asked the special actors to put on military uniforms and lie on the green carpet. They did nothing but stared straight ahead resolutely, as if there were a group of enemies in front of them.
Then it took another four days to do the special effects. The two bosses did the hard work themselves. After repeated verification, Fang Yi was asked to check it. The video was only twenty-seven seconds long, and it probably showed a sniper lying on the snowfield.
Stay still if possible to reduce physical exertion. After he found that there were no enemies, he gently pulled his two hands back and rubbed them up and down. This was to keep the blood flowing and prevent his hands from being completely frozen and unable to pull the trigger.
Fang Yi met a Korean War veteran at the 301 General Hospital before. He said that he was too cold and found that when the enemy was about to stand up and shoot, he was shot down. Because he thought he was moving as fast as he could,
In fact, to the other party, he was so cold that his movements seemed to be in slow motion.
This is the plot of the short film, but what really shows the skill is the scene of the short film. The heavy snow, the trenches ignited by gunpowder smoke, the yellow hospital tents with a strong sense of the times, the wards with simple but complete furnishings, the woods with rich layers of light and shadow, the vague
The visible fog in the forest...the element details in the scene fill the atmosphere, creating a realistic winter battlefield.
Fang Yi read it several times and asked: "What is true and what is false?"
William answered before Lao Ke: "A few simple wooden frames and a few curtains, these are real...the rest are all special effects."
Fang Yi was surprised: "You mean even the tent is fake!"
"Yes, the curtain is real and the tent is fake."
"So, can your set be moved? For example, set the tent on fire or something."
William chuckled, which meant that it must be impossible. He and Lao Ke looked at each other and said: "It is definitely possible to do it regardless of the cost, but it is not necessary. Why not find a real tent to burn... We are just technical here
Check it out online, what do you think?"
"That's right." Fang Yi nodded. "But there are still a lot of bugs, which were not made by the Volunteer Army at that time. You should refer to this from the Soviet-German battlefield. The Korean War was not like this at the time. You have to do more homework...
…”
Lao Ke shrugged: "Hospitals, woods, field fortifications... I thought these can be applied everywhere."
Fang Yi didn't know what to say for a while.
After all, it has been decades since this kind of movie has been made for many years, and Lao Ke is an American, so of course he does not understand the Korean War.
In fact, compared to the Battle of Changjin Lake, the subsequent Cheorwon Blockade was more in line with heroism.
Imagine that you are a soldier of the 189th Division. Your division commander received an order from a higher-level leader to be responsible for blocking the US military in Cheorwon for more than 3 days. The 189th Division has about 9,400 people. There is no favorable terrain and no field operations.
There were no field hospitals in the fortifications, only light-armed infantry. In order to complete the task, the division commander made an incredible decision to split the entire division into more than 200 small units to take charge of more than 200 positions, requiring each position to be held as long as possible.
On this 500-square-kilometer battlefield, you know that you are just one of them, and there is a high probability that you will be buried here. You are thousands of kilometers away from home, and everything here is different from home. The only things that accompany you are the birch forest and the sunshine.
, a few bullets, homemade grenades, a handful of fried rice, and endless loneliness.
But you don’t feel scared, because the reason why you came here is so that your home will not be as dilapidated as here. This was indeed the thought of many people in the Volunteer Army at that time. It is recorded in historical materials that quite a few soldiers came to North Korea.
After seeing the ruined Korean village, he was moved by the scene and aroused stronger fighting spirit. In a letter sent to his family, he vowed to repel the enemy at all costs.
Fang Yi is quite satisfied with the effect of the experimental film produced by Lao Ke. However, the actual shooting of this kind of film is not just for him to shoot the head alone, more people are involved in the preparation of the film. If it works, not only the base
Special effects companies, as well as Republic Era, DJ drone providers that have not appeared for a long time, and a series of large-scale heavy equipment manufacturing central enterprises headquartered in the capital that have been connected through "Zodiac"... They will all use their various
Participate in film production in various ways.
On the last day of May, Republic Era held a directors' meeting.
Participants included Fang Yi, Guo Fan, Lu Yang, and other sponsor representatives mentioned. Needless to say, the coordination work at the meeting. Guo Fan had questions about the structure of Fang Yi's story. After the meeting, he found Fang privately.
Yi:
"Modern people accidentally stumbled into the Korean War, and participated in the Battle of Changjin Lake and the Cheorwon Blockade...I won't say much about technical matters. Now it seems that it can be completed. What I mainly want to say is the story structure.
, the structure of this story seems a bit... uh..."
Guo Fan tried to be tactful again and again, "Top-heavy?"