The early stage of filming went smoothly and the scheduled time was well ahead of schedule, so Tang An was not in a hurry to rush to Xiangjiang immediately.
From the early preparations to now, the crew has been exhausted after several months of busy work, so they can just take advantage of this time to take a break.
On the morning of the 9th, Tang An came to the post-production center of Huairou Film and Television Base to inspect the production of film special effects.
Generally, the pre-production and post-production of movies are separated. Some scenes do not have to wait until the finished film is released, and can be started first.
Last year I was still sleeping at someone's desk, but in a little over a year, I've already made my third movie.
Under the building, Chen Yanjun, director of the production center, was already waiting there. When he saw him coming, he immediately took two steps forward and greeted him with a smile on his face.
"Director Tang is here!"
"Director Chen, I haven't seen you for a long time. I'm here to see how the special effects are going. Don't you think it's troublesome for me?" Tang An laughed.
"No, no, how can this be possible? Director Tang has to wait for his decision in many places!" Chen Yanjun said quickly.
Just kidding, the post-production special effects is equivalent to 20 million yuan, and their entire post-production center cannot receive a few orders of this size in a year.
Although what they received was not real money, in addition to a production fee, China Film Group also gave them quite generous bonuses!
As a small subsidiary company of China Film Group Corporation, a huge entertainment group, it had been unable to make ends meet before 2004, and even most of their main business was not producing special effects for movies.
TV series, TV movies, cartoons, commercials...
Basically doing everything, there is very little time to actually do movie special effects.
That is to say, starting from Tang An, three consecutive movies made their center not only turn around from losses to profits, but even the appearance of the entire company changed.
For a price of 20 million, we must give people an effect worth more than 20 million, which is no better than those producers who are only willing to spend a few hundred thousand to fool the audience.
"Director Tang, come on in quickly. The model of the car chase scene is ready. The digital matte extension and CG background extension of the entire Xiangjiang River have been made. Various automated CG weapons have been simulated. In order to ensure the digital synthesis
The picture is authentic and believable, and it is completed at ultra-high resolution..."
Chen Yanjun introduced Tang An as he walked.
"Director Chen is very interested. Of course I can rest assured that these matters will be left to professionals like you. I will take a look this time when I have time!" Tang An nodded frequently.
Pass through the building and come to an open space of several hundred square meters at the back.
The original open space has been transformed into a scaled-down version of the Beijing CBD business center, and a model-making team of hundreds of people are comparing various places with photos and measuring tools.
More than 10 special effects experts in the center are constantly drawing pictures and recording data. Under their feet are various vehicles, including police cars, joint ventures, domestically produced cars, etc.
"Bah bang bang!"
Chen Yanjun clapped his hands and summoned everyone.
"Come here, Director Tang is here for inspection today. Everyone must be well prepared. When the meeting starts, no one will slip up and show our skills to Director Tang!"
After that, he whispered to Tang An, "Director Tang, why don't you say a few words?"
"No, everyone is professional, I'm just here to take a look!"
As expected of a state-run organization, it always talks.
After the disbandment, Chen Yanjun began to explain one by one.
"Previously, our visual effects photography director had taken several 360-degree HDRI pictures of the scene, and then scanned the LIDAR scene to provide accurate and detailed data."
"The combination of HDRI and LIDAR scanning is very important. Each parameter may affect the entire model production. I think you have done a good job. It is simply a concentrated version of CBD!" Tang An nodded.
Through the previous two cooperations, Chen Yanjun also knew that Tang An had a certain understanding of special effects production, so he did not dare to be careless and did his best in every aspect.
He continued, "We also rigged the car for dynamic simulation to make the car's suspension system achieve the correct effect."
"After each car model is selected, we perform simulations on a high-precision ground model scanned by LIDAR, which can track points on the ground and collisions consistent with the weight and specifications of each vehicle.
"For all car collision scenes, we developed a deformation binding system that can control the deformation of the geometry mesh based on the impact point, speed and angle."
"We started from this most basic deformation and continued to add details to improve it, including simulating the interior of the car that will be presented, and adding a second layer of animation. In addition, we also simulated the special effects simulation of small elements such as debris, dust, and smoke in Houdini.
."
As he spoke, Chen Yanjun turned to everyone and shouted, "Old Wang, are you ready to handle the dust and smoke lighting?"
"It's ready, I've tested it many times, I'm sure it'll be fine!" A middle-aged man in the crowd raised his head and answered loudly, and then went back to his own business.
After going through all the places, we started testing.
The staff tied the cars to wires, and the first thing they filmed was that under the influence of superpowers, two cars collided head-on, and a police car hit the two cars from the side.
The three-car collision required special effects photographers to shoot from all angles, and two crane cameras to shoot from mid-air.
The production of special effects is complex and delicate. Every detail, as small as the direction of the collision and deformation of three cars, the vibrations, the surrounding dust, and the range and speed of falling car parts, must be carefully calculated.
After watching them shoot twice, Chen Yanjun brought Tang An to the office.
There is a scene in the film showing the beautiful scenery of Hong Kong seen from a hotel suite.
This is not a real shot. Real shots cannot achieve such a perfect night scene.
Chen Yanjun pointed to the computer screen and explained, "Our photographer spent 6 days shooting a large number of high-resolution twilight and night scenes of Hong Kong."
"By compositing these negatives to construct an ultra-high-resolution animated panorama, the senior digital matte artist added high-rise buildings and neon lights to the scenery to make the scenery more layered. He then continued to construct a 3D digital matte, making the foreground and middle
The parallax effect of the buildings in the scenery is very realistic!”
"The effect is very good. Real shooting would not be able to achieve this effect!" Tang An nodded with satisfaction.
"And here!"
Chen Yanjun led Tang An to another LCD screen, "This is the colorful ray and the heroine's superpower x-ray that we made according to Director Tang's requirements!"
"There are also some "invisible" things that the heroine can see. We started by dividing the real-shot materials into different levels, similar to the operation during stereoscopic conversion."
"Once the layout of the different levels of depth is determined, we replace these layers with elements photographed against a green background. We then model these "invisible" scenes based on LIDAR scans and use simple geometry combined with projection to reconstruct these "invisible" scenes, such as
Hospital hallways and exam rooms.”
“The final step was to animate these elements so that they could switch between live action and X-Ray effects. These extended scenes and CG characters were rendered using different materials, and then the compositor composited them together in FLAME, and
Add artistic touches.”
...
In the next few days, Tang An traveled between home, studio, and base.
Until the afternoon of the 14th, Tang An was invited by Han Sanping to attend the world premiere of "The Promise" at the CPPCC Auditorium in Beijing.
It just so happened that he had made some more contacts, and this was the first time he had seen Han Sanping in a few months. There were still many things to discuss regarding the later announcement!
PS: The typos have been corrected after being put on the shelves. There are still some in the early morning. I will post them before going to bed, but the time is not sure. Please subscribe!!!!