On the afternoon of January 4th, Tang An led the crew to the bank of the Yangtze River in a small city in northern Hunan. This is the location with the most scenes in the movie, the riverside battlefield.
The actors all went to a nearby studio to rest, and Tang An brought various departments and the action director team to the scene for inspection.
After more than a month of construction work by hundreds of employees, this empty beach has turned into a huge battlefield.
All previous fight scenes involving alien creatures have been completely simulated on the computer through three-dimensional animation, and the entire battlefield was determined through repeated calculations and drills by the action director and special effects director.
Including where there are hills and where there are pits, every detail of the entire battlefield of more than 60,000 square meters has been taken care of.
Holding the computer and walking around, I looked at the three-dimensional images on it, as well as the fights between aliens and soldiers simulated using three-dimensional animations.
The alien creatures in the movie move quickly and have many "tentacles", often sweeping across a large area at once.
A certain action shot involves five or six group performers, and a complete design must be made in advance. Which way each group performer falls, and what posture they are in, must be simulated repeatedly.
I walked all the way from the river to the shore holding my laptop in my hand, looking at the computer screen and forming pictures in my mind.
"At this location, make a pit of about 30 square meters and nearly three meters deep."
Tang An stood at one place and turned around to take stock.
"Deng Chaogang on the right rear was hit by a falling plane when he landed. Liu Ye was at this position, and the air wave generated by the explosion directly pushed him into the pit."
Tang An drew a rough location with his hand towards the person in charge of the set design team.
"Okay, Director Tang." Chen Jinhe, who was in charge of setting the scene, responded immediately, turned to his men and gave instructions to remember the location.
The entire battlefield circled around and retreated into the distance to prepare to return to the set.
"Director Cheng, Director Li, take the next week to familiarize yourself with all the action scenes on the entire battlefield and see if there is anything that needs improvement."
This film has a lot of action scenes, so Tang An found Li Zongzhi, who had previously collaborated with Wu Jing on "Spike", and is considered one of the most outstanding action directors of the young generation in Hong Kong.
Later, Yu Dong invited Cheng Xiaodong over, and two generations of the best action directors escorted the action scenes of the movie.
"Don't worry, Director Tang, we will make sure everything is foolproof." Cheng Xiaodong and Li Zongzhi nodded.
Tang An then asked Zhao Jun, "Mr. Zhao, is there no problem in sealing off this area of more than 6,000 square meters for a few months?"
Zhao Jun immediately replied, "No problem, the local government welcomes our filming."
Tang An nodded. This riverside battlefield and airport are both within the scope of this small city. In addition to paying some expenses, there was also an additional public relations fee of nearly 1 million, otherwise it would not have gone so smoothly.
This is not even the most troublesome. The film will use a large number of fighter jets, armed helicopters, large transport aircraft, and dozens of warships capable of carrying tanks and armored vehicles.
Han Sanping was of great help here, otherwise he would hardly be able to apply because he had little connections with the government or the military, but he would still owe a huge favor.
I took a car to the nearby studio, where I saw a military base with a total area of more than 150,000 square meters, three runways, hundreds of fighter jets, transport planes, armed helicopters, and a large number of armored vehicles and tanks.
However, most of them are empty shells, and only a few of them are real, used to shoot an overlooking panoramic scene.
The layout of this military base was specially designed by experts to be as reasonable as possible, otherwise it will look messy.
In fact, if you save money, you can scale down and build a model.
But since we have to take the photo, we need to take it bigger. This full overlooking shot needs to cover the entire base from beginning to end.
We had dinner at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, spent two hours preparing, and officially started shooting at 6 o'clock in the evening.
In a huge military base of more than 100,000 square meters, thousands of group performers in military uniforms are distributed throughout the military base, standing guard and patrolling. From time to time, transports land and take off, bringing in large quantities of ammunition and materials.
Armored vehicles and tanks return to camp after a day of training.
Two helicopters shot in the sky one behind the other, and it took 4 flights back and forth to capture the entire scene.
The sky is getting dark, and the entire military base made of steel (wood coated with a layer of paint) stands quietly in the wilderness, exuding a cold and dangerous atmosphere, like a dormant beast, coupled with the unique texture of film,
I fixed the lighting later and it couldn't be more shocking.
"good!"
"Everyone, let's call it a day. Xu Tao will bring someone to deliver the lunch boxes."
"Go to bed early, recuperate your energy, and get up early tomorrow."
Tang An stopped eating with them. He had to deal with the local government bureaucrats and took Zhao Jun and Zhao Lei to fend off the wine.
I got up at 6 o'clock the next morning to prepare for shooting.
It's such a big military base, and the entire crew lives there, so there's no need to rent a hotel.
There is also a special kitchen that employs a large number of chefs, some of whom cook large meals for extras and ordinary employees, and some who specialize in cooking meals for middle-level crew members and above and actors.
It's not as scary as those big-name celebrities who would eat a dozen dishes at a time. Tang An's food at best only had two meat dishes, one vegetable dish and one soup.
It just tastes a little better, after all, the chef was hired at a high price.
The crew spends money everywhere, so we should save whatever we can.
After finishing breakfast in three or two mouths, drinking the milk, and watching the actors eating slowly, Tang An said with a smile.
"Eat enough, don't run out of energy while filming."
"Director Tang, I'm full." Deng Chao wiped his mouth and said.
"Director Tang, I'm ready."
Everyone put down their bowls one after another to indicate that they could start makeup shooting.
Tang An glanced at the bowls in front of them and saw that no one had finished eating them all.
"Let me tell you, you must do 50 push-ups later. Don't blame me if you don't eat enough and have no energy."
"Director Tang, is this really a good shot?" Everyone said with a bitter smile.
This push-up is not something they can just deal with. It is not easy for them to do 50 push-ups continuously according to military standards.
And God knows if one line can be passed, or it will fall apart after a few more shots.
"Don't tell me that you can't even do 50 standard push-ups during this period of exercise." Tang An asked after looking around.
50 is still a small number. In the movie, a group of 100 people do two sets. If they weren't afraid that they would collapse from exhaustion if they did too much, they wouldn't look like soldiers by then.
How could a soldier who had actually been on the battlefield do two hundred push-ups and just lie down on the ground?
Ignoring their sad looks, Tang An walked to the road in the center of the base and started filming the first scene, which was the scene where Liu Ye was thrown into the base at the beginning.