Chatty Hollywood

Now that she has discussed the plan with River Phoenix, Charlotte has begun to prepare.

The first thing, of course, is to once again confirm the shape of the Headless Horseman.

He comes from hell,

Holding fear in hand,

A nightmare under my seat,

Death follows behind.

This is the conceptual description of the Headless Horseman given by the director.

It's quite poetic, but it would be a lie if the makeup team relied on these few words to determine the look of the Headless Horseman.

According to the general Hollywood commercial movie process, the process involving the modeling design of such an important monster is actually quite complicated.

First, the director or producer should combine the script and give a basic concept;

If the director's own drawing skills are sufficient, he can directly provide basic concept drawings, which are sketches;

After that, professional artists will step in to expand the concept drawing into a line drawing, and then refine the line drawing and fill in colors to form the final original painting;

There are often iterations in this process, because many people from producers to directors and screenwriters will review from multiple angles, and it is very normal to overturn and start over.

And even if the original painting is completely finalized, it will not immediately enter the implementation stage.

The painters also need to give various angles and postures of the image based on the original painting as a reference for production.

To a certain extent, this process is basically consistent with the 3D character image production process in the game industry.

However, in the later implementation part, the difference between the two industries becomes obvious.

First, unlike the game industry, which relies mostly on computers to draw images due to cost constraints, the film industry, which has deep pockets, is often more inclined to use motion capture technology.

The former relies heavily on the production staff's 3D skeleton construction level and action adjustment level, especially the production staff's imagination.

Although the technical difficulty of the latter is also not low, it can be adjusted based on the captured real-person movements, which is much more targeted in comparison.

certainly,

There are also some film crews who have no money and cannot afford expensive motion capture technology. But don’t forget, there is another profession in the film industry called makeup artist!

If we can’t afford fancy motion capture, we can also directly make up real actors into monsters!

The gaming industry is completely incomparable in this regard.

After all, unlike movies where the scenes can be used after being shot, the 3D characters used in games need to be placed on the computer and called at any time according to the player's game progress.

The needs of the two are fundamentally different.

And this is not just the monster shape of the two industries, but the fundamental reason why the final presentation is so different.

Especially in terms of pure 3D monster modeling.

You know, after the 3D model is made, it needs to be mapped on it to achieve the shape in the original painting.

Without these materials called skins or textures, the 3D model is just a three-dimensional honeycomb composed of small grids.

And every time you post a picture of a detailed part, you can think that there is a face at the corresponding position.

The more faces a 3D model has, the higher its level of detail.

This is the same as the circle-cutting method used when calculating pi.

The more sides the cut polygon has, the closer it becomes to a circle.

At this time, the 3D models in the game industry and the film industry are actually basically the same.

But when we consider the playback medium, the problem arises

There are many carriers for electronic games, but whether it is a mobile phone, a computer or a dedicated game console, the performance is limited considering the cost.

This also means that the number of faces that can support the model is limited.

If it is a single model, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of faces can still be used. However, considering that in games, a large number of models and other particle effects often appear on the same screen, the number of faces will directly drop by one digit and become Thousands or even hundreds.

This is an inevitable hardware problem.

If you insist on it, no matter how good or unique the game is, it will eventually become two "masterpieces"

"Graphics Crisis" and "Screen Terror".

Well, maybe Pixel Wars too.

In comparison, the 3D models in the movie are much happier

For large movie screens, there is basically no need to consider the problem of jamming caused by too many screens.

It can be said that as long as the production staff's dedicated graphics workstation can hold up during production, 3D models can be used in movies.

This leads to the fact that compared to the game industry, the 3D models used in the film industry have an order of magnitude advantage in terms of surface precision.

This is just like using hundreds of people to face an army of 100,000 people with the same weapons and training levels. There is basically no need to imagine other endings except being crushed.

**********

Of course, now in 1995, both 3D special effects technology and motion capture technology are still far from mature.

After the crew of "Sleepy Hollow" completed the design of the original painting, the method of bringing the headless horseman into reality is still the most commonly used makeup technique in Hollywood.

only

"This is different from what I imagined!"

Looking at the Headless Horseman, who was made up by stuntman Rob Inge, Charlotte always felt dissatisfied.

"I think it's pretty good!"

The speaker is Christopher Walken, the real Headless Horseman, or rather, the actor who was the Headless Horseman when he still had a head.

Okay, that's a little weird.

But according to the script, the Headless Horseman has a lot of action scenes involving horseback riding and fighting. Ordinary actors can't do this, so action doubles are indispensable.

In particular, in order to reflect the horror of the Headless Horseman when he was alive, that is, as a Hessian mercenary, Charlotte invited Christopher Walken, who had won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, to play this role.

This famous Hollywood golden supporting actor has superb acting skills. Even if he doesn't have a single line, he can probably show the terrifying aura of the Headless Horseman.

But the problem is

Walken was born in 1943 and is currently 52 years old.

It's really too much to expect him at this age to personally perform in action scenes.

So, the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow actually had three actors starring Christopher Walken, as well as two action stunt doubles.

Among them, Robert Inge, who is good at equestrian skills, is responsible for the equestrian actions, while Ray Park, who is skilled in several Chinese Kung Fu moves and is agile, is responsible for the combat scenes on the ground.

These two stand-ins were specially selected by Lao Qiang based on Christopher Walken's body shape.

In this case, it is normal for Walken to look at their outfits and give some advice to avoid being confused.

In comparison, the later "Avengers" is called exaggeration

There, there is a thin man in the action double of Black Widow played by Scarlett Johansson.

Many of the action scenes in the movie that show off Black Widow's figure were all done by this cross-dressing tycoon with prosthetics tied to her butt and chest...

Of course, those are all matters for later generations and have nothing to do with the current "Sleepy Hollow".

Now, Charlotte may feel that there is something wrong with the Headless Horseman's appearance. In fact, it is not that she thinks it is a gangster, nor is there any detail error.

In fact, the shape of this headless horseman was directly borrowed from the shape of the headless horseman in the original world version of "Sleepy Hollow".

There is no difference between the two.

"But why do you still feel like something is missing?"

The director was thinking hard.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up

"That's what it should be!!"

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