Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"What do you mean by painting?" Ronald had no idea about this ancient stunt.

"Matte Painting may be the earliest stunt technique..." Cameron thought for a long time, but couldn't think of a way to describe it, so he simply dragged Ronald to the office building of Twentieth Century Fox.

In the most famous "Star Wars" scene display in the reception room, Cameron pulled Ronald to look carefully at the scene of the Millennium Falcon being pulled in by the Empire's Star Destroyer with a tractor beam.

There is a detail in this scene that seems ordinary to the audience but seems weird to the filmmakers. It is that the top, bottom, left and right of the tractor beam are empty. But in the real world, there is no such tractor beam, and other things must be used to hang the Millennium Falcon model. How did Lucas film it at that time?

Cameron pointed at the picture and explained to Ronald that it turned out that the Imperial Star Destroyer in this scene was not a real model, but a painting painted by an artist and placed behind the Millennium Falcon spacecraft as a camera. Fake background during shooting. Even those groups of white stormtroopers were obtained through paintings.

This painting had to be done very carefully, so that all the perspectives and lighting were exactly the same as those in the studio, so that the audience would have the illusion that they were seeing a huge Star Destroyer on a black sky.

In the original shot, there was nothing in the distance beyond the Millennium Falcon. With the addition of a background painting made with matte paint, when illuminated by the light, it looked almost like a normal scene.

Finally, by letting the camera mover zoom in and out, the originally stationary background painting can have the effect of moving like when we are watching the scenery outside the window while flying on an airplane, so that the audience cannot tell that this is actually a painting.

It sounds simple, but it is quite complicated to implement. The first thing is to find a suitable painter who has the skills of sketching and gouache painting. No one in the film industry has used this ancient technique for a long time, and whether it can find high-level painters is a problem.

Second, if the camera moves beyond a fixed length, the perspective of the background will change. The traditional Hollywood method is to paint several background matte paintings, so that the puzzle pieces can be carefully connected according to different scenes.

Because if there is a slight discrepancy, the audience will notice that something is wrong. It requires experienced people to carefully handle the interface between the real background and the fake painting. This is why this type of work is called a landscaper.

Likewise, there are not many experienced landscapers left because of the gradual demise of this technique. Even a major studio like 20th Century Fox may not be able to find anyone who can still do this.

However, this same matte painting method of connecting scenes, if done well, also has advantages that other special effects methods do not have, that is, painting can handle details and perspective very realistically. Compared with the current stage of computer special effects and shots shot by other methods, it is even more invisible to the audience.

And compared to setting up scenes and shooting on location, the cost of setting up scenes is almost one-tenth of the cost of the first two.

The benefits are so great, in a place like Hollywood, anything can be done.

Ronald called Joel Silver and told him his special effects ideas. Joel Silver watched the Star Wars tapes carefully and found no flaws. He waved Pamela Anderson away to have a private chat with Ronald.

"Ronald, I have no doubts about your technical judgment. But after all, Fox paid the majority of the money for this movie. Such a cheap special effects method, the budget is only..."

"Who said it's cheap?" Ronald understood the thinking of an independent producer like Joel Silver, who could deduct a little from the production cost. He continued, "This method is almost extinct in Hollywood. It's not that easy to hire experienced painters. You have to let them practice and trial production. Moreover, our movie's special effects shots are very long and require many paintings.

Can these matte landscape paintings be combined with real shots to achieve our effect? ​​Do we need repeated experiments? Do you need to adjust your ideas based on the effect? "

"Hahahaha, you are so right. We are also making important contributions to preserving traditional craftsmanship in Hollywood..." Joel Silver was prompted by Ronald and immediately came up with more than a dozen ways to cheat money. It’s totally okay to increase your budget by five to ten times.

"That's still the old division of labor. I'm responsible for the technical implementation, and you're responsible for the budget..." Ronald also smiled, just in time to find someone to come over and experiment with some other special effects. I won’t use much anyway.

The two co-producers still have a specific division of labor. Joel Silver is in charge of the money, but he doesn't care much about the filming situation. But Ronald was in charge of filming, not the money.

…

The search for suitable matte painting talent went exceptionally smoothly. This is because George Lucas, the boss of Industrial Light and Magic, the largest special effects company in Hollywood, admires Ronald. He told Ronald that after 1985, Industrial Light and Magic also did matte matching work for two blockbusters. We were able to find possibly the only experienced painters and cooperative photographers left in the industry.

"I have maintained a small team at Industrial Light and Magic that specializes in matte painting and setting work. However, recently, only a few small productions such as Steven (Spielberg)'s 'Young Sherlock Holmes' have done this kind of work. Yes, you can use this technology, just so I can maintain this small team."

George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic has many strange technical teams. Except for some popular special effects teams, such as explosions, aerial combat, and matte scenes, there is little demand for niche special effects. They all rely on the boss to support the team.

Lucas was actually very happy that Ronald was able to get them started this time. Otherwise, it would have been quite a financial pressure just for him and Spielberg to start work.

"Hello, my name is John Noel, I'm glad to serve you." The people from the special effects team quickly rushed to Hollywood from Lucas's Star Wars estate to meet Ronald. He had worked on Cameron's "The Abyss" special effects team, and he looked familiar to Ronald.

"Hello, I think we have met before. I have a big project here. The longest continuous shot takes 35 seconds. Come and take a look at the schematic diagram I made."

Ronald made a small model of the airport scene at the end of "Die Hard 2" and showed it to John Knoll, asking him how difficult it was technically to realize it.

"There aren't any big problems with the shooting. It's just that the matte painting is larger, the hole in the middle is larger, and it takes a little more support to support it."

The scene needs to leave a place for the actors to perform, so a hole is left in the painting for them to perform in the hole. When the camera shoots, it can form an illusion and integrate the picture and the characters into one.

With such a large scene and such a long lens, the painting will be several meters high. The painting will take a long time to complete. After completion, it also needs to be fixed in many ways to prevent accidental collapse during filming.

This part is just time-consuming. There are still a few months until shooting, so there is no problem in trying it slowly.

But when Yusei Shangshan, the most skilled among the last few matte set painters in Hollywood and a Japanese-American, came over to take a look, he raised a question.

"This scene is too big. I can't draw it by myself. I have to double the size, otherwise I'm afraid the drawing won't be accurate." Shangshan Yusheng complained about the difficulty. This kind of scene-taking scale is rarely done even in old Hollywood. Except perhaps for a few scenes that Kubrick played with on such a large scale as Spartacus . But that was the golden age of painting and setting, with many people and experience.

"However, if the frame is smaller, the holes in it will also be smaller. We need to have a large panorama during shooting, so it cannot be smaller. The rest of the shots can be shot in smaller versions." Ronald opened the script to him Look, this shot would lose its magic if it didn't move from close-up to long-range.

Ronald did not agree to remove the biggest lens, but Yusheng Shangshan still shook his head. Today's painters are not as good as they used to be. If several people work together, the style cannot be completely unified. He has never dealt with such large-scale special effects, so he did not dare to promise that it would work for a while.

"Excuse me, is John Knoll here?"

During the stalemate, a young man wearing jeans and a baseball cap came to see the special effects supervisor of Industrial Light and Magic.

"He was changing the camera's trajectory from behind. Do you have anything to do with him?" Yusheng Shangshan asked.

"I am his brother Thomas. I came to see him for something... Oh, are you using scene painting? Not many people are practicing this craft now."

"Why, you know this too?" Ronald was a little surprised.

"This is a technique, which means we cover the outside of the real scene, replace it with a picture, and open a hole in the middle for the actors to perform inside. This technique is very classic, and the new software I developed uses this idea. "

"Software, what software?" Ronald seemed to have some inspiration.

"It's a small software that Thomas and I wrote that can modify photos on an Apple computer just like in a darkroom. I wrote the first version of the program with him. Later, both Apple and a company called Adobe took a fancy to it, and we We sold the software and came back to do the special effects in movies we like.

However, there is still a lot of programming work to be done in the follow-up. I am mainly upgrading the main program. My brother is busier at Industrial Light and Magic, so he writes some small functional plug-ins. This time I come here to show him what will happen after the upgrade. main program. "

…

It happened that Ronald bought a lot of Apple computers last time and invited the Noel brothers to demonstrate the software to him.

On Apple computers, this software called Photoshop was installed quickly. The icon is a human eye, and a color palette.

Thomas Noll was more familiar with the program, so he opened a picture, then added a channel on it, and then clicked the mouse. After more than ten seconds, a hole appeared in the middle of the landscape painting.

Then he opened a picture of a character, shrunk the character, and put it into the hole in the landscape painting. The effect was the same as that of matt painting.

"So, we can move the special effects of matte painting and scene matching to Apple computers, and let the computer handle the process of cutting out the middle of the picture, retaining the surrounding background, and adding the actors' performances to make them fit together perfectly."

"Oh, this computer is really good. This way I only need to draw a much smaller matte painting, and then use..." The artist Yusei Shangshan also watched the entire demonstration, and his work became much easier.

"Then we find a way to turn the painting into film, and we can use PhotoShop to synthesize it." John Knoll continued. The plug-in for this channel was developed by him. I had never thought of using this method to deal with it before, but fortunately my brother Thomas had an idea.

"So, the next step is to make a few frames to verify whether this method can be successful..." Ronald calculated. If this computer synthesis method is used, the savings will not only be the labor cost of painting. Shooting will also become very simple. There is no need to set up a large drawing board on site and ensure that it does not shake when the blower blows to simulate the strong wind when the plane takes off.

Just simply shoot within the designated area without leaving the circle.

"This is much simpler. Do you have any way to turn paintings into film?"

Although the idea is good, the last step of format conversion is still a big problem. It is simply impossible to achieve the resolution required by the movie using an ordinary printer or film reproduction. Professional equipment is required to convert digital images stored on the hard drive into 35mm film that can be projected.

"It also needs to have sufficient resolution to meet the high standards of the film industry." Thomas Noll added.

"I know that Industrial Light \u0026 Magic is jointly developing a film machine with Kodak that can convert computer images into a four-hole 35mm film format."

"Four-hole 35 film?" Ronald was a little dissatisfied. The final shot was so amazing that if only standard four-perforated film was used, it would not have been able to fully capture the explosive scenes of explosions and action.

Generally speaking, in the production of special effects shots, they will use the format invented by Paramount, with each frame occupying eight holes in length. Any shots that require particularly high image quality, or scenes with rich details such as explosions, will use format film to achieve better results.

"If we want to convert it, the graphics department of Industrial Light and Magic is developing a laser film scanner. It still has some shortcomings. Every minute or so, a frame failure will occur. No one knows where the problem lies."

"Whatever, let's try both methods."

Ronald hung up a phone call to George Lucas on the spot and said that he could provide some money to increase the research and development costs of two technologies so that he could actually use them in film production. He would first build two prototypes...

"That's great. I said Ronald, if you have any special effects shots in the future, remember to find me. As long as you have money, I will get it for you." Lucas laughed out loud. It is a good thing for someone to give money. . The Star Wars series is no longer being produced, several of its own special effects movies have not done well at the box office, and the research and development of various technologies has stagnated. After all, it is still very difficult to support it all with its own Star Wars income.

"Very good, George has agreed. I have a few Apple computers here. You will experiment here. If you need more computers, just tell me..." Ronald came over and announced the good news to the three of them.

Unexpectedly, the two brothers Noel looked at each other, as if there was another problem.

"What's wrong?"

"Adobe is definitely willing to let you use it for free. This is a living advertisement for the Photoshop software we will officially launch next year, but now Mr. Lucas..." Thomas Noel hesitated.

"Mr. Lucas is a little dissatisfied with some of Apple's practices after acquiring his animation department. We at Industrial Light \u0026 Magic have fully cooperated with SGI. Now the company uses Apple computers internally, which is a bit sensitive... We don't care, other engineers You may not be able to accept it emotionally.”

"What are you afraid of? Just use it..." Ronald took out an SGI workstation from the corner. It was expensive and often crashed. He hadn't used it much since the last time he bought it.

Click, Ronald took a knife and pried off the Graphics logo on the SGI workstation, "I'll make some copies of the props, and you can just paste them on your Apple computer."

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . :