Hollywood Road

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After discussing with Bill Rossis in the Death Star Building for a period of time, Murphy asked him to contact the photographer Philip Raschel and others, and then find a relatively cheap special effects production company. After leaving Century City, he went to The branch of Miramax in Burbank, Harvey Weinstein just came from New York today, and he came here to meet this big fat Jewish man.

"Why, have you decided on a new project?" Harvey Weinstein asked jokingly.

"Harvey, remember the call I made to you some time ago?"

Sitting on the chair in front of the desk, Murphy looked across at Harvey Weinstein, "That comic, that comic is my goal!"

"You mean..." Harvey Weinstein immediately remembered, "DC is not easy!"

Instead, he asked, "Murphy, why did you choose it? You wrote the scripts of the first three movies..."

Adaptation often means a large amount of copyright fees, and Harvey Weinstein certainly wants to exchange the smallest expenditure for the largest profit.

"Because this comic is boldly created in black and white, the strokes are chaotic and orderly, emphasizing the contrast between light and shadow, creating a unique black style, and breaking the readers' preference for color comics."

After saying this, Murphy spread his hands and added, "It also has unique black and white images, strong cinematic scenes and traditional engraving style, which has had an important impact on the American comics industry!"

These are certainly not enough to impress Harvey Weinstein, so Murphy added, "More importantly, it has a large number of loyal fans throughout North America, and these are potential audiences for the movie in the future!"

Harvey Weinstein also has some knowledge about that comic, and knows that what Murphy said is true, but things are not that simple.

"Murphy, we don't talk about investment and returns, nor scripts and plans," he looked across, "Hollywood, you are not the first person to come up with the idea of ​​this comic, and Miramax is not the first company either. But they were all rejected!"

Since this comic was chosen for the new project, Murphy certainly knew about it and nodded slightly.

"Planet Terror" has brought a lot of profits to Miramax. Harvey Weinstein now admires the young director on the opposite side very much, and said patiently, "Even if we can handle DC, how can we handle Frank Miramax?" Les this stubborn old guy?"

"I'm going to talk to Frank Miller,

"Murphy is confident, "Now CAA is very supportive of my idea, as long as Miramax can also support me, I am confident to persuade Frank Miller. "

Harvey Weinstein slowly clasped the armrest of the chair with his fingers, and after thinking for a while, he slowly said, "Murphy, as long as you can convince Frank Miller, we can contact DC. However, if you invest ..."

He spread his hands, "You know, I am responsible to the head office Walt Disney and other shareholders. I can't promise you anything until I see the script and the specific plan."

"I know." Murphy nodded.

If Harvey Weinstein promised him tens of millions of dollars in investment in the future at this time, Murphy must suspect that this guy either has a problem with his head or has ulterior motives.

Murphy stood up, "I'll go first, Harvey."

"Okay," Harvey Weinstein stood up and sent him out of the office, "keep in touch."

Such a young director with a lot of promise in the future naturally has to maintain close cooperation with him.

It is not easy to impress people like Frank Miller, who has already achieved great success, and the simple temptation of fame and fortune is not the best way.

From mid-August to the end of August after the release of "Planet Terror", Murphy took a break for a period of time, but unlike the previous time, he did not go on vacation, and basically hid in Los Angeles, except for exercising, visiting friends and relaxing. , still considering new projects.

The continuous commercial success of the two films "Saw" and "Planet Terror" undoubtedly gave him more capital and more investment, even tens of millions of dollars, so he set his sights on Aimed at Frank Miller, the famous comic master.

Frank Miller is definitely a god-like existence in the North American comics industry. He has created such as "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns", "Sin City", "Daredevil: Rebirth", "Spartan 300 Warriors" and " *****" and many other influential works.

He has profoundly changed Batman comics, and it is no exaggeration to say that he is the one who truly brought the Dark Knight style to Batman.

Of course, Murphy wasn't interested in the Batman series. He also knew that he didn't have this ability at all, and even if he wanted to play Batman's idea, DC and Warner would not ignore him.

What Murphy was looking at was the work that established Frank Miller's status as a master in the comics industry, and it was also a work full of strong black style-"Sin City"!

This comic can be said to be one of the rare works that can perfectly combine violence and aesthetics.

"Violence" and "aesthetics" were originally two irrelevant words, but some comics have cleverly blended them together, and gradually formed a well-known art form - "violent aesthetics", which is usually Appropriate artistic means are used to visually render exaggerated realistic techniques or euphemistically allude to violent processes and bloody scenes with formal symbolic techniques, so as to stimulate the senses while conveying a soul-stirring aesthetic experience and thought-provoking theme connotations.

In the past, Murphy has studied this comic and the works adapted from the comic. The movie "Sin City" breaks the rules, uses flat and conceptual visual language, finds a new way, and creates a unique aesthetics of violence.

This film intuitively expresses a large number of violent processes and bloody scenes with extremely artistic visual design techniques. Instead of being disgustingly vulgar, it makes the naked violent scenes melancholy and poignant, with profound charm. It is a violent aesthetic movie innovative masterpiece.

After selecting the target until now, apart from participating in some necessary activities, Murphy spent a lot of time watching and consulting the extremely relevant materials of the "Sin City" comics. It can be said that this comic is born with the characteristics of a movie, with a strong movie The scenes and traditional engraving style are very suitable for adaptation, even without too many cuts, as long as the comic style effect is achieved, it can become a very charming movie.

This further strengthened Murphy's determination to get the right to adapt this comic.

Before the Saturn Awards Ceremony, Murphy had roughly figured out the method of adaptation. Shooting according to the original comics is undoubtedly the least risky, and it is also the one that can get the most support from Franco Miller.

Without the support of Franco Miller, the right to adapt "Sin City" cannot be obtained, and there is no other way to talk about it.

Even, this project is more like a transition from comics to movies than an out-and-out movie adaptation.

The "Sin City" comics mainly tell three interrelated stories-Sin City, Sniper and Yellow Bastard.

All three stories take place in the same fictional city - Sin City. But in this city, the bishop, the senator, and the police, who are supposed to represent light and justice, are the root of the evil.

Darkness is the only scenery in this city, and violence has become the only justice left in it. In order to fit the plot and theme, the entire comic

Almost all of the stories are arranged to take place in the deep night, using simple and rough flat images and contrasting conceptual colors as the visual language, trying to create a dark and terrifying urban atmosphere.

Among them, the flat scene style boldly omits irrelevant picture details, and even uses pure color blocks to reshape the visual images, making the violent theme simple and straightforward, and making the bloody plot implicit and deep.

Adapted movies will inevitably use this conceptual color application, and mainly use black and white tones, combined with strong contrasting local colors, to create a materialistic, depraved, and dark city image, which can completely activate this city. A city of sin shrouded in darkness and violence.

Although he hasn't made a specific plan yet and hasn't got the script, Murphy has already thought about a lot, especially the shooting method of this film.

Undoubtedly, he had to abandon the traditional film camera and switch to the latest digital camera, use the green screen as the main shooting background, and rely on post-production CGI technology to realize the comic scenes.

What is the essence of the comic version of "Sin City"? Undoubtedly because of its unique images and alternative anti-hero characters, in a world of color comics, Frank Miller adopted a black and white style, and then applied eye-catching colors to some special targets, which is quite fresh sense.

To achieve these effects, it is not impossible to rely on traditional film cameras and special effects technology, but the cost is quite high, far exceeding the cost of using digital technology.

Despite the successive successes of "Saw" and "Planet Terror" as capital, Murphy also knows that Hollywood producers are realistic, and at his current level, it may be difficult to get an investment of more than 50 million US dollars , so digital cameras and digital special effects are the best choice to achieve visual effects.

Visual effects are ubiquitous in movies, from the earliest frame-by-frame shooting, makeup make-up, to live-action model shooting and mechanical special effects, to motion capture technology and 3D mash-up cgi.....The technology of the film industry is changing with each passing day. There are many large and small technologies contained in it. For example, motion capture technology can be classified into mechanical, acoustic, electromagnetic, optical, etc., and the final visual communication to the audience is the use of the most basic photography lens. The result of collaborative completion of various technical categories.

Therefore, as long as he can achieve the effect he wants, Murphy doesn't care whether he uses the traditional method or the latest digital technology.

Whether it is advocating traditional live-action models and mechanical special effects, or completely green-screen plus blue-screen production; whether it is traditional technology or the most advanced cg, they all serve the production of movies.

Before all of that, though, Murphy had to convince Frank Miller. (To be continued.)