Made in Hollywood

In the two weeks after the Super Bowl, "The Matrix" released posters of the main characters one after another. The posters were completely formulated according to Duke's ideas. In addition to being 'cool to scum', there were also some cyberpunk cultural aspects. Show, by March, Warner Bros., in conjunction with Silicon Valley and related forum websites, held a cyberpunk cultural exhibition in San Diego, and released the first official trailer of "The Matrix" at the exhibition.

What's the other big thing about The Matrix besides being cool? It is definitely not philosophical thinking and mysticism, but a summary of the development of cyberpunk culture to the present. Such a trailer that highlights coolness and cyberpunk can create a sensation in this group.

Strictly speaking, Duke had the idea of ​​being cooler and more fun than "The Matrix" in his mind, and even many things in the original film could be changed into dazzling futuristic settings, but whether it was shooting or in post-production, Du gram has only changed to a certain extent, not completely overturned.

Any film has its own style, Duke knows this very well. Even the most successful hodgepodge of "Avengers" actually has a very distinct style. The cool and cyberpunk of "The Matrix" is The brightest mark, and adding some futuristic elements to it can help, but if you add too much and affect the overall style of the film, it will be a disaster.

A pure hodgepodge movie may not fail completely, but it will never achieve great success. For example, Joss Whedon, who is good at bringing together various elements into a unified style, failed in the typical hodgepodge film "Firefly". up to this point.

Making a popular sci-fi film into a fan-oriented film is actually a failure, and after the great success of "The Avengers", the director seems to have a tendency to approach this direction in subsequent sequels . A direct result of the sequel far less than expected.

Cyberpunk has its own black quality, and Duke will definitely not add some inexplicable things, especially beautiful scenery, to destroy this quality.

If a film has no style, or the style is not clear, the possibility of failure is higher than the possibility of success.

do not forget. It's only 1998, and it's not yet the era of bombardment with visual effects.

The week-long cyberpunk cultural exhibition has attracted the attention of a large number of teenage enthusiasts across the United States. Warner's media and NBC TV have also made intensive reports on this exhibition, of which "The Matrix" is the most mentioned.

Even, this exhibition also attracted some bigwigs in the computer industry. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have appeared successively. To a certain extent, it further aggravated the status of this cyberpunk cultural exhibition in the minds of computer and computer network enthusiasts.

Subsequently, the posters of "The Matrix" spread rapidly throughout North America with the fastest speed and the cinema as a fulcrum. The first trailer also quickly landed on all media platforms that can play videos, telling all the viewers that the new film of the king of summer is about to strike.

The biggest benefit comes after the deeper cooperation with Warner. That is, Duke doesn't have to worry about publicity, distribution and theatrical lines, except for some suitable opinions. In addition to a series of actions in North America, Warner Bros. has also cooperated with the major sponsors of the film to actively carry out promotion work in major overseas ticket warehouse markets.

In terms of publicity, Warner is in charge, and Duke's main task is to complete the post-production of "The Matrix" with high quality and quantity.

The big ship that is rampaging around the world can be said to have opened a new era of film special effects. Duke compresses actor expenses and obtains the largest amount of tax incentives from Australia in order to invest more funds in special effects production. Although "The Matrix" may not be able to reach the current limit of special effects production, it must create dazzling Cool visual effects.

A film, invested $20 million and $40 million in special effects, the final effect is definitely the difference between the sky and the earth.

Special effects can be said to be another major reason for the success of "The Matrix". As for the philosophical thinking that is highly praised by professionals, it has to be in a very backward position, and the failure of the last two films, especially the last one, actually It also shows what kind of evil it will bring if some condiments of commercial films are turned into meals.

The two sequels of the film strengthen the unique personality of the film on the basis of the original work, especially the puzzling dialogue and philosophical speculation, which make the storyline far beyond the limit of thinking that mainstream audiences can bear. The visual effects did not get the desired effect, which directly led to the film's box office performance far below expectations.

Just like Duke said, this is a sci-fi commercial film that went straight to the summer. A little touch on some things is enough. If you really want to explore in depth like a literary film, such a huge investment scale is absolutely unbearable. .

During the post-production in the past few months, Duke still used the usual sharp editing style. After several years of cooperation, Mike Dawson cooperated with him tacitly. These tasks are relatively easy, the most troublesome and time-consuming. , or the main visual effects of Industrial Light and Magic.

At Duke's suggestion, ILM's special effects group is divided into three parts, one part deals with general special effects parts, one part is made to synthesize the bullet time of Neo and Smith, and the last part is to use computer technology to deal with several gunfights. The role of the technique is modified.

Gunfighting, if you want to be cool and impactful, not only can Charlize Theron show off his sexy body and glamorous face, but there will inevitably be some shortcomings when shooting, but more and more Powerful CGI technology is enough to make up for the shortcomings of shooting.

Of course, there are also mechs, squid army and Zion, etc., which will not appear in the film. "The Matrix" is only two hours long, and too many things are stuffed into it, and it can only become a hodgepodge.

The film is not able to succeed by stuffing some future West into it.

Most typically, the greater the amount of information reflected in a film, the more difficult it will be for the audience to watch and understand. Once the audience's thinking limit is exceeded, the consequences will be quite serious.

Even in the past 20 years, looking at the world movie box office rankings, it is not difficult to find that the top 100 are basically very simple movies.

The effectiveness of special effects production is related to the success or failure of the entire film. In order to avoid the trouble of coordination and integration caused by scattered work, Duke needs to integrate the entire process of post-production special effects production. This is the first time in film history that such a huge computer information management system has been used in film shooting.

Through this "digital diary" and "special effects process" system, the staff engaged in digital processing, computer-aided design, and 3D model design in the entire post-production group can obtain the desired scene design, high-resolution model and at various levels. All the lens data in the shooting process greatly improves the work efficiency.

More importantly, this system can continue to function and be used in future post-productions such as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

In addition, Duke is going to call on the crew to reshoot a scene, a scene that is cooler than bullet time.

To say that the most impressive scenes in "The Matrix" must be Trinity's flying legs and kicking over the police, Neo dodging the bullets from the agents on the roof, Neo and Smith flying in the subway and facing off with two guns, etc. A series of 'time freezing' scenes, Duke is to add the 'time freezing' during the explosion on this basis.

The final effect of the video is not the coolest, only cooler!

To put it bluntly, these "time solidification" achieved by using technical means all use "slow speed" to reflect the "fast" visual effect impact.

This method of expressing fast with "slow", today's real masters are also not Hollywood directors, but the famous John Wu and Wu Baige. His slow-motion shooting scenes had a profound impact on the production of gunfights in Hollywood movies, and even changed the way Hollywood movie shootouts to a certain extent.

In the past, the most respected in Hollywood was the classic realistic gunfight of Michael Mann in "The Wire", and even if it is the same unkillable gunfight style, you can find the difference between Hollywood and Wu Baige, Rambo and Schwarzenegger. The format of the shootout is diametrically opposed to Wu Baige's romanticism.

It is no exaggeration to say that people like Wu Baige and Yuan Heping have a far greater impact on Hollywood movies than those that can be seen on the surface, but unfortunately they have never been able to integrate into this circle like Ang Lee.

Hollywood can be said to be an extremely exclusive and attractive circle.

Any enterprising Hollywood director actually understands one thing, standing still is equal to failure, and the two super directors in Hollywood are typical of this.

James Cameron is the representative of technical stream directors. He has always been at the forefront of film technology in the whole world. It is not too much to describe him as a pioneer.

Steven Spielberg is a typical businessman director. In fact, anyone with a discerning eye can see that Spielberg has basically stopped in place in recent years. The works he directed can only be described in general. It is also a well-known fact that the director's career is in decline.

Duke is neither James Cameron nor Spielberg, but he is always clear-headed and understands that learning never ends. Just like drawing on Yuan Heping's strengths in filming, he will not let go of those who are helpful to him. For film ideas, knowledge and technology, he can learn from Wu Baige's coolness in the shootout, and he can also learn from Japanese animation for production. (To be continued ~^~)

PS:  Ask for a ticket~~