Made in Hollywood

PS:  Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Another year has begun. Thank you for your company. This book has reached its final stage, and it will probably end around the Chinese New Year. I already have some ideas for the new book. I will talk about it after the Chinese New Year. Thirteen is very grateful to the brothers and sisters for their support all the time. I wish you all good luck in the New Year and a lot of fortune! In addition, ask for a monthly ticket and a recommended ticket!

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States, referred to as NASA, is an administrative scientific research institution of the U.S. federal government, responsible for formulating and implementing the U.S. civil space program and conducting research on aeronautical science and space science. Its headquarters is located in Washington, DC.

Duke came to NASA to seek support. After all, "Gravity" is not a sci-fi movie like "Transformers" or "Star Wars". The bureau is undoubtedly the most authoritative organization. If we can get their support, from preparation to shooting to post-production, it will definitely reduce a lot of unnecessary troubles.

Just like the former director, Duke easily won the support of NASA, and he was more famous, and the other party also paid more attention to this project. Not only did he send two active astronauts who were in the rest period to the The crew provided on-site guidance and was hired by Duke to send a four-member technical team to help the crew design and shoot props such as space stations and spacecraft.

In Duke's plan, most of the scenes inside the space station in the film will be filmed on the set. Although the team will only stay in Los Angeles for less than a month, the crew will have to pay a high salary, but Their joining will undoubtedly make the scene built more professional.

Every shot of the film is based on reality, except for China's Tiangong and Shenzhou spacecraft because many contents have not yet been released. Most of it is beyond imagination, and other space stations and satellites used for shooting must be accurately modeled.

When it comes to the Chinese elements in the film, Duke will not be as inconsistent as the original director. He added Chinese elements for commercial purposes and to increase its appeal in the Chinese market.

Moreover, Warner Bros. once again introduced funds from China Film Group in the pre-sale. The other party also sent relevant professionals over to ensure that the content related to China in the film would not touch the sensitive nerves of the scissors.

The biggest selling point of the film is the special effects and the self-help of the heroine, among which the special effects are more commercially attractive.

In order to make the audience as immersive as possible after the film was completed, Duke inquired about the information of many astronauts, and after returning to Los Angeles, he continued to communicate with the two astronauts sent by NASA and obtained a lot of information.

The heroine's one-man show in the film is very difficult. Therefore, Duke paid close attention to the details of Scarlett's preparations. He not only invited a yogi to train her, but also asked the astronauts to practice the space breathing rhythm she used in filming.

After all, Scarlett was born as a literary girl, and George Clooney had limited roles, so Duke was more at ease with them. The main energy of the early preparations was put on the special effects.

For special effects, the biggest challenge in shooting is to express the state of weightlessness and present it to the audience, in addition to making the actors forget the feeling of gravity as much as possible. The crew will use a lot of CG animation technology to make the synthesis more realistic.

It is not an exaggeration to say. Space is the ultimate dream of all human beings, and even for the dream machine of movies, it is no easy task to create real space on the screen.

Ideally, the entire film crew will shoot in space. But this is obviously impossible.

The biggest difficulty in making "Gravity" comes from the technical aspect. Duke is well aware of this, but compared with the former Alfonso Cuarón, he has too many advantages.

First of all, Duke is also one of the directors who are at the forefront of Hollywood technology; secondly, he has been to James Cameron's filming location several times, and he has enough understanding of the improved equipment of the King of the World, and many of them can be used directly In the filming of "Gravity"; in the end, the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic was strong enough, and when Duke proposed some special effects solutions in memory, he was able to find out the practical application method very quickly.

Of course, the most important thing is that Duke's production budget is as high as 200 million US dollars, and if necessary, it can continue to add more. Sufficient funds can also hire more special effects staff to work at the same time, thereby compressing the production time.

The realistic space scenery in the film will be produced entirely using CG, and the special effects team spent a lot of time studying the real space.

"It must be more realistic than other space films!"

"Gravity"'s visual effects supervisor Tim Webber started the special effects work for this film before shooting with Duke's request.

According to Duke's vision, when the space environment of "Gravity" is presented on the IMAX screen, it is no less than an interstellar journey for the audience wearing 3D glasses sitting in the dark. Most of the interior scenes were filmed in the built sets, and the realistic outer space actually needs to be realized by CG, and all space shots are synthesized by CG.

In the preliminary preparations, Duke and his team interviewed astronauts, read various books about space, and studied thousands of photos taken in space to understand space; and then spent a lot of thought on the details , as he said, you have to make sure that every shot is grounded in reality.

However, China's Sky and Shenzhou are not in this category. Even if the China Film Group's funds are introduced, the other party will not be able to obtain this information. Hannah Serena's set team can only rely on imagination.

In order to simulate the majestic light perception in space, the visual effects team of "Gravity" will also use the latest software developed by Industrial Light and Magic as the screen renderer for the first time. There are a total of 71,000 codes related to coloring.

Tim Weber once described the rendering workload of the film to Duke in this way, "If it is produced with a single-core CPU computer, it will have to be rendered from the beginning of Egyptian civilization, that is, 5000 BC, to the next century. , so that we can catch up with the trial screening at the end of the year."

The special effects work went far ahead of the shooting. After the modeling was completed, at the request of Duke, the huge special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic took the lead in starting the production of several explosion scenes purely relying on CG. Due to the explosion in the vacuum and the Explosions on Earth are very different, and Duke did not intend to use the method of model explosions to shoot the explosion scenes in the film.

But according to his requirements, these explosion shots are not completely realistic. After all, this is a commercial film, and some shots are not for realism, but to convey an atmosphere and increase the appeal of the film.

In addition, there are many dangerous scenes in some scenes, and CG characters will also be used.

In fact, some of the moves were too dangerous, such as the scene in which Scarlett Johansson's legs were put to a considerable test while levitating in the space capsule during filming, but Duke would not let her risk this kind of injury.

Even if it was to help her advance to the Olympics, Duke would not allow accidents to happen.

Then there is the preparation to create a weightless environment. It is impossible for a movie named "Gravity" to avoid the problem of weightlessness. This is also one of the key tasks in the preliminary preparations.

Duke has always been very clear that the weightlessness on the big screen in space movies is actually the weightlessness of the screen perspective, not the real weightlessness.

Therefore, the core problem that he and his team have to solve is how to deal with the changing perspective.

So, John Schwarzman recommended a flexible robotic arm to him.

The mechanical arm is basically taken out of the car factory. John Schwartzman once found a small company in San Francisco that fixed the camera on the mechanical arm to take pictures, so that the movement of the camera can be precisely controlled, and it is also very flexible.

This inspiration inspired him.

This robotic arm has a motion speed of 4 m/s, a motion radius of 3.1 m, an accuracy of 0.04 mm, up to 7 joint axes, and a track of more than 10 m, which is enough to complete various complex tasks. And with fine movements, you can shoot shots from various tricky angles as you like.

However, in subsequent shooting tests, both Duke and John Schwartzman found that the shooting effect of the robotic arm was not as good as expected.

In the initial test, Scarlett Johansson was placed on a machine with a small range of motion. There were two robotic arms beside her, one controlling a lens and the other controlling a light source.

This basically expresses the crew's idea of ​​​​solving the problem of weightless shots-changing camera angles plus moving light sources.

But the effect of shooting is far from expected.

This problem has troubled Duke for several days. He kept communicating with Hannah Serena and John Schwartzman, and also called Tim Webb, an expert in special effects from Industrial Light and Magic. After discussion, the four of them came up with the idea In order to use the robotic arm as the basis, create a more suitable equipment for shooting - a light box!

After continuous experiments, it took more than half a month for the crew to produce the ideal light box for the four Dukes. The light box is mainly composed of LED screens, movable baskets, and IRIS robotic arm camera.

This is actually a cubic box about six meters high and three meters wide specially built by the visual effects team, surrounded by LED screens composed of 1.8 million light bulbs, and a simple movable basket in the center. Lee Johnson performed in this basket.

But this light box also has a flaw, it is very hot inside when working...

It’s just that the time is limited. This is the best solution the crew can think of in a short time. When simulating weightlessness, the basket in the “light box” can only be moved to a 45-degree tilt, because once this angle is exceeded, the actors will fall. down danger.

In order to ensure the safety of the actors, more viewing angles will be changed through the IRIS robotic arm to drive the lens to achieve the effect of relative displacement, and if the actor’s body angle is too large, gravity will easily cause facial congestion and picture distortion.

When showing the effect of the actor "slamming" into the camera, the actor basically does not move, but the camera "slams" the actor under the precise control of the robotic arm. (to be continued ~^~)