Made in Hollywood

During the entire week before Christmas, Duke was making internal adjustments to Marvel Comics, had several talks with people from the creative committee and Kevin Fitch, and at the new shareholders meeting, concurrently served as Marvel Comics Group chairmanship.

Duke's attitude is very clear, the creative committee will not be disbanded.

He is indeed trying to keep Kevin Fitch, but the other party insists on disbanding the creative committee. If he wants to get more power that should not belong to him, Duke doesn't mind accepting Kevin Fitch's resignation.

As Duke said, this Hollywood would function without him or James Cameron, let alone Kevin Feige.

Fortunately, Kevin Fitch is not a fool or a megalomaniac, and he did not make too irrational actions.

Duke will not break the balance of Marvel's power structure. After he talked with Kevin Fitch, in the new board meeting, Kevin Fitch's annual salary and option dividends have risen to a certain extent. The Creative Committee The intervention of Marvel Pictures has also been appropriately weakened, and their relevant suggestions must be reviewed by Duke before they can be implemented.

Of course, this is only limited to Marvel movies, and the power of creative committee supervision still exists.

The battle within Marvel comics has temporarily subsided. Duke stayed in New York to spend Christmas with his mother, and then rushed back to Los Angeles. It is less than half a year before the release of "The Avengers", and the post-production must start as soon as possible .

In addition to recruiting Mike Dawson's editing team into Warner Studios, Duke focused on the special effects production of Industrial Light and Magic.

The production of film special effects is a complex and vast project. It is difficult to say that a single factor can achieve it. Just as for the human body, it is difficult to rank the importance of the brain, heart, lungs and other organs. Same. People can't live either.

Factors such as capital, cycle, talent, process, communication, and design also jointly determine the fate of the special effects of a movie. If the special effects of a movie are well done, it means that all links are well coordinated; if the special effects of a movie are not done well, then Indicates that at least one of the links has a problem.

We all know that making movie special effects is a very expensive thing, but specifically. Where is all this money spent? How much does a movie cost to make satisfactory special effects?

There are many places to spend money to produce special effects for movies, the largest proportion of which is labor costs. For Hollywood commercial blockbusters such as "The Avengers", Duke needs to use a team of thousands of people in the post-production, not just Industrial Light and Magic, just like the special effects of many big-invested movies are composed of tens or even twenty Multiple special effects companies and studios are responsible for the same, and many other special effects production teams have also joined the huge special effects production of Warner Studios.

Many of these people are animators and compositors with many years of work experience, and the salary will definitely not be low.

In the budget of The Avengers. Fifty percent of the budget is used for special effects, about 35 percent for Duke, the actors and other staff, and the remaining 15 percent for shooting.

To put it bluntly, this film is not only selling stars, but also selling special effects.

The investment scale of a film determines its special effects. This is a truth that will not change in any country in the world.

For example, Duke still remembers that the "fifty cents special effects" of the online drama "Tomb Raiders Notes" once aroused heated discussions among netizens. Slag".

Assume that the film's publicity on production costs is not watered down. The money that should be spent on special effects is also spent, but the three episodes of "Tomb Raiders Notes" are already equivalent to a movie. And a movie with an investment of 30 million is not considered a big production even on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

For a work like "Tomb Raider Notes" that focuses on visual spectacle, this investment is bound to be a drop in the bucket. Who can expect 30 million RMB to bring good special effects?

This is very simple truth. But not everyone can accept it.

Special effects production is a highly industrialized industry. A good process can achieve twice the result with half the effort, but a good process cannot be achieved overnight. It needs repeated polishing in practice.

Although the process of special effects production is similar, there are often great differences in the execution process. However, the current mainstream Hollywood visual effects teams are very mature and rigorous in all aspects. They have a complete industrial process, regardless of post-production management or The technical capabilities are already very mature.

One of the representatives is undoubtedly Industrial Light \u0026 Magic, which was acquired by Duke.

At first, Hollywood special effects companies didn’t pay much attention to process. Industrial Light \u0026 Magic spent a lot of time researching this problem, and then it almost became a standard in the entire industry. Now every company hopes to use the process of Industrial Light \u0026 Magic .

The work of Industrial Light and Magic is continuous, including from development to review, communication, and finalization. Each link has a set of strict procedures.

This is also an important reason why Duke's preferred special effects partner has always been Industrial Light and Magic in Hollywood for 20 years.

In Duke's crew, the special effects team is a very important part. From the earliest time, he never separated the special effects team from the crew.

Any work that requires multiple people to work together requires communication, which is not limited to the film field, let alone the special effects industry.

However, due to the natural technical barriers of film special effects, many film crews split the pre-production, shooting and special effects production into two parts that rarely overlap. This is exactly the taboo of film special effects production. From then on, the pre-production team of the crew must maintain good communication with the special effects team at all times.

Before production begins, Duke makes sure that all special effects houses have a solid understanding of what is being produced.

The visual effects director of Industrial Light and Magic had a full communication with Duke, editor Mike Dawson and assistant director Anna Prinz in the director's studio to confirm Duke's ideas and the production requirements of all shots.

Then they communicate with other special effects companies in charge of specific production requirements for individual scenes. For key scenes, Duke first confirms key factors such as environment and location through simple pictures. He confirmed that the final effects shots were made last.

Of course, different directors have different attitudes towards special effects production.

Directors like Duke and Steven Spielberg don't ask too much about the details of special effects production, but just tell the special effects team clearly what they want, and the special effects team has a clear goal, so Can accurately produce the pictures and shots they want.

Another category of directors, such as James Cameron, are very concerned about the process of special effects production. They would like to see different versions and understand the progress of the production. This is also a very good communication mode.

There are also some directors who know very little about special effects production, and cannot accurately describe the final effect they want to present, or do not pay enough attention to special effects production, and rarely cooperate consciously in the early stage preparation and shooting. The result is that the quality of special effects is naturally difficult to guarantee. , Repeated revisions will also increase the cost of special effects production.

In addition to the feature film, Duke also constantly communicated with his team about the end credits of the film.

Just like the movie itself, Duke wanted the end credits to include many different elements, allowing each character to show their face once while still showing their most important characteristics.

It's best not to show real people, but to have the most distinctive items of each character appear once, such as Iron Man's helmet, Thor's hammer, Captain America's shield and Hawkeye's bow and arrows, etc.

It's a bit tricky not to lose touch with the plot, and characters like Hulk and Black Widow don't have many objects to show.

Bringing together the core post-production staff, including the head of ILM's special effects team, Duke brainstormed and found some great solutions.

Nick Fury's pistol holster and Black Widow's gun can be added at the end of the film. During the actual production, the staff also added her belt.

Hulk is the most difficult character in this regard, because he has neither a suit, nor armor, nor even a weapon.

Therefore, Duke decided to focus on Bruce Banner before he transformed. Professor Banner's glasses, laboratory, and his clothes will all be added to the end of the film.

Duke hopes that the opening title will not only catch the eye, but also keep the audience thinking about it after the movie is over.

The crew strives to bring the audience's attention from one place to another, so that they can see the magnificent picture. In order to achieve the effect beyond the picture, the characters and the plot are also required to be more vivid and interesting.

As the release date of "The Avengers" approached, Marvel Studios and Warner Bros.' promotional campaigns were carried out step by step. By mid-January, Duke had already completed a 30-second commercial , this commercial will also appear on time in the halftime commercial of the Super Bowl in February.

In addition, some of the film's actors also appeared at this month's Sundance Film Festival, especially Robert Downey Jr. and his car in the film, which easily stole the limelight of all independent films, the car The ruby ​​red Acura sports car with a market price of 9 million US dollars murdered a group of journalists, filming, and blinded the eyes of movie fans at the scene.

Afterwards, it also caused a huge topic discussion.

Warner Studios was busy until the Super Bowl. When Super Bowl XL6 came, Duke left Los Angeles and flew directly to Indianapolis to watch the Super Bowl.

His Los Angeles Raiders made it to the Super Bowl for the second straight year by knocking out the New England Patriots in the American League Finals. (to be continued ~^~)

PS:  Ask for monthly and recommendation tickets!