CEE started with Nortel lecturers

Chapter 14 "Ball Lightning"

"Ball Lightning" is a long scientific fantasy novel centered on ball lightning published by Liu Cixin in 2005. It tells the story of a strange rainy night when a ball lightning breaks into the home of a young Dr. Chen and instantly reduces his parents to ashes. Therefore, Dr. Chen decides to devote his life to unraveling the mystery of nature that turned him into an orphan.

But he never thought that many years later, his research was included in the "new concept weapon" development plan, and the ball lightning he was pursuing became the ultimate weapon that determined the survival or extinction of the motherland in the next war.Moving forward, the cold "blue sun" rises from the Gobi Desert in the northwest, and the world becomes strange and strange.A completely unknown future, under the watchful eyes of space observers, descends in front of mankind...

Before writing "Ball Lightning", Liu thought he had liver cancer, so he gritted his teeth and wrote "Ball Lightning" with pain, wanting to make it his last posthumous work.As the "last posthumous work", compared to "Three-Body Problem" which depicts the magnificent universe, "Ball Lightning" is more like a memoir written by Liu to himself, with a strong sense of reality and substitution.

Among Liu Cixin's many novels, "Ball Lightning" is not the most famous, but in terms of storyline and character creation, it can be said to be second only to "Three-Body Problem"!

The reason why Gu Zhongyu chose this novel as the first shot in the new mileage of domestic science fiction is that besides really liking this story, there is another important reason

Unlike "The Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth", "Ball Lightning" does not require a lot of grand special effects scenes, especially the content of the first half of the novel, which can be shot in the style of a suspense movie or even a horror movie!This saves a lot of cost. According to production estimates, "Ball Lightning" can be filmed in two parts, and the production cost of the first part can be controlled at around 6.7 million!Judging from last year's box office champion "Tangshan Earthquake" with a box office of [-] million, such a production cost still has a lot of room for profit.

A few years ago, he also wanted to remake "The Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth", but after carefully examining the domestic special effects companies and production levels, as well as the current domestic film market, he chose to give up this unrealistic idea.

It's not that it can't be shot, even if the domestic special effects company can't meet it, he can find someone from Industrial Light & Magic and the digital field, as long as he is willing to spend money and be stricter, he can definitely make it.But the cost is too high!
The first part of "The Wandering Earth", the special effects are basically made by domestic companies, the quality is cheap, and the production cost has reached more than 3 million. If you are looking for Industrial Light and Magic, you don't have a base of 2010 million US dollars, so don't even think about it!In 6, the domestic movie box office champion was only more than [-] million yuan. According to the law that the box office cost is at least three times the cost to make money, there is no hope of even paying back!
So Gu Zhongyu understood at that time that the development of domestic sci-fi films has to follow a long-term planning path, and there is no rush.So in 2008, he invested and controlled the special effects company on Hong Kong Island, Xiantao Digital (he was responsible for the special effects production of films such as Fengyun Xiongxia, Heroes, and Kung Fu), and then began to cultivate what he needed, a new generation of special effects technical talents. In recent years, Xiantao Digital has also received many domestic and foreign orders. Although the company is still in a state of loss, Gu Zhongyu does not care, as long as it does not lose too much.

……

After reading the script and production plan of "Ball Lightning", Guo Fan took a deep breath, calmed down his excitement and asked, "Mr. Gu, I don't understand. Why would you think of looking for me for such a big-budget movie with a cost of over [-] million?"

"Then who should I find?" Gu Zhongyu asked with a smile.

"It should be those directors who have already achieved fame in the film industry!" Guo Fan felt that he was a newcomer, and compared with those big directors, he had no advantage at all.

"For example? Old Mouzi? Old monster Xu?" Gu Zhongyu asked back, and shared his thoughts with Guo Fan.

He also considered looking for those big directors before, but after thinking about it for a while, he quickly let himself dismiss this idea!

Old schemer?
Gu Zhongyu admits that he is indeed the best among domestic directors in terms of photography, composition and scene scheduling, but what about making science fiction films?

Anyway, he felt that this guy might not even understand the movie script!After all, the level of education is limited. The pile of science and engineering knowledge and nouns in Da Liu’s novels can probably confuse him. He can’t be blamed for this. After all, domestic directors have always emphasized literature over theory. They can talk about film theory and human history.
Old Freak Xu is fine. As an outlier among Chinese directors, he has always loved special effects and all kinds of unconstrained plot settings.But the problem is, Mr. Xu's film special effects has always been the comprador route, and he likes to use foreign film special effects teams directly instead of training his own people.

This is in conflict with Gu Zhongyu’s training of a domestic special effects team. After all, one of the reasons why he made “Ball Lightning” was to lay the foundation for other sci-fi movies in the future.

After comprehensive consideration, Gu Zhongyu decided to let Guo Fan come, after all, he has directing experience now, and... he is still very cheap!

"What you just said may be some shortcomings of the seniors, but it still can't be explained. Why did you choose me?" After hearing Gu Zhongyu's previous explanation, Guo Fan still couldn't understand the reason why the other party came to him!
Why did you choose you? I can't fucking tell you that you will direct two "The Wandering Earth" in the future, and become the No.1 domestic science fiction movie, right?

Let me think about how to fool you kid into taking the bait!
Gu Zhongyu adjusted his sitting posture, and explained in a serious voice: "One, you, Guo Fan, who passed the normal college entrance examination and was admitted to the 211 University from SD Province, a big introverted province, has an IQ that is definitely in the top 5% of the country. Although he is not a major in science and engineering, his learning ability is completely fine. Other people in the entertainment industry generally rank in the bottom 30% in IQ. This group of people score 300 points in the college entrance examination. of!
[-]. You like sci-fi, and you have your own understanding of sci-fi, not like other directors, whose cognition of domestic sci-fi is still limited to works of the last century such as "Dead Light on Coral Island" and "Thunderbolt Beibei". As the saying goes, only good works can be produced with good consciousness!
[-]. And the most important point is that I admire you, Guo Fan!The initial development of sci-fi movies requires talents, and our Warring States Film Industry needs talents like you!I believe that you can make this movie well, and I also believe that you, Guo Fan, will open the door to domestic sci-fi movies!
Rainbow farts don't cost money!You can come more, I don't believe you won't take the bait!

(End of this chapter)