director of the millennium

"Finally, I can take a few days off without worrying about anything."

"At least we can have a perfect Spring Festival!"

Lying on the big bed in the master bedroom of his large flat, Wu Yuan smiled with satisfaction and felt a sense of relaxation all over his body.

Although, there is still post-production work to be done for "Ready Player One" and "Riding the Wind".

But he has decided to give himself a vacation!

The filming of these two films has finally been completed. Such a tight shooting schedule is definitely an unprecedented business for Wu Yuan.

It's not just him. In the whole of China, he should be second only to director Zhang Yimou, who was preparing for the Olympics while filming "Curse of the Golden Flower".

You know, Wu Yuan was preparing for Ready Player One while writing the script for Riding the Wind. Then, after finishing the script, he immediately started filming Ready Player One. After the filming was completed, he was in charge of the post-production while preparing for Riding the Wind, and then filming Riding the Wind.

This can no longer be considered a seamless connection, but rather two films made together.

Most Chinese directors take 1-2 years to complete a movie, and large projects take at least 2-3 years from preparation to shooting.

It was already an extreme achievement for Wu Yuan to complete the preparation and shooting of two films in less than a year and a half.

Therefore, he has a strong admiration for director Zhang Yimou.

At the age of 30, he feels exhausted and stressed after being so busy. I really don’t know how director Zhang Yimou, who is 60, does it.

No wonder there is only one Zhang Yimou in China.

Thinking of this, Wu Yuan thought of "The Great Wall" again.

Because he was busy filming "Riding the Wind", he didn't care about the follow-up of "The Great Wall". Now that he finally had a holiday, Wu Yuan took out his mobile phone and called Li Xiaoping.

"How's the situation with The Great Wall? Is everything going well?"

"Oh, that's strange. Our Director Wu can still care about company affairs when he's on vacation?"

"What you said is true. I care even when I'm not on vacation!"

"Very well, The Great Wall is going pretty smoothly. Although this is the first time that Director Zhang Yimou is shooting a special effects movie, he has made very thorough preparations in advance and is now fully involved in the post-production special effects production of the movie. There are no reports of any difficulties so far."

“It’s just that Director Zhang Yimou is not satisfied with the special effects in some places, but the special effects company has already done its best. This is a problem of technical limit and there is no way to solve it. Director Zhang Yimou has accepted it.”

"Oh? Special effects that even director Zhang Yimou is not satisfied with?"

“I heard that it was the image of Taotie. Director Zhang Yimou felt that it was not realistic enough and looked a bit fake, but this is the best that special effects can achieve so far, and it is not bad even compared to Jurassic Park.”

"understood."

Wu Yuan smiled bitterly. Director Zhang Yimou really overestimated the current movie special effects technology. He actually wanted to create fantasy creatures that could be compared with real creatures. This was crazy.

Although the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" look very real, if you hold up a photo of a real animal for comparison while watching the movie, you can immediately see how fake the dinosaurs in the movie are.

The colors aren't realistic enough, the details aren't realistic enough, there's nothing we can do about it.

Some special effects movies use slogans such as "incredibly real" and "beyond reality" to promote their products, but they are almost all scams. The closer something is to reality, the less likely it is that it will be made real by special effects alone. After all, computer special effects are virtual images made with computers.

Things like humans, animals and plants cannot be compared with reality by relying solely on computers.

Therefore, most of the aliens that appear in science fiction movies are shot by human actors wearing special effects costumes, rather than actually using computers to create an alien image and then editing it into the movie.

Even the motion capture technology doesn’t work.

For example, the monkey captured by Huang Bo in the movie "Crazy Alien", no matter how realistic it is, the sheen and color of its skin are obviously fake.

Although the Avatar aliens in "Avatar" also used motion capture technology, they were a synthesis of real people and computer special effects. It was by adding special effects to real people that they appeared real.

Zhang Yimou's pursuit of an "incredibly real" Taotie is indeed asking too much.

"I see."

"By the way, "War of the Demonic Tide" is about to be released."

"The promotion of this movie has been really crazy in recent times. Whether you go online or go out, you can see posters and trailers of this movie everywhere."

"It seems like the company is very ambitious this time. Is the goal to break the mainland box office record?"

Wu Yuan said again on the phone.

"War on Tide", the Light and Shadow Era's own "Avengers" movie.

The entire company undoubtedly has high hopes and is full of confidence in this film.

We were so confident that we put this movie into the bloody Spring Festival period, and we all thought that this movie would be able to succeed and even break the mainland box office record.

Wu Yuan could understand and fully accept this sentiment throughout the company, and he even thought it was promising.

Because this year's Spring Festival period, although known as the most crowded Spring Festival period in history, its quality is really average.

The movies currently scheduled for the 2015 Spring Festival include "Dad's Vacation", "Where Are We Going, Dad 2", "Triumph in the Skies", "Dragon Blade", "Wolf Totem", "Zhong Kui Fu Mo: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal", and "The Man from Macau 2".

These films were released simultaneously on February 2015, 2, the first day of the Lunar New Year, creating the most crowded Spring Festival period in history.

But to say there are any gems among these films is a joke.

Among these movies, the one with the best reputation is "Wolf Totem", which earned 6.99 million yuan at the box office.

However, "Wolf Totem", which has the best reputation, actually did not leave any mark in the history of Chinese cinema. No one remembered this movie the following year. It can be said that it was a failure.

As for "The Man from Macau 9.71", which ranked first in the Spring Festival box office with a box office of 2 million yuan, although this movie ranked first in the box office, it is indeed another bad movie by Wu Jing!
Jackie Chan's "Dragon Blade" ranked second with a box office of 7.39 million yuan, but this movie is also a little-known work among Jackie Chan's movies. Moreover, the historical background was changed drastically and there are many flaws. It also has a low sense of presence and was forgotten the following year.

The reason why these movies can achieve such good box office is simply because all the movies during the Spring Festival period are very bad, but domestic movie fans have become accustomed to going to the cinema with their families to watch movies during the Spring Festival. The box office pie of about 30 billion is still there, so even though these movies are not very good, they still share this box office pie.

If "Wandering Earth" enters this year's Spring Festival period with great momentum, in a situation where other movies are competing to be worse, "Wandering Earth" is entirely likely to produce a siphon effect, just like "The Wandering Earth 1", directly dominating the entire Spring Festival period and sucking away all the box office revenue of other movies!

Wu Yuan is also confident about this! (End of this chapter)