This director needs to apologize

Chapter 97 Change investment again
After playing for a few minutes, Xiangrui reluctantly put Fang's head down and ran to confirm the debugging progress of the camera truck. She had followed up the whole process before.

Another deputy director, Zhang Weining, took the time to tell the story to the engineers and soldiers who were putting on makeup in the dressing room built in a wooden room.

Fu Ruixiang and Zhang Weining each have separate duties. The former mainly oversees the camera, lighting, recording and equipment, while the latter oversees the group performances and also manages the costumes.

Chen Yiming was sitting on the director's chair with his eyes closed and concentrating. After seeing this, Li Mingliang called on his classmates to exit the prison cell together.

After shooting his second movie, Chen Yiming finally no longer had to do everything himself. Now he could sit back and wait for the preparations before shooting to be completed, and then sit behind the monitor and give directions with a walkie-talkie.

This is the kind of "dog guide" that uninformed netizens ridiculed.

His location is probably in the woods on the south side of the dirt road. There is a depression not far from the edge of the woods, which was dug and leveled by the engineer brothers in advance.

The wooden frame had been reinforced in advance, and the students draped the tarpaulin they brought over like a mosquito net to create a ready-made prison shed.

When shooting on location, the studio, supporting equipment, wiring, etc. are all factors that must be taken into consideration when setting up the location. Whether a crew has a tacit understanding, whether the director and producer have experience, the shooting status of the location can be determined from the first day. I can see a lot of it.

For example, in the location scene of "1951", the prison sheds, power supply facilities, etc. are all underground, which will not damage the integrity of the location. The cables were also dug in advance and buried underground, instead of being directly exposed on the surface.

Not wearing clothes is only one aspect, the more important thing is to ensure safety.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, Xiangrui entered the shed and informed Chen Yiming that the preparations were basically completed and he could go out for the last inspection.

The assistant director cannot do this for him, Chen Yiming must do it himself, otherwise he will really be a "leash dog director".

Chen Yiming walked out of the prison cell in an awkward manner, followed the steps out of the pit, and when he turned around, he could see the very conspicuous camera car parked on the roadside.

At first glance, it looks like a fire truck that has been lengthened and widened. In fact, it is indeed modified from a heavy-duty fire truck.

When filming "Holiday in the Magic City", the last scene required a very high camera position. Xiangrui had an idea and moved the camera head onto the sprinkler truck, which solved the shooting problem.

When preparing for "1951", according to Chen Yiming's original idea of ​​storyboarding, the camera's displacement range was larger and the requirements for stability were higher.

The first solution he thought of was to extend the experience of "Holiday in Magic City" and simply use a fire truck to transform a photography platform.

Chen Yiming came up with the idea, the car modification master of Moying Factory designed and modified it, and Fu Ruixiang followed up the modification and debugging. The final result was this multi-functional camera truck on site.

The first step in the transformation is to remove the water tank of the fire truck, install a lifting platform in its original position, and readjust the counterweight.

This step is not difficult for experienced car modification masters. The technical bosses of Moying Factory even integrated the control function of the gimbal into the car system. After Chen Yiming tried it, he was eye-opening. Isn't this Jackie Chan's "fast food"? car"?

The second step is to customize a stronger telescopic rod to meet the needs of high-position cameras.

The weight of the F35 camera is not light. It weighs dozens of kilograms together with the multi-function rack. The camera truck has to lift this big thing to an altitude of more than ten to 20 meters, and it also needs to be stable enough to avoid shaking.

The original long ladder of the fire truck will definitely not work. It can only be removed and replaced with a specially customized alloy pole, which stretches into the air one by one.

When Chen Yiming saw the alloy rod extended to its highest state for the first time, he was inevitably shocked.

The tall alloy pole pierced the sky at an angle, and the lowest section was thicker than his waist. It was as powerful and domineering as the "Paris Cannon" made by the Germans during World War I.

Like the "Paris Cannon", the barrel of the cannon is too long and heavy. When it is fully extended, the chassis needs additional counterweight. At this time, the body of the camera truck has lowered all the inner wheels, which is equivalent to the load of a ten-wheel truck.

After the chassis and platform were modified, it was the turn of the camera itself.

The main job is to re-make an exoskeleton for the F35, which looks like a globe.

The outermost layer is a circular frame, which serves as an intermediary to connect the alloy rod and the camera.

An electronic control base is installed on the lower part of the frame to remotely control the camera's left and right shaking and up and down tilting to meet the requirements of moving the camera.

The X-axis and Y-axis of the electronic control base are marked with scales. The minimum movement unit is 6/360, and the distance is equivalent to an angle of 1 minute on the watch dial.

The only thing missing was the function of adjusting the movement speed. The stability problem was really difficult to solve, so Chen Yiming simply didn't need it and used frame extraction instead when shooting.

When Chen Yiming walked to the camera car, there was already a large circle of people surrounding it.

The few who couldn't squeeze in were looking up at the cameras in the sky.

Most of the people with their necks tilted up were peeping around to watch Sang Ping operate the remote control.

Chen Yiming squeezed into the crowd, with Sang Ping and Paul standing in the middle, flanked by their respective assistants, and behind him stood Alai's crew member and assistant director Fu Ruixiang.

Xiangrui was the translator, and the two photographers were discussing the steps of moving the camera for the actual shooting.

There is an oversized keyboard on the side table in front of Sang Ping, and a large pair of headphones hangs around his neck, looking like a veteran of a new wave band.

The keyboard is made larger for ease of operation because three functions are integrated on it.

The first one is the related functions of the photography platform, including the lifting and moving of the pan/tilt, and the expansion and contraction of the alloy rod, which are mainly used to adjust the height of the camera.

The second is to control the movement of the camera base, including horizontal and tilt directions, to determine the camera's viewing range.

The third is the function of the camera itself, actually controlling the shooting.

The pure black keyboard is made of all-metal material and is covered with large and small knobs and buttons, giving it an industrial punk sci-fi feel.This thing looks inconspicuous, but it is actually not easy to make.

Just asking Alai to open the camera control module is not simple. In terms of nature, this matter is completely different from improving and developing split cameras.

The latter is only a partial improvement in the appearance and function of the product. What comes out is still a packaged product, and does not involve the underlying technology and logic.

The former requires Alai to open the interface of the control system and allow direct calls from third-party devices, which is a crazy exploration on the edge of infringement.

Ma Yunteng's mother-in-law lobbied hard, and coupled with the pioneering significance of "Holiday" and "1951" to Alai's digital cameras, he finally succeeded in persuading Alai's management to make an exception.

The crew was able to modify and use the camera control keyboard under the on-site supervision of Alai and the crew.

In fact, the most critical reason is profit-driven. Because of this silly, dark and thick thing, Chen Yiming filed a patent application in advance.

It doesn't matter if Alai disagrees. He can wait for the patent review to go to those small companies.

You must know that the digital camera market is still a blue ocean. There are many companies that are interested in this, and Alai will not be able to be the only one in 10 years.

It's just that Chen Yiming doesn't make money from this thing. He occasionally makes inventions just for the convenience of making movies, so his first choice is Alai, who he has worked with before.

Facts have proved that in the face of interests, the so-called iron-headed Germans also know how to be flexible.

Sang Ping was explaining his idea to Paul, "While lowering and shrinking the rod, it is equivalent to moving horizontally and vertically at the same time. The camera shake is still a bit large, which we have verified before.

So I still insist on not shrinking the stick, adjusting the focus, and leaving the main work to the camera itself. "

After listening to Xiangrui's translation, Paul muttered a long string of words, starting with three "no no no"s in a row, followed by Xiangrui's translation.

"It's too slow and flat. We need something less mediocre."

Chen Yiming coughed twice, and then several people in the middle noticed Chen Yiming's presence and greeted him one after another.

Mr. Sang's mind was entirely on the filming, and he asked for support directly without any courtesy, "Xiao Chen, I think the first scene in the opening scene should have a slow pace to leave room for the audience to integrate into the atmosphere of the movie, so..."

As soon as Paul finished listening to the first sentence of Xiangrui's translation, he interrupted, "NO, if smooth camera movements are used here, it will reduce the subsequent tension and jump out of the rhythm at the beginning, which will be more conducive to mobilizing the audience."

Chen Yiming looked slightly "ashamed" and avoided the glances of Sang Ping and Paul seeking support, and said to himself, "Your opinions are all reasonable. I agree with half of them, so let's change the storyboard."

Sang Ping and Paul's expressions changed greatly after hearing this. The filming is about to start, are you still coming?

The "perversion" of the two people has a past relationship, because the storyboard of the opening scene has been revised many times in the past month or so. The entire photography team was tortured to death by Chen Yiming.

The earliest draft was completely derived from the original "1917", starting with Brother Qin finding the wood, and the entire trench scene.

This kind of arrangement cannot be said to be soothing, it is simply as smooth as a mirror.

After visiting the veterans, Chen Yiming wanted to profile the extreme shortage of supplies in our army, so he added several tattered liberation trucks as backgrounds in the opening scene.

In other words, scenes of the soldiers being transported and complained about were interspersed with the march of the two protagonists.

It can be regarded as enriching the content of the shot based on the first draft.

As for the shooting techniques, not much has changed.

The third change came from Professor Sha. He told Chen Yiming in detail the huge price paid by our army's logistics department after stretching the supply line, and pointed out several errors in the lines of the group performances.

Chen Yiming further broadened his thinking and thought of the documentary "Steel Transport Line", which is known as the prototype of "King Kong River" and reflects the struggle on the logistics line of the Peninsula War.

After repeated deliberation, he changed the storyboard again, pushing the time node of the opening scene forward, from "the protagonists meeting" to "rescuing supplies". This is the prototype of the current version of the opening scene.

As a side note, Lao Sha is now a "God of Plague" in the crew, and all departments are "disgraceful" when talking about Sha.

With Chen Yiming's strong support, Mr. Sha became a teenager and had great motivation to "find faults", and his subjective initiative was overwhelming.

The nearly 70-year-old man first spent time on location every day, directing the engineers to "restore" the battlefield one by one.

His micro-manipulation level is simply better than that of Chairman Chang. They are all operations such as "move this machine gun nest one and a half meters to the left" or "bend the corner of the anti-gun hole another 25 degrees".

At one point, when the soldiers saw him approaching from a distance, they couldn't help but want to urinate and run away. They were more afraid of him than their own regiment leader.

After the location was almost completed, he seamlessly transferred his energy to the behind-the-scenes department of the crew.

The old man who was photographed in the light could not understand, so the Fuhua Road who could understand became the hardest hit area, and they all trembled under Lao Sha's lustful power.

At this moment, he was quarreling with the assistant director Zhang Weining, who was in charge of these three departments. The tunes were louder than the other, and could be heard clearly by the camera truck.

Lao Zhang is a well-known butler of extras in the industry. He spends time in large group performances every day, and has developed a loud voice that can calm even the naughtiest extras without using a speaker.

Being able to compare the volume with Lao Zhang, one can imagine how dedicated Lao Sha is.

(End of this chapter)