hollywood melon man

Chapter 428 Technological Development Gap

After its premiere at the Shanghai Film Festival, "Pirates of the Caribbean" was officially released in the mainland film market.

As the importer of this film, China Film Corporation naturally spent a lot of resources to promote the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean".

In the bus stations and big screens in commercial plazas of several major ticket-selling cities, various posters of Pirates of the Caribbean can be seen everywhere. These posters are different from those of North American movies, with Gilbert Jr.'s name being placed at the largest position.

The reason is simple. In mainland China, Gilbert Jr. is much more famous than the leading actors. Even the world-famous Orlando Bloom is not as well-known as Gilbert Jr. in China, not to mention that he has not come yet.

Johnny Depp made a very true comment: "I thought it was Tom Cruise coming, these fans are so crazy."

In fact, although Tom Cruise has a certain degree of popularity in China, he is still not as famous as Gilbert Jr.

Many movie fans have said that Gilbert Jr.'s movies were their enlightenment to Hollywood blockbusters. Many people fell in love with Hollywood blockbusters after watching his movies.

In fact, except for "The Shallows" and "Final Destination", all of Gilbert's films have never been absent from the Chinese market. Although there are sometimes cuts, they are all within a reasonable range.

"Saving Private Ryan" and the "Lord of the Rings" series filmed in China have received high praise.

The media will also focus on promoting Gilbert Jr., his legendary experiences and life. With such large-scale exposure, it will be hard for Gilbert Jr. not to be popular in China.

After attending the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Film Festival, Guo Fan and Liu Ji chose to go to a cinema in Shanghai to watch "Pirates of the Caribbean" because they were not eligible to watch the opening film.

While waiting to enter, Liu Ji talked about his fate with Gilbert Jr.'s movies: "My favorite is The Rock. I watched a pirated disc with my brother at that time, and I was immediately attracted to it.

Later, I came into contact with movies such as "Speed" and "Real Steel".

But the most shocking thing was when I went to the cinema to watch "The Matrix" when I was in high school. It was my first time to go to the cinema to watch a movie.

From then on, I fell in love with movies and Little Gilbert."

Guo Fan also said: "I started earlier than you. After watching "Real Steel", I had the idea of ​​becoming a director, and a science fiction director."

"Only to find out that you are not that cut out for it?"

"Not really," Guo Fan shook his head and said, "I just found that with our domestic environment and technology, it would probably take 20 years to reach their level."

"Indeed," Liu Ji patted Guo Fan on the shoulder and said, "I'm optimistic about you, young man. You have potential. Keep going."

Guo Fan smiled bitterly and said, "Don't flatter me. Even a director like Guo Shi can't make a science fiction film, so how can I do it?"

"Hey!" Liu Ji disagreed: "The Imperial Master can't shoot it? That means he doesn't have the ability, right? We are different, we are still young!

There will always be opportunities in the future.”

"I'm going to give you some good luck," Guo Fan knew that his classmate was always an optimist, commonly known as a big mouth, and very confident. Sometimes Guo Fan didn't even know where this confidence came from.

The movie started soon, and the two followed the crowd into the cinema to watch it.

The number of fans in the Chinese film market is not worth mentioning compared to its huge population. Perhaps only in big cities like Shanghai, the number of fans is relatively large.

Therefore, this cinema located in the center of Shanghai has a good flow of people. The attendance rate of the show that Guo Fan and Liu Ji watched was about 60%.

It is different from North American cinemas, where moviegoers usually have popcorn and Coke in their hands when they go to the movies.

But in China, movie fans go to the cinema just to watch movies, and only a small number of people will have things like popcorn and Coke.

After all, the things sold in cinemas are not too cheap, and it is indeed a bit of a luxury for Chinese movie fans who don’t spend much on entertainment at this time.

Liu Ji is rich, as he said, because his family owns a mine, so he bought popcorn and Coke.

However, Liu Ji and Guo Fan did not expect that, apart from eating two popcorns and drinking a sip of Coke at the beginning, they did not touch the popcorn and Coke for the rest of the time.

It’s not that the popcorn isn’t sweet or that the Coke isn’t tasty.

It was just that the movie was so good that the two of them couldn't take their eyes off it.

Logically speaking, both of them are students of the film academy, and they should have watched a lot of films.

But in fact, watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" in the cinema, especially the part where they turned into skeletons under the moonlight, still shocked them both.

This is true for the graduating students from both film academies, not to mention the ordinary audiences who have little movie-watching experience or are even entering a cinema for the first time.

Guo Fan also observed the reactions of the fans around him. Almost all of them had their mouths wide open and watched the movie. Their faces showed the excitement brought by the excessive secretion of adrenaline during the movie.

For many Chinese audiences, this is a fresh feeling they have never experienced before.

The situation in Shanghai is better. As the country's largest box office city, going to the cinema to watch movies is still very popular.

Actually, watching movies is not unfamiliar to Chinese audiences. However, compared with the huge population base, only a small number of people go to the cinema to watch movies.

Most Chinese audiences watch movies on pirated discs, especially Hong Kong movies.

After watching the shocking "Pirates of the Caribbean", Guo Fan and Liu Ji walked out of the theater and could still hear several peers in front of them discussing it.

"I used to watch God of Gamblers and A Better Tomorrow by renting discs. I never thought that watching a movie in a cinema would be so exciting." Another young man expressed his thoughts: "This is the shocking part of Hollywood movies. If you let our domestic movies be shown in cinemas, it will not feel like this at all."

Guo Fan, who was listening from behind, couldn't help but nod in agreement.

Indeed, if you want to watch Hollywood blockbusters with visual effects, you have to watch them in the cinema. You won't get that kind of shocking feeling if you watch pirated discs.

In fact, the cinema that Guo Fan and Liu Ji visited is a theater chain under China Film Group Corporation. The projection technology used in this cinema is the most advanced projection system introduced from North America, and the experience effect is very good.

From the layout of the theater to the sound effects and the large screen with maximum picture quality, all of them are the best configurations in cinemas in the world today.

This is one of the contents of the cooperation reached between China Film and several North American cinema companies, which aims to introduce cinema systems and transform the domestic cinema market.

Hollywood has not restricted the export of this technology. The reason is simple: the Chinese market still needs to be vigorously developed.

There is still a lot of room for exploring the potential of the Chinese market. The primary issue is how to expand the fan base and attract more fans to the cinema.

This not only relates to the development of the Chinese-language film market, but is also more conducive to Hollywood's entry into the Chinese market and harvesting this market.

If the market is not big enough and the fans are not numerous enough, no matter how attractive the land is, it is not enough for Hollywood. Therefore, developing the Chinese market is a consensus reached by all Hollywood companies and even the North American cultural community.

Moreover, this is also related to the output of ideology, which is also supported by the gentlemen in Washington.

Therefore, cinema projection technology, which is considered advanced but insensitive, was boldly introduced into China.

Now, several cinemas in Shanghai have completed the renovation and are running as a pilot project. Once good results are achieved, China Film will promote it to its own cinemas across the country.

From this perspective, although Hollywood's goal is to first cultivate and then reap the market, it has still done good things, so we should judge by the deeds rather than the intentions.

However, there is still a problem, which is the technological innovation in film shooting methods. There are more restrictions in North America in this regard.

For example, the big screen of this Shanghai cinema can project images at a quality of up to 2K, but the shooting technology of Chinese-language films and the images captured by the camera can only reach 1080P.

What this means is that the picture quality of the movie is not good enough for the 2K big screen, and it looks like a low-quality product, which is very disappointing.

In this regard, several state-owned film companies have also been working hard, either spending a lot of money to buy other people's mature cameras, or developing their own.

When filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was finished, Gilbert Jr. left several camera systems with damaged surfaces for personal gain and asked China Film Corporation to study them.

China Film Corporation has indeed conducted research, but research is research alone, and many parts still need to be imported from island countries and Germany.

For example, no domestic company can manufacture lenses that meet the requirements for cameras, so they can only buy products from Germany or other countries.

But they raised the price exorbitantly, and the money from selling one lens was enough to manufacture several old cameras.

China Film is not a charity company. After the camera is copied, it is bound to increase the selling price of each unit or increase the rental price.

However, excessively high selling prices and rentals will usually discourage other film companies and crews from leaving, thus forming a vicious cycle.

But for China Film, the more fatal problem was not this, but that the photography system they imitated soon became obsolete in Hollywood and was replaced by a new generation of technology.

In other words, the photography system that was copied at a huge cost not only did not make a penny, but it is also already an outdated technology.

This is not the end. Before the Shanghai Film Festival lecture started, Lao Tian came all the way from Beijing to have a meal and chat with little Gilbert.

During the dinner, Gilbert Jr. revealed that there is an IMAX company in North America that has developed the IMAX photography and projection systems, which are now mature and have commercial value.

Gilbert Jr. also said that his next movie will be shot with an IMAX camera.

In fact, Shanghai had its first IMAX cinema as early as 2001, but not many people went there to experience it, and not many people knew about it.

Hearing about so many new things made Lao Tian worried.

Technology is developing abroad, but it is struggling domestically. The commercialization of the film market has been called for for nearly a decade, but there are not even one or two decent commercially-operated films.

If this continues, when will Chinese-language films be able to stand up?

What Minister Tian didn't know was that Gilbert Jr. had not yet revealed to him that James Cameron had made great progress in his research on 3D photography systems.

In the past two years, James Cameron has made great progress in documentary filming and underwater photography.

James Cameron has now returned to his studio in Los Angeles and is preparing for a major project with a planned investment of $200 million to $300 million.

But in fact, the money spent on research and development of new technologies alone has cost three to four hundred million yuan.

James Cameron was afraid that the film company would not trust him, so he asked Gilbert Jr. to endorse him in order to attract investment for his new project.

Gilbert Jr. has agreed to James Cameron's request. If nothing unexpected happens, Gilbert Jr. will become the producer of this film, which is temporarily named "A".

There is no need to guess which "A" is the famous "Avatar".

However, given James Cameron's slow pace, as well as many technical verification issues and the construction of 3D cinemas, it is still a little early for this film to be released.

(End of this chapter)