Made in Hollywood

In the two weeks after the Super Bowl, "The Matrix" successively released posters of the main characters. The posters were formulated completely according to Duke's ideas. In addition to having to be'cool to the point', there are also some cyberpunk cultural aspects. On display, in March, Warner Bros., in conjunction with Silicon Valley and related forum websites, held a cyberpunk cultural exhibition in San Diego, and released the first official trailer of The Matrix at the exhibition.

What is the other big feature of "The Matrix" besides being cool? It is certainly not philosophical thinking and mysticism, but a summary of the development of cyberpunk culture to the present. Such a trailer that highlights cool and cyberpunk can cause a sensation in this group.

Strictly speaking, Duke has cooler and more fun ideas than "The Matrix" in his mind, and even many things in the original film can be changed into dazzling futuristic settings, but whether it is shooting or post-production, Du Ke only made a certain degree of change, rather than overthrowing it all over again.

Any film has its own style. Duke knows this very well. Even the most successful hodgepodge "The Avengers" has a distinct style. The cool and cyberpunk of "The Matrix" is The most distinctive mark, on this basis, appropriately adding some future ★, pie elements will be helpful, but if you add too much and affect the overall style of the film, it will be a disaster.

A pure hodgepodge movie may not fail completely, but it will never achieve great success. For example, Jos Weeden, who is good at bringing various elements together into a unified style, has failed in the typical hodgepodge movie "Firefly". Up to this point.

To make a popular science fiction film into a fan-oriented film is actually a failure, and after the director experienced the great success of "Avengers", the subsequent sequels seem to have a tendency to approach this aspect again. . The sequel directly led to far less than expected.

Cyberpunk has its own black quality, and Duke will certainly not add some inexplicable things, especially beautiful scenery, to destroy this quality.

If a film has no style, or if the style is not clear, the chance of failure is higher than the chance of success.

do not forget. It's only 1998, and it's not the era when it can be bombarded with visual effects.

The Cyberpunk Culture Exhibition, which lasted for a week, attracted the attention of a large number of young enthusiasts across the United States. Warner’s media and nbc television also reported on this exhibition. The most mentioned is The Matrix.

Even this time the exhibition attracted some big names in the computer industry. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have appeared one after another. To a certain extent, it has further aggravated the cyberpunk culture exhibition in the computer industry. And the status in the minds of computer network enthusiasts.

Subsequently. The poster of "The Matrix" used the fastest speed, with the theater as the fulcrum, spread rapidly throughout North America, the first trailer also quickly landed on all media platforms that can play video, telling all viewers that it is summer vacation The new movie of the King of Files is about to strike strongly.

After the cooperation with Warner goes deeper, the biggest benefit is that Duke removes some suitable opinions. There is no need to worry about publicity, distribution and theater, and apart from a series of actions in North America. Warner Bros. has also joined the major sponsors of the film to actively promote it in major overseas ticket warehouse markets.

Warner is in charge of the propaganda, and Duke's main task is to complete the post-production of The Matrix with quality and quantity.

The big ship that is rampaging all over the world can be said to have opened a new era of movie special effects. Duke reduced the cost of actors and obtained the largest tax incentives from Australia in order to invest more funds in special effects production. Although "The Matrix" may not be able to reach the limit of current special effects production, it must create extremely cool visual effects.

For a film, 20 million U.S. dollars and 40 million U.S. dollars are invested in special effects, and the final result is absolutely a gap between heaven and earth.

Special effects can be said to be another major reason for the success of The Matrix. As for the philosophical thinking highly praised by professionals. On the contrary, it has to be in a very backward position, and the failure of the last two films, especially the last one, actually shows what kind of consequences will be brought if some of the condiments of commercial films are turned into dinner.

The two sequels of the film strengthen the unique personality of the film on the basis of the original work. The puzzling dialogue and philosophical speculation are the most prominent, making the storyline far beyond the limit of thinking that mainstream audiences can bear. The visual effects did not receive the desired effect, which directly caused the film's box office performance to be far below expectations.

Just like Duke said, this is a sci-fi commercial film that goes straight to the summer vacation. A little touch is enough. If you really want to discuss it like a literary film, such a huge investment scale will definitely not be able to bear. .

In the past few months of post-production, Duke still used his usual sharp editing style. After several years of cooperation, Mike Dawson worked with him tacitly. These tasks are relatively easy, the most troublesome and time-consuming. , Or the main visual effects of Industrial Light and Magic.

Under Duke’s suggestion, the special effects of Industrial Light and Magic were divided into three parts. One part deals with common special effects, one produces and synthesizes bullet time about Neo and Smith, and the last part uses computer technology to control several gun fights. The scene of the technique is modified.

Gunfighting, if you want to be cool and impactful, it's not just Charlize Theron who can do it by showing off his **** figure and glamorous face. There will inevitably be some shortcomings when shooting, but more and more The powerful cgi technology can make up for the shortcomings of shooting.

Of course, there are also mechas, squid army, and Zion, etc., which will not appear in the film. The Matrix is ​​only two hours long. If too many things are packed in, it can only become a hodgepodge.

The film is not able to succeed by squeezing in some of the future.

Most typically, the greater the amount of information reflected in a film, the more difficult it will be for the audience to watch and understand. Once the audience's thinking limits are exceeded, the consequences will be quite serious.

Even in the past two decades, looking at the world movie box office rankings, it is not difficult to find that the top 100 are basically very simple movies.

The effectiveness of special effects production is related to the success or failure of the entire film. In order to avoid the trouble of coordination and integration caused by scattered work, Duke needs to integrate the entire process of post-production special effects. For this reason, he specially designed a complete set of people. This is the first time in film history that such a huge computer information management system has been used in film shooting.

Through this "digital diary" and "special effects process" system, the staff engaged in digital processing, computer-aided design, and 3D model design in the entire post-production team can get the desired scene design, high-resolution model, and All the lens information during the shooting process greatly improves work efficiency.

More importantly, this system can continue to be effective and will be used in post-production such as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in the future.

In addition, Duke is also preparing to summon the crew to make up a scene, a scene cooler than bullet time.

To say that the most impressive scenes of "The Matrix" are definitely Trinity kicking over the police, Neo avoiding the bullets fired by the agents on the roof, Neo and Smith flying double-gun confrontation in the subway, etc. A series of "time freezing" scenes, Duke is to add the "time freezing" of the explosion on this basis.

The final effect of the film is not the coolest, only cooler!

To put it bluntly, these "time freezing" achieved using technical means all use "slow speed" to reflect the impact of "fast" visual effects.

This method of expressing fast with "slow" is now the real masters, not the Hollywood directors, but the famous John Wu. Although Wu Baige is not an original creator, he is currently a master in this regard. His slow-motion shooting scenes have had a profound impact on the production of Hollywood movie shootouts, and even changed the way of Hollywood movie shootouts to some extent.

In the past, Hollywood’s most admired is the classicist realistic gunfight of Michael Mann in "Stealing Fire". Even if it is the same undead gunfight style, you can find the difference between Hollywood and Wu Baige, Rambo and Schwarzenegger The format of the shootout is completely opposite to Wu Baige's romanticism.

It is no exaggeration to say that people like Wu Baige and Yuan Heping have had more influence on Hollywood movies than those that can be seen on the surface, but unfortunately they have never been able to integrate into this circle like Li Ang.

Hollywood can be said to be an extremely exclusive and attractive circle.

Any enterprising Hollywood director actually understands one thing, staying still means failure, and the two Hollywood super directors are typical in this regard.

James Cameron is the representative of technology flow director. He has been at the forefront of film technology in the whole world. It is not too much to describe him as a pioneer.

Steven Spielberg is a typical businessman director. In fact, anyone with a discerning eye can see that Spielberg has basically stopped in place in recent years. The works he directed can only be described in general. It is also a recognized fact that the career of director is going downhill.

Duke is not James Cameron, nor Spielberg, but he is always clear-headed and knows that learning never ends. It is like absorbing Yuan Heping’s strengths in shooting. He will not let go of those who are helpful to him. Film concept, knowledge and technology, he can learn from Wu Baige's coolness in the shootout, and he can also learn from Japanese animation in production. (To be continued...)

ps: Ask for a ticket~~