Made in Hollywood

"It is estimated that the nominees luncheon will also end."

At the rest table in the editing room, Mike Dawson looked at the time and said to Anna Prinz, "I bet $100, and Duke will definitely not be nominated for best director."

For old-school Hollywood figures like Mike Dawson, it is impossible to be nominated for best director by virtue of a superhero movie.

But Anna Prinz didn't think so. She put down the coffee in her hand and said, "Well, I'll block $100. Duke will definitely be nominated for best director."

After drinking the coffee in the cup, Duke glanced at the two men with boredom, "If you have nothing to do, go to the special effects studio to help."

Tina Fei, who was sitting next to Duke, laughed, "The results will be passed on soon."

It seemed that there was a tacit understanding with Tina Fey. Three minutes after this, Nancy Josephson called, but after Tina Fey hung up her phone, an incredible expression appeared on her face, as if Transformers really appeared on Earth.

"What's the matter?" Anna Prinz asked.

"Don't you get the nomination for best supporting actor?" Mike Dawson immediately thought of the other side.

∽,

Even Duke’s eyes showed a bit of curiosity. Tina Fei was extremely affected by him, and even if there was a serious emergency, this would not happen.

"The nomination list is out." Tina Fei put away the expression and said directly, "The Dark Knight won the best supporting actor, best sound editing, best photography, best art direction, and best sound effect. , Best makeup, best editing, best visual effects, and..."

She paused, then said, "And best director, nine nominations in total."

"No best picture?" Mike Dawson asked.

Tina Fei shook her head, "There is no nomination for best picture."

Duke and several others also showed similar expressions to Tina Fei just now.

A film nominated for best director. It was not nominated for Best Picture. Although not unique in Oscar history, it is also extremely rare.

Several people glanced at each other, Duke sighed, "The academy is indeed a master of balance."

"That group of people should go to politics..." Anna Prinz couldn't help shook her head, "not a film critic."

After all, Duke are veterans in the industry. It’s not difficult to find the intention of the academy after a little thought. "The Dark Knight" has aroused an extremely strong response. The content of its discussion has been out of the scope of the film and has spread to the real society. With Duke’s strong appeal, if you ignore it If you don’t give an explanation, you will be attacked by countless media and fans.

Discrimination against superhero movies is the tradition of the academy. Of course, those stubborn old men don't want to destroy the tradition easily.

Give Duke a nomination for best director and ignore "The Dark Knight" in the best picture. It can not only comfort the media and fans, but also try to maintain its own traditions.

On the other hand, Duke's own status and influence cannot be ignored at all, and this can also give him an explanation.

"That is a nomination." Duke told Tina Fei, "Notify Warner that the focus of publicity is still on Heath Ledger, and he must be guaranteed the best supporting actor."

If Heath Ledger is still alive, the difficulty for him to get the best supporting actor will increase infinitely. But death is often better than the best PR.

By the same token, Duke is still alive. And the life is very moist, it is impossible for the academy to award its director to him because of "The Dark Knight."

Let Tina Fey continue to pay attention to the progress of "The Dark Knight" in the Oscars, Duke's attention turned back to the post-production of "Transformers".

After completing the first cut version, Duke began to fine-cut the film without special effects. The goal of the fine-cut was very clear, reducing the length of the film to less than two and a half hours. Make the whole rhythm more compact.

Strictly speaking, this is also a standard superhero movie, but unlike "Spider-Man" and his like, Duke will not let "Transformers" appear similar to Peter Parker and Mary Jane's melodious love song, Sam The feeling of adversity with Michaela. It will also exceed the relationship between men and women, and this relationship is the same as the rhythm of the film, and it is hard to breathe from beginning to end.

This sharp mtv-style high-speed picture editing is also known as the "Duke Rosenberg format style".

In fact, no matter who is making the Transformers live-action movie, the protagonist of the protagonist is undoubtedly Transformers itself.

Alien machine life transforms into ordinary mechanical equipment to avoid the attention of ordinary people. All kinds of transformations, from cars and airplanes to robots with their feet firmly on the ground, the pictures are dreamlike.

But if you want to be authentic, you need extremely good special effects production. Duke has extremely high requirements on the Industrial Light and Magic company responsible for special effects production, and the special effects pictures produced are repeatedly modified by them.

He hopes that the robots on the screen come alive, whether they hover in the air, escape under the sand, or run wild on the highway, they all exist as if they exist in the real world.

The robots are virtual, but the tanks and airplanes they compare with are real. This cannot be ambiguous.

According to Duke's request, the special effects artists of Industrial Light and Magic let the two use digital technology to form the special effects picture on the blue screen.

At the same time, cooperation with the military is very important. There are many war scenes in the film. It is also the largest cooperation between the military and Hollywood in an action film in history. The sponsorship provided by the Pentagon allows the crew to save a lot of money. Makes more money invested in post-production.

Excluding the months spent on preparation, it took only 75 days for the film to be shot on the spot, and some shots also used imax3d cameras.

The scale of the production process of "Transformers" can be described as very large.

Although the shooting was completed and the post-production progressed smoothly, Duke did not relax in the slightest. For such a film, any negligence may cause extremely serious consequences.

In order to coordinate the work between various departments in the post-production, he put a folder in the computer sharing area, named it ‘Edit Sample’, and all colleagues involved in the production can browse it freely.

Duke is very clear that film is the product of teamwork, and if you don't try it yourself, you will never get the ideal picture.

The film editing is completely loyal to the style requested by Duke. In the finished clips, there are countless action scenes, countless characters, lines and witty lines, one after another visual special effects, and of course, there are countless speedy spins. The footage is almost breathless.

To a certain extent, whether it is editing or special effects production, it must be tempered, Duke can cooperate with the tacit team to make the pictures in his mind into finished products.

The special effects production department uses 6 video workstations and two mass storages, which are specially used to store all the lens images and corresponding preview effect sketches. In order to let Industrial Light & Magic and Duke send daily work results to each other smoothly, they are also specially built A multimedia network.

"Transformers" is very large. The editor Mike Dawson is very experienced and skilled, and he can fully understand Duke’s ideas. He can always weave fast-paced fighting scenes, complex special effects, and just the right little humor. Into an exciting story.

Except for the six-hour version that was first cut out, Duke still has dozens of hours of material in his hands. These are all candidates for the film.

A movie, no matter how it is shot, cannot be copied and pasted. What's more, Duke has made so many changes. Since he entered the industry, the number of shots taken is not ten times or even two times the final editing. Ten times as much.

From the preparatory period to the end of the shooting, Duke prepared a large amount of material. After entering post-production, sometimes the only purpose of the crew's work seems to be to find some unused shots, because he will also be dissatisfied with the editing results and put them all. Kill.

Except for vacation days, Duke would go to the workplace every day to carefully figure out the pictures he wanted, and then describe it to others.

He sometimes hopes to see the results of the editors first, let them cut out their own work, and then study and examine it for one to two hours. He doesn’t need to piece together dead objects, he wants a set The group shots are smooth and natural.

In this case, the action scenes of the movie have undergone repeated editing. Duke often has to deal with 80 to 100 sets of shots a day. Every shot must be taken seriously. They are all important components of the movie.

In order to complete the work efficiently, including Mike Dawson, Duke used a total of six editors, but the other five people are dominated by Mike Dawson.

Large scale and fast pace are the biggest characteristics of "Transformers". There must be a capable editing team to constantly come up with useful new ideas.

Even so, many times the crew will look at each other and feel helpless. For such a high-cost and high-cost movie, it requires multiple editors to work closely together to process the shots that have been shot with high quality and quantity.

In order to find the feeling, Duke repeatedly watched the first few episodes of the 1984 cartoon in his free time, but he does not intend to be too affected. After all, movies and animated series are completely different works.

And among several editors, including Mike Dawson, there are no enthusiastic fans of Transformers. Although it is easy to delete some clips that may be important to Transformers fans, it also makes The editing effect is easier for the general public to accept, avoiding the movie to be too fan-oriented.

The scale of this movie is very magnificent. The content of the original animated series is not suitable for transplanting into the movie. Mike Dawson has not even watched the previous Transformers animated series and the animated big movie, because he thinks it is useful for making a ' Movies in Duke Rosenberg format are not helpful. (To be continued...)

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