Made in Hollywood

"Need a stand-in?"

Standing in front of the Vientiane Ring, Duke asked Joseph Gordon Levitt, who was about to film the weightless fight scene in the corridor. The latter shook his head and vowed to say, "I have done a lot of practice, and I will complete these scenes myself. ￥f"

That said, Joseph Gordon Levitt still had a little nervousness on his face.

Although protected by coercion, this action scene still has a certain degree of difficulty and danger. With Duke's work style, the first choice for this scene must be the stunt stand-in, but he will not completely ignore the actor's own opinions.

Most of the scenes here will be completed by Joseph Gordon Levitt himself, but some difficult action scenes will inevitably use stunt doubles.

At this point, the actors have no say. Duke cannot allow the main actors to take such risks. Not to mention the possible troubles of their agency and actors' union after the injury, he can't afford to delay time alone.

The shooting here is also the most typical scene combining traditional scenery and digital technology.

In this scene, it is not enough to change the direction of gravity. Duke also used the "zero gravity" trick.

In the shooting, gravity changes are produced by the rotating set, so how can the total weightlessness be achieved?

The traditional approach is that the crew builds a high-speed spinning centrifugal system to allow the actors to perform in a true weightless state; the digital technology approach is that it’s too much trouble, directly hang the actors in front of the green screen to shoot, and then interact with the background. Combining together can be done easily.

However, Duke relies on the perfect combination of traditional scenery and digital technology to achieve this-this is the crystallization of superb art direction imagination and advanced digital technology work.

First of all, the entire gravity-free scene was completed in a real setting, and actors including Joseph Gordon Levitt were suspended in the setting to create a weightless effect.

However, this kind of suspension is not as simple as just hanging a few Vias. According to the requirements of the action guide Jimmy Carter, the Vias on the shooting scene are as many as the forest. There is no need to worry about these appearing in the film and causing interference to the film itself, because digital effects artists can easily erase them all using the latest computer technology.

Duke is very clear that shooting in the usual way is a huge disaster for digital special effects, because that means a huge amount of Via removal work. So he thought of a wonderful shooting method-to build the original horizontal scene into a vertical one, while shooting the camera vertically upwards!

In other words, the walls on both sides of the corridor become the ceiling and the floor in the true sense, and the vertical relationship of the shooting scene becomes the depth relationship-and vice versa, the depth of the shooting scene is actually physically vertical Surface—In this way, the vertical hanging Wia, according to the spatial relationship of the shooting scene, has become extended from both sides of the corridor instead of hanging from the ceiling.

This greatly increases the chance of using actors to cover the suspension. The special effects artists who do WIA removal can breathe a sigh of relief.

In this respect, traditional shooting techniques have helped digital technology a lot, but digital has also helped traditional special effects.

For some actors, especially those facing the camera frontally—meaning he was facing down when shooting—for example, Ken Watanabe and Hilion Murphy, they couldn’t bear to hang for a long time. You can use double actors, but don’t forget that they have to show their faces in front of the camera...

In this way, face replacement is indispensable. Of course, this can only be done by digital special effects technology. The digital special effects artist scans the face of the actor. Making a digital model and sticking it to the stuntman is almost the same as me.

Such a special shooting technique requires traditional shooting and special effects technology to be seamlessly combined.

In Duke's view, this is the sublimation of special effects production. Traditional special effects and digital special effects do not have to die or die. Digital special effects represent the future direction of development, and traditional special effects are not useless. The two can completely complement each other.

Duke's production of "Inception" is not a game between tradition and numbers. It is a comprehensive application of the entire film craft.

Of course, for Duke, digital special effects are used much more than traditional special effects.

After the special effects artists of Industrial Light and Magic completed the rewinding of Paris, they began to make another full cg scene-the building complex on the edge of the subconscious.

To convince the audience that the Daum Cobb and his wife spent 50 years building a city on the edge of the subconscious when watching the film, it means that the film requires a huge number of three-dimensional buildings, and the special effects artists only have a few months to complete the 50 years. jobs.

At the same time, the diversity of architectural styles also increases the complexity of modeling work.

In order to further amplify the authenticity of architecture, Duke specifically requires that cities on the edge of the subconscious must embody modern architectural aesthetics in different time spans, from Bauhaus-style buildings to skyscrapers to post-modern styles.

These are all done by digital special effects artists who are not very high in the industry.

Regardless of the thousands of digital special effects shots in the current box office productions, the status of the digital special effects group is actually quite embarrassing.

On the one hand, they are important contributors to visual effects films. On the other hand, Hollywood, which has not yet fully adapted to the way of digital film production, does not give them the attention they deserve. This is because digital special effects technicians always appear at the very end of the credit list. It is not difficult to see.

Those who are a little familiar with Hollywood production know that when shooting, most film crews seldom think about how the original lens and visual effects coexist harmoniously. They just throw their finished things to the digital special effects department. This is why digital special effects often Known as "post-processing".

Of course, the situation is changing a little bit, and the projects of directors like Duke and James Cameron are the dawn of digital special effects artists-they are no longer just doing "post-processing" at last. In the project, digital technology special effects artists successfully penetrated the entire process of the film from the early stage to the later stage.

The visual effects director of "Inception", Paul Franklin from Industrial Light and Magic has been involved since the establishment of the film project. This alone is a rare thing in the Hollywood industry. During the filming of the entire film, he was always involved. A member of the core creative team composed of Duke, Anna Prinz, Hannah Serena, John Schwarzman and others, flew to every shooting location to participate in framing, scene construction and shooting Discuss, and have sufficient preparation time to collect special effects references.

The special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic has fully won the trust of Duke through many previous projects and years of cooperation. The nearly 2,000 VFX lenses of "Inception" will all be completed by one company of Industrial Light and Magic.

It took nearly a month for Duke to complete all the studio scenes in Warner Studios. Then the crew left Los Angeles, rented two planes, and flew directly to Tokyo, Japan, where they started shooting a few shots. .

Among them, there is a scene on the Shinkansen. It turns out that Duke planned to shoot on the spot, but because there are some uncertainties in the shooting location and the management of the Shinkansen, the shooting was completed in the studio. In post-production, Then use cgi to replace the scenery outside the car window.

Leonardo DiCaprio once said that Duke wanted to take a round-the-world trip through filming, which was obviously impossible. The crew was busy and the time spent on filming was quite tight, and there were other scenes later. To hurry, after Duke arrives in Tokyo, he will be used for shooting during the day, and at night to examine the camera and deal with other aspects of work.

In addition to being a director, Duke has other identities after all, and there are a series of investments and industries that need attention.

For example, after he acquired the corresponding shares in the theory of relativity, "Avatar", which has accounted for nearly 40% of the investment and income, is launching a bombardment-like propaganda offensive in North America and the world, and will also be promoted to global theaters in December. market.

On a temporary leased apron in Tokyo, a helicopter soared into the air amidst the roar. Duke looked up, and when the plane circled around and was about to land, he gestured for his field record.

"Scene 78, Act 11..."

Put the field record card in front of the main camera lens, the field recorder shouted, "Now!"

The lens of the main camera was deflected and aimed at the landing helicopter. It kept following the plane back to the apron. After the helicopter stopped, the door was opened from the inside. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Leonardo DiCaprio jumped down one after another.

Duke made a gesture, and the second camera controlled by a camera assistant immediately pointed to Watanabe Ken's face that exposed the cabin, and the microphone used for recording moved from the side to the side of the cabin.

"Hey, Mr. Cobb." Ken Watanabe yelled at Leonardo's back, and waited for Leonardo to turn around and said in a seductive tone, "If you go home, go back to the one in North America. What do you think about the child?"

"You can't do this!" Leonardo obviously didn't trust him. "No one can do it!"

"Is it harder than Uemu?" Watanabe Ken said again.

Joseph Gordon Levitt shook his head at the front and reminded, "Cobb, let's go."

The longing for home and children gradually appeared on Leonardo’s face. He did not heed Joseph Gordon Levitt’s reminder, strode back to the helicopter, and asked Ken Watanabe, “This How complicated is the idea?"

A faint smile appeared on Ken Watanabe's face, "It's quite simple."

The overall shooting in Japan went smoothly. By mid-December, Duke ended all of the Tokyo location scenes, and temporarily handed over the crew to Anna Pritz, who returned to Los Angeles with Leonardo. Ready to participate in James Cameron's "Avatar"! (To be continued.)