Made in Hollywood

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, abbreviated as an administrative scientific research institution of the US federal government, is responsible for formulating and implementing the US civil space program and conducting research on aviation and space science. Its headquarters is located in Washington, DC.

Dukelai is seeking support. After all, "Gravity" is not a sci-fi movie like "Transformers" or "Star Wars". It is necessary to reduce the unrealistic aspects. NASA is undoubtedly If the most authoritative organization can get their support, from preparation to shooting to post-production, it will definitely reduce a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Like the previous director, Duke easily won the support of NASA, and his reputation is greater, and the other party also attaches more importance to the project. Not only did it send two active astronauts in the rest stage to the project. The crew was instructed on-site and also accepted Duke's appointment to send a four-person technical team to help the crew design and shoot props such as space stations and spacecraft.

In Duke’s plan, most of the scenes inside the space station in the film will be shot in the set set. Although this team will only stay in Los Angeles for less than a month, the crew will have to pay high remuneration. Their participation will undoubtedly make the built scene more professional.

Every shot of the film is based on reality, with the exception of China’s Tiangong and Shenzhou spacecraft because many contents have not yet been announced. Most of them are beyond imagination, and other space stations and satellites used for shooting must be accurately modeled.

When it comes to the Chinese elements in the film, Duke will not be as disagreeable as the original director. He added the Chinese elements for business and to increase the appeal in the Chinese market.

Moreover, in the pre-sale, Warner Bros. once again introduced funds from China Film Group. The other party also dispatched relevant professionals to ensure that the content of China in the film will not touch the sensitive nerves of Big Scissors.

The biggest selling point of the film is the special effects and the heroine's self-help, and the special effects are more commercial.

In order to make the audience as immersive as possible after the film was completed, Duke inquired about many astronauts' information, and after returning to Los Angeles, he kept communicating with two astronauts sent by the Aeronautics and Space Administration and obtained a lot of information.

The heroine's one-man role in the film is very difficult, so Duke pays much attention to the details of Scarlett's preparation, not only invited a yogi to train her. Also let the astronaut exercise the space breathing rhythm she used when shooting.

After all, Scarlett was born as a literary girl, and George Clooney's role is limited. Duke is more at ease with them. The main energy of the preliminary preparations is on special effects.

For special effects, the biggest challenge of shooting is to show the weightless state and present it to the audience. In addition to letting the actors forget the feeling of gravity as much as possible, the crew will use a lot of g animation techniques. Make it more real.

It is no exaggeration to say that space is the ultimate dream of all mankind. And even for the movie dream machine, it is not easy to create real space on the screen.

Ideally, the entire crew will be shot in space, but this is obviously impossible.

The biggest difficulty in making "Gravity" comes from the technical aspects. Duke knows this very well, but compared to Alfonso Caron. He has too many advantages.

First of all, Duke is also one of the directors who are at the forefront of Hollywood technology; secondly, he has been to James Cameron’s filming locations several times and has sufficient knowledge of the equipment improved by the King of the World, many of which can be used directly. To the shooting of "Gravity"; finally. The special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic is strong enough that when Duke proposes some special effects solutions in his memory, he can quickly find out the actual application methods.

Of course, the most important thing is that Duke’s production budget is as high as 200 million US dollars, and if necessary, it can continue to be added. Sufficient funds can also hire more special effects staff to work at the same time, thereby reducing the production time.

The realistic space scenery in the film will be made entirely with g, and the special effects team spent a lot of time studying real space.

"It must be more realistic than other space films!"

Tim Weber, the visual effects director of "Gravity", took Duke's request and started the special effects work for this film before shooting.

According to Duke's vision, when the space environment of "Gravity" is presented on the ima screen, it is no less than an interstellar journey for viewers sitting in the dark and wearing 3D glasses. The entire film only has a space station. Most of the internal scenes are shot in the set set, and the realistic feeling of outer space actually needs to be realized by g, and all the space shots are synthesized by g.

In the preliminary preparations, Duke and his team interviewed astronauts, read various books about space, studied thousands of photos taken in space to understand space; then they spent a lot of attention on the details As he said, it is necessary to ensure that the images in each shot are based on reality.

However, China's Sky and Shenzhou are not in the ranks. Even if the China Film Group's funds are introduced, the other party will not be able to obtain this information. Hannah Serena's set team can only rely on imagination.

In order to simulate the magnificent light perception in space, the visual effects team of "Gravity" will also use the latest software developed by Industrial Light & Magic as the screen renderer for the first time. In the preliminary preparations, the programmers of Industrial Light & Magic wrote in the software. A total of 71,000 pieces of code for coloring.

Tim Weber once described the rendering workload of the film to Duke, "If you use a single-core pu computer to make it, you have to render it from the beginning of Egyptian civilization, which is 5000 BC, to the next century. To catch up with the trial screening at the end of the year."

The special effects work went far in front of the shooting. After completing the modeling, at the request of Duke, the huge special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic took the lead in the production of several explosion scenes realized purely by g. Due to the explosion in the vacuum and the The explosion on the earth is very different, and Duke did not intend to use the model explosion method to shoot the explosion scene in the film.

But according to his request, these explosion shots are not completely realistic. This is a commercial movie after all. Some shots are not for realism, but to convey an atmosphere and increase the appeal of the film.

In addition, there are many dangerous scenes in some scenes, and g characters will also be used.

In fact, some actions are too dangerous. For example, in the shots suspended in the capsule during shooting, Scarlett Johansson’s legs will undergo considerable tests, but Duke will not let her risk such injuries.

Even in order to help her rush to Austria, Duke did not allow accidents.

Then we are preparing to create a weightless environment. It is impossible for a movie named "gravity" to avoid the problem of weightlessness. This is also one of the key tasks in the preliminary preparations.

Duke has always been aware that the weightlessness on the big screen in space movies is actually the weightlessness of the perspective of the screen, not the weightlessness of the real.

Therefore, the core problem he and the team have to solve is how to deal with the problem of changing perspectives.

So, John Schwarzman recommended a manipulator with flexible operation.

The robotic arm is basically taken out of a car factory. John Schwarzman once found in San Francisco that a small company fixed the camera on the robotic arm to take pictures, so that the camera's movement can be precisely controlled and it is also very flexible.

This inspiration inspired him.

This manipulator has a movement speed of 4 meters per second, a movement radius of 3.1 meters, an accuracy of 0.04 mm, up to 7 joints of the axis, and a track of more than 10 meters, which is enough to complete various complex And the fine movement, shooting all kinds of tricky angle shots at will.

However, in subsequent shooting tests, both Duke and John Schwarzman found that the effect of shooting with the robotic arm was not as good as expected.

In the initial test, Scarlett Johansson was placed on a machine with a small range of motion. There were two robotic arms around her, one controlling a lens and the other controlling the light source.

This basically expresses the idea of ​​the crew to solve the problem of weightless lens, the changed lens angle and the moving light source.

But the effect of the shooting is far less than expected.

This problem has plagued Duke for a few days. He kept communicating with Hannah Serena and John Schwarzman, and also brought together Industrial Light & Magic special effects expert Tim Weber. The four people discussed and thought Based on the robotic arm, a more suitable light box for shooting equipment is made!

After continuous experimentation, it took more than half a month for the crew to produce the ideal light box for Duke's four people. The light box is mainly composed of led screens, movable baskets, and i-days robotic arm cameras.

This is actually a cubic box about six meters high and three meters wide specially built by the visual effects team. It is surrounded by a led screen composed of 1.8 million light bulbs. There is a simple movable basket in the center. When shooting, Scarlett Lee Johnson is performing in this basket.

But this light box is also defective, it is very hot when working...

Only time is limited. This is the best solution that the crew can think of in a short time. When simulating weightlessness, the basket in the "light box" can only be displaced to a 45 degree tilt, because once this angle is exceeded, the actor will fall off The danger of coming down.

In order to ensure the safety of the actor, more perspective changes will be used to drive the lens through the i-day s robotic arm to achieve the effect of relative displacement, and if the actor's body angle is rotated too large, gravity will easily cause facial congestion and picture distortion .

When performing the effect of the actor "smashing into" the camera, in fact the actor basically doesn't move, but lets the camera "smash into" the actor under the precise control of the robotic arm. (To be continued.)