Director’s Legend

"Look at this, Hatton and I came up with this idea. We placed the imax camera on the top of the jet remote control aircraft and controlled the aircraft to take pictures from the Oriental Pearl Tower to Dongpu New District. Look at this set of scenery, the rising sun is bathing in sunshine , the whole city is like a set of paintings, so beautiful.”

It was already four days later, and the shots of the Magic City, including those on rooftops, at the airport, on trains, and in hotels, were completed. At the same time, the photography team also completed the city's bird's-eye view shot, and Huang Yuetai is now showing off the results and playing a set of copies.

"Looking at this sequence again, it is an aerial shot at night. Millions of lights are captured in one shot. The two most beautiful moments in the Magic City are not missed. Putting them in the movie will definitely greatly increase the quality of the picture. Oh, and there is also this set of shots of the train situation, which is very powerful. Look at this, it is an aerial shot of the Huangpu River. Does it look like a jade belt running through the city?"

"The effect is very good, so much material, enough for me to edit into the movie. By the way, have you shown it to the people in the city government?"

"Wang Wei sent it, and the city government wanted to keep a set of copies. For safety reasons, we didn't agree. We meant to wait until the movie is released before sending it over."

"It's right to be on the safe side." Shao Shuaijun nodded, "By the way, Lao Huang, I heard that you and Bob have been studying high-speed lenses recently at night. How is the research going? Call the photography team over and let's do it. An experiment?"

High-speed photography requires the use of high-speed photography technology, and the so-called high-speed photography is easy to say, but not easy to say.

The time resolution ability of the human eye is only 124 seconds. In other words, we can see 24 groups of pictures in one second. To put it simply, we see 24 images in one second, which make up the action we see. However, the movement is discontinuous and consists of countless groups of static actions. For example, throwing a flying knife, you may only see the flying knife passing by. In fact, the flying knife has more motion trajectories left behind, which is difficult for human eyes to distinguish. Ability is invisible.

Therefore, the frequency of film photography and projection is 24 frames, 24 frames flashing in one second. This allows us to get the feeling that the movie is continuous and the characters are always moving without pause. But there are many high-speed moving objects. Or transient phenomena, we cannot see clearly.

High-speed photography clearly presents these changes that are invisible to the human eye. It is a photography method that shoots very quickly and has a short exposure time. The human eye can only "see" 24 images in one second. High-speed cameras can see hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands or millions of images in one second. Then exposed to film. After washing and decompressing, it is played back with 24 frames per second, like this. People can clearly see this change.

A very typical application of high-speed photography is bullet time. The bullet passes by in an instant, but it can be greatly extended in the movie to give people a strong visual conflict. Shao Shuaijun has always been very eager for this kind of application. Now that he has the opportunity, he naturally has to study hard.

Especially in "Inception", the time in dreams is different from the time in reality. Five minutes in reality is equal to one hour in dream. In order to achieve this kind of temporal contrast, high-speed photography is a very good way to clearly show the temporality.

"HDCAM-SR high-speed camera, photo-sonics-4er lens, a perfect combination. Let's first show a high-speed lens of an apple falling into water?" Bob Adams was civilized while combining the camera. This camera is a high-speed camera professionally used for movies.

High-speed cameras were originally used for scientific research and military purposes to record experimental phenomena that are tiny or difficult to capture with the naked eye. There are many categories. The principle is spectrometer type, optoelectronic type, the result is divided into scanning camera and frame camera, and the shooting speed is divided into medium and low speed, high speed and ultra-high speed. The one we are using now is an optical-mechanical ultra-high-speed framing camera.

Simple and effective.

"Very good, very well, I have turned on the camera and the footage is very clear. Very well, Hatton, throw down the apple!"

Zhizhi!

The sound of the camera running is clearly audible, and the apple falls into the water and water splashes.

Then a group of people took the film and went to develop it. In about half an hour, the copy was produced. Screened on a small device, the picture is clearly presented.

An apple slowly fell into the water, as if it had made a circular pit in the water, or as if a flower suddenly bloomed on the water. The movement trajectory of the water droplets is clear and distinct.

"Wow! Very beautiful!" Shao Shuaijun praised.

"I can already imagine that when Leo falls into the water, he will be like this big apple, causing the water in the bathtub to blossom and bear fruit, haha." Assistant Director Inst laughed.

But Bob looked calm: "It's not enough. The exposure range of high-speed photography needs to be corrected. The light this time obviously does not meet the tone I want, nor does it match the dream-like picture you mentioned, director."

"Inception" is so complicated that some viewers may not even know which level of dream they are in. Even the actors on the set are often confused about which play they are acting in. Therefore, Shao Shuaijun established strict photography standards, and the main colors of different dreams must be distinguished.

For example, in the opening of the script design, in the palace of the golden dragon, the required tone is nostalgic, so the lighting and materials used in the shooting, the dialogue between the characters, etc. must conform to this main tone. Then it falls back to the first layer of dreamland, which is in the mistress's nest built secretly by the golden dragon, so the color is hot, and then returns to reality, which is cold color, so that people can know at a glance which dreamland they are seeing.

"Bob, we are going to shoot in the palace tomorrow. Let's put these experiments aside for a while. This part of the palace requires us to shoot carefully, and it also sets a tone for future shooting. Collapse of buildings, destruction of stone statues, etc. , all require the cooperation of your photography team and special effects team, and there is also a scene of flooding, we'd better pass it in one go."

There is a very magical scene to be shown in the palace, where Leo is pushed into the bathtub, and the sense of reality affects the dream. As a result, in his dream, huge water flooded the entire palace.

In order to achieve this effect, Shao Shuaijun and the props team have discussed and prepared about twenty tons of water, put it in boxes, arranged it at the windows of the palace, and then poured it uniformly to simulate the shot of a flood. It is conceivable that with so much water painting over it, the crudely built palace will inevitably suffer a devastating blow.

If there is a mistake in the lens, it will be time-consuming and laborious to re-shoot.

It can be said that this shot can only succeed and cannot fail. (To be continued...)