Director’s Legend

Once he entered the shooting state, Shao Shuaijun seemed to be a different person. Except for the journey between the two crews, he was buried in the set and projection room all day, or he was working in the office of the special effects team and Weta Digital's G group. staff to discuss issues.

Weta Digital is the world's leading special effects company. It is a New Zealand company founded by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who directed the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and his friends. He is famous all over the world for providing special effects production for "The Lord of the Rings", "King Kong" and "Avatar".

The cooperation with Weta Digital this time is not only to provide special effects assistance for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Teddy Bear", but also to build a bridge for the cooperation between Summit Special Effects and Weta Digital. Weta Digital wants to develop the Chinese market, and Summit Special Effects can provide good support, and then obtain Weta Digital's technology.

For this reason, the New Electronic Technology Research Institute has invited the visual effects director of Weta Digital, Joe Latteri, to serve as a visiting professor at the New Electronic Technology Research Institute. The formalities are done.

"Joe, I think there's something wrong with this orangutan sample. It's too much like a chimpanzee. It lacks the form of unique intelligence. I mean, it doesn't have its own unique behavioral characteristics. It shouldn't be A chimpanzee with red hair." Pointing to an orangutan walking slowly on the computer screen, Shao Shuaijun frowned.

In order to study the morphology of various orangutans, the G group led by Joe Lairett can be said to have studied all the videos about apes on the Discovery Channel. There are at least a few thousand such CDs and tapes piled up in the warehouse of Group G. Even a layman like Shao Shuaijun is almost half an ape behaviorist.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" needs to produce more than one hundred apes of various forms, mainly focusing on three species. One is the only orangutan. This orangutan will be designed to be able to sign language and is Caesar's titan. Orangutans are distributed in Southeast Asia. They have long red hair and are slow to move. As males age, their face rims get larger and wider. It looks hideously ugly.

The second type is the gorilla, which has a rough appearance and a huge body. In the movie, there will also be a mature gorilla, as the number one fighting force, who will become Caesar's powerful warrior leading the apes to escape. But the gorilla will end up dying for saving Caesar.

The third is the chimpanzee. This is the Caesar breed, and the one with the most in the movie. Chimpanzees are highly social animals that are closer to humans, with less than 1% genetic difference from humans. [

Group G has accumulated a lot of research on chimpanzees and gorillas. After all, they have produced "King Kong", the most popular gorilla movie. But for the study of orangutans. It's not so thorough. There are not many videos about orangutans on the Discovery Channel. Everything needs to be discussed by the G group and the director team to outline this big red-haired guy.

"But we don't have enough materials for orangutans. It's hard to find the characteristics of orangutans and integrate them into special effects." A programmer in group g said shaking his head.

G special effects are technological innovations and the most cutting-edge technology for visual presentation, but it is a pity. These lifelike g effects require a lot of realistic material. You can't expect this group of otaku programmers to use their imagination to describe a wonderful nature, which is unrealistic. Only when they see it with their eyes and capture the natural scenery with software can they be integrated into the special effects lens.

Shao Shuaijun also knew the truth that a good woman can't cook without rice, so he pondered for a while. The decision was made and said: "Well, Joe, you Weta Digital will send some senior material collectors, and I will let the peak special effects and dream special effects people go to Southeast Asia to shoot wild behaviors of orangutans."

"In this case, it will cost a lot?"

"It doesn't matter, as long as it can make the movie more perfect. Whether the production cost is 10 million more or 10 million less, I can accept it."

"Okay, I'll arrange someone now."

After solving the structure of the orangutan, Shao Shuaijun rubbed his eyes. For a whole week, almost the spare time was allocated to the special effects arrangement. There are still many problems that need to be solved one by one. What's more difficult is that he still has two crews to take care of. Shao Shuaijun felt that his decision to shoot two films at once was hasty.

Such heavy pressure, if he was not young and in good health, he would not be able to bear it at all.

However, only when there is pressure can there be motivation. Now he feels that when he deals with problems, he is better able to grasp the core and gradually resolve difficult problems into small problems. If you can better control the crew, how to mobilize the enthusiasm of the staff and actors, how to arrange the rhythm to speed up the process, etc.

All of this has never been realized before, and human potential is indeed squeezed out.

Seeing that January 17th was approaching, Shao Shuaijun had no choice but to put aside his work: "Joe, now all the special effects materials can be handed over to a few small special effects companies to make them first, and our first solution is Caesar! All the power should be arranged on expression and motion capture, and after a while we will go outdoors to shoot real scene expression capture, and all the focus of work must be shifted to this aspect.”

Unlike "Avatar", which is completely indoor model building and set shooting, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" has a lot of outdoor motion and expression capture in addition to indoor modeling, so as to eliminate the boundary between visual effects and real environment, so that Everything is true and I can't be picky, otherwise, what is the difference between the new version of the movie and the old version of the movie.

"We are already rushing to work on the outdoor portable equipment, and it will be produced in a few days. Now we will train Andy Serkis how to match the lens in the wild." Joe Lairett gave an affirmative answer.

"That's good, I'm going to the "Teddy Bear" crew now, Joe, will you come with me?" Shao Shuaijun asked again. "Teddy Bear" also uses capture technology to create the toy character of the teddy bear. Just as Weta Digital's g team is producing "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", naturally, "Teddy Bear" is also contracted by the way. [

"Okay, I'm going to see the working group over there too, how is the work going?"

The two drove to downtown San Francisco together, just as the crew was busy shooting teddy bear motion capture shots. The motion capture actors wear tights covered with light spots, doing actions such as climbing chairs and moving benches. There are 8 cameras around, filming his movements.

Motion capture technology is an animation production method that has only become popular in recent years. Through the light spots on the clothes worn by real people, that is, signal trackers, the trajectory of each tracker is recorded with a computer, and finally the trajectory of these signal trackers is drawn on the computer.

Then through computational processing, this image line is converted into a three-dimensional image, and various character sections are added, and after refinement processing, the perfect presentation of special characters can be achieved.

This set of motion capture technology equipment in "Teddy Bear" can be said to be very low-level equipment, which can only capture a general movement. Fortunately, the movie does not need teddy bears to be so vivid, so the performance is very simple.

While studying this motion capture technology, another Scarlett Johansson, who had just finished acting on the set, came to Shao Shuaijun's side and said hello: "Hi, Shao, when do you get off work?"

While watching the 3D modeling on the computer, Shao Shuaijun casually said, "You can leave work at any time. Today's work is not stressful. Have you finished filming today's scene?"

"Yes, if it's not after get off work, I'll treat you to dinner." Scarlett said.

"take me Out to eat?"

Scarlet smiled sweetly: "Ryan is here to visit the class. We hope to treat you to a meal. We have known each other for so long, and Ryan has not met you yet. I hope we can chat together. Oh yes, Joseph , Giovanni and Laura will go too."

Looking at his watch, it was only less than six o'clock, so Shao Shuaijun nodded: "Okay, let's go have a meal together."

When I walked out of the room, I saw Joseph chatting enthusiastically with a handsome guy. Although this handsome guy Shao Shuaijun met for the first time, he was immediately recognized as Ryan Reynolds, the husband of Scarlett Johansson, and the future Green Lantern. In Shao Shuaijun's first movie "Buried Alive", he was the leading actor in his previous life, so it can be said that he has a long history.

"Director Shao, hello."

"Hello, Ryan."

After saying hello, a group of people went to a restaurant in San Francisco for dinner. Ryan is a very talkative person, making the scene lively and lively. And Shao Shuaijun is the kind of person who eats and drinks stuffedly, you say yours, I eat my own. For this kind of gathering among friends, Shao Shuaijun let go of it first, and went as much as he could, and just buried himself in eating and drinking when he went.

Small talk is not something he is good at, and he doesn't want to brag about it with others.

After dinner, everyone broke up. Shao Shuaijun watched Scarlett and Ryan getting into the car arm in arm, and shrugged slightly. He remembered that Scarlett and Ryan's marriage only lasted about two years. After the filming of "500 Days with Summer", Scarlett married him. At that time, Shao Shuaijun was invited, but Shao Shuaijun was supervising the production of "Slumdog Millionaire" in India and did not spare time.

This year, the marriage of the two is estimated to be coming to an end soon.

But who cares about this kind of thing, Shao Shuaijun doesn't care anyway.

The next day, Shao Shuaijun went to the crew of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" to pick up Freida Pinto, and took a special plane to Los Angeles. Today is January 17, 2010, and the Golden Globe Awards will be presented today. As Summit Entertainment's first film to hit the Oscars, Shao Shuaijun will naturally give his best support, and this time the Golden Globe Awards will be the first.

"Slumdog Millionaire" has four nominations for best drama film, best director, best screenplay, and best soundtrack, and Shao Shuaijun's "Pounding Heart" is also nominated for best soundtrack. Besides, today, Shao Shuaijun will present the best actress award. Last year, the Golden Globes gave him two awards for face, but this year he was embarrassed to refuse this small request. (to be continued...)