Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"What do you mean by painting?" Ronald didn't know anything about this ancient stunt.

"Matte painting may be the earliest stunt technique..." Cameron thought for a long time, but couldn't figure out how to describe it, so he simply took Ronald to the office building of 20th Century Fox.

In the most famous "Star Wars" scene display in the reception room, Cameron took Ronald to look carefully at the Millennium Falcon fighter being pulled in by the Empire's Star Destroyer with a tractor beam.

This scene has a detail that is very common to the audience, but looks very strange to the filmmakers, that is, the tractor beam is empty above, below, left and right. But in the real world, there is no such tractor beam, and the Millennium Falcon model must be suspended by other things. How did Lucas shoot it at that time?

Cameron pointed to the picture and explained to Ronald that the Empire Star Destroyer in this scene was not a real model, but a painting drawn by an artist, placed behind the Millennium Falcon spacecraft, as a fake background when the camera was shooting. Even those groups of white storm troopers were taken from the painting.

This painting must be carefully drawn so that all perspectives and lighting are exactly the same as those in the studio, so that the audience will have an illusion that they are seeing a huge Star Destroyer on a black sky.

Originally, there was nothing in the distance outside the Millennium Falcon in the camera shot. With the background painting painted with matte paint, it looks almost like a normal scene when illuminated by the light.

Finally, by moving the camera closer and farther, the originally static background painting can produce the effect of moving the scenery outside the window when we are sitting on an airplane, so that the audience cannot tell that it is actually a painting.

It sounds simple, but it is quite complicated to implement. First, you need to find a suitable painter who has a foundation in sketching and gouache painting. No one in the film industry has used this ancient technology for a long time, and whether you can find a high-level painter is a problem.

Second, if the distance the camera moves exceeds a fixed length, the perspective of the background will change. The traditional Hollywood approach is to draw several matte background paintings, so that the puzzle pieces can be carefully connected according to different scene types.

Because the slightest inconsistency will be noticed by the audience, an experienced person is needed to carefully handle the interface between the real background and the fake painting. This is why this kind of work is called a scene stitcher.

Similarly, there are not many experienced scene stitchers because of the gradual demise of this technology. Even a large studio like 20th Century Fox may not be able to find anyone who can do this job.

However, if this matte painting scene stitching technique is done well, it also has advantages that other special effects methods do not have, that is, painting can handle details and perspective very realistically. It is more difficult for the audience to detect than the current computer special effects and other methods.

Moreover, compared with setting up the scene and shooting on the spot, the scene stitching method is about one-tenth of the cost of the former two.

With such a great benefit, anything can be done in Hollywood.

Ronald called Joel Silver and told him about his special effects ideas. Joel Silver carefully watched the Star Wars videotape and did not find any flaws. He waved his hand to let Pamela Anderson leave, and wanted to talk to Ronald about something private.

"Ronald, I have no doubts about your technical judgment. But after all, the bulk of this movie was paid by Fox, and the budget for such a cheap special effects method is..."

"Who said it was cheap?" Ronald understood the thinking of independent producers like Joel Silver, and he would cheat a little bit of production costs if he could. He continued, "This method is almost extinct in Hollywood. It is not easy to hire experienced painters. We have to let them practice and trial produce. Moreover, our movie special effects shots are very long, and we have to paint many pieces.

Can these matte paintings be combined with real shots to achieve our effect? ​​Do we need to experiment repeatedly? Do we need to adjust our ideas according to the effect?"

"Hahahaha, you are so right. We are also making important contributions to Hollywood's preservation of traditional craftsmanship..." Joel Silver was enlightened by Ronald and immediately came up with more than a dozen ways to cheat money. It is completely no problem to increase the budget by five to ten times.

"It's still the old division of labor. I'm responsible for technical implementation, and you're responsible for the budget..." Ronald also laughed. It was just right to find someone to come and experiment with some other special effects. Anyway, he wouldn't need much.

The two co-producers still have a specific division of labor. Joel Silver is in charge of money, not much about the shooting. Ronald is in charge of shooting, not money.

...

The search for suitable matte painting talents was particularly smooth. This is because George Lucas, the boss of Industrial Light and Magic, the largest special effects company in Hollywood, admires Ronald very much. He told Ronald that Industrial Light and Magic had done matte painting work for two big films after 1985. It may be possible to find the only experienced painters and cooperating photographers in the industry.

"I have maintained a small team at Industrial Light and Magic, specializing in matte painting work. However, recently only a few small productions such as Steven (Spielberg)'s "Young Sherlock Holmes" have this kind of work. You can use this technology, and I can keep this small team."

George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic has many strange technical teams. Except for some popular special effects teams, such as explosions, aerial combat, and matte scenes, there is little demand for niche special effects. They all rely on the boss to support the team.

Lucas was actually very happy that Ronald was able to get them to start work this time. Otherwise, it would have been quite a financial pressure for him and Spielberg to start work alone.

"Hello, my name is John Noel, I'm glad to serve you." The people from the special effects team quickly rushed to Hollywood from Lucas's Star Wars estate to meet Ronald. He had worked on Cameron's "The Abyss" special effects team, and he looked familiar to Ronald.

"Hello, I think we have met before. I have a big project here. The longest continuous shot takes 35 seconds. Come and take a look at the schematic diagram I made."

Ronald made a small model of the final airport scene in "Die Hard 2" and showed it to John Noel, asking him how difficult it was technically to realize it.

"There aren't any big problems when it comes to shooting. It's just that the matte painting is larger, the hole in the middle is larger, and it takes a little more support to support it."

The scene needs to leave a place for the actors to perform, so a hole is left in the painting for them to perform in the hole. When the camera shoots, it can form an illusion and integrate the picture and the characters into one.

With such a large scene and such a long lens, the painting will be several meters high. The painting will take a long time to complete. After completion, it also needs to be fixed in many ways to prevent accidental collapse during filming.

This part is just time-consuming. We are still a few months away from shooting, so there is no problem in trying it slowly.

But when the Japanese Yusei Kamishiro, the most skilled among the last few matte scene painters in Hollywood, came over to take a look, he raised a question.

"This scene is too big. I can't draw it by myself. I have to double the size, otherwise I'm afraid the drawing won't be accurate." Shangshan Yusheng complained about the difficulty. This kind of scene-taking scale is rarely done even in old Hollywood. Except perhaps for a few scenes that Kubrick played with on such a large scale as Spartacus . But that was the golden age of painting and setting, with many people and experience.

"However, if the frame is smaller, the holes in it will also be smaller. We need to have a large panorama during shooting, so it cannot be smaller. The rest of the shots can be shot in smaller versions." Ronald opened the script to him Look, this shot would lose its magic if it didn't move from close-up to long-range.

Ronald did not agree to remove the biggest lens, but Yusheng Shangshan still shook his head. Today's painters are not as good as they used to be. If several people work together, the style cannot be completely unified. He has never dealt with such large-scale special effects, so he did not dare to promise that it would work for a while.

"Excuse me, is John Knoll here?"

During the stalemate, a young man wearing jeans and a baseball cap came to see the special effects supervisor of Industrial Light and Magic.

"He's changing the camera's trajectory from behind. Do you have anything to do with him?" Yusheng Shangshan asked.

"I am his brother Thomas. I came to see him for something... Oh, are you using scene painting? Not many people practice this craft now."

"What, you know this too?" Ronald was a little surprised.

"This is a technique, which means we cover the periphery of the real scene, replace it with a picture, and open a hole in the middle for the actors to perform inside. This technique is very classic, and the new software I developed uses this idea. "

"Software, what software?" Ronald seemed to have some inspiration.

"It's a small software that Thomas and I wrote that can modify photos on an Apple computer just like in a darkroom. I wrote the first version of the program with him. Later, both Apple and a company called Adobe took a fancy to it, and we We sold the software and came back to do the special effects in movies we like.

However, there is still a lot of programming work to be done in the follow-up. I am mainly upgrading the main program. My brother is busier at Industrial Light and Magic, so he writes some small functional plug-ins. This time I come here to show him what will happen after the upgrade. main program. "

…

It happened that Ronald bought a lot of Apple computers last time and invited the Noel brothers to demonstrate the software to him.

On Apple computers, this software called Photoshop was installed quickly. The icon is a human eye, and a color palette.

Thomas Noll was more familiar with the program, so he opened a picture, then added a channel on it, and then clicked the mouse. After more than ten seconds, a hole appeared in the middle of the landscape painting.

Then he opened a picture of a character, shrunk the character, and put it into the hole in the landscape painting. The effect was the same as that of matt painting.

"So, we can move the special effects of matte painting and scene matching to Apple computers, and let the computer handle the process of cutting out the middle of the picture, retaining the surrounding background, and adding the actors' performances to make them fit together perfectly."

"Oh, this computer is really good. This way I only need to draw a much smaller matte painting, and then use..." The artist Yusei Shangshan also watched the entire demonstration, and his work became much easier.

"Then we can find a way to turn the painting into film, and we can use PhotoShop to synthesize it." John Knoll continued. The plug-in for this channel was developed by him. I had never thought of using this method to deal with it before, but fortunately my brother Thomas had an idea.

"So, the next step is to make a few frames to verify whether this method can succeed..." Ronald calculated that if this computer synthesis method is used, it will not only save the labor cost of painting, but also make shooting very simple. There is no need to set up a large drawing board on the scene, and it is also necessary to ensure that it does not shake when the blower blows to simulate the strong wind when the plane takes off.

Just simply shoot in the designated area and do not go out of the circle.

"This is much simpler. Do you have any way to turn the painting into film?"

Although the idea is good, the last step of format conversion is still a big problem. It is impossible to achieve the resolution required by the movie with an ordinary printer or film reshoot. Professional equipment is required to convert digital images stored on the hard disk into 35 film that can be projected.

"It must also have sufficient resolution to meet the high standards of the film industry." Thomas Noel added.

"I know that the film machine that Industrial Light and Magic is jointly developing with Kodak can convert computer images into a four-perforated 35 film format."

"Four-perforated 35 film?" Ronald was a little dissatisfied. The final shot was very amazing. If only standard four-perforated film was used, the explosion and action scenes could not be fully expressed.

Generally speaking, in the production of special effects shots, they would use the VistaVision format invented by Paramount, with each picture occupying eight perforations. Any shot that requires particularly high image quality, or a scene with rich details such as an explosion, would use VistaVision format film to achieve better results.

"If you want to switch to VistaVision, the graphics department of Industrial Light \u0026 Magic is developing a laser film scanner. There are still some shortcomings. Every minute or so, a frame of the picture will fail, and no one knows where the problem lies."

"Whatever, let's try both methods."

Ronald called George Lucas on the spot and said that he could pay some money to add the research and development costs of the two technologies so that he could actually use them in film production and build two prototypes first...

"Great, Ronald, if you have any special effects shots in the future, remember to find me. As long as there is money, I will make it for you." Lucas laughed out loud. It was a great thing to have someone give money. The Star Wars series has been discontinued, and the box office of several of his special effects movies is not good. The research and development of various technologies has stagnated. After all, it is still stretched to the limit to rely on the income from Star Wars.

"Very good, George has agreed. I have a few Apple computers here. You can experiment here. If you need more computers, just tell me..." Ronald came over and announced the good news to the three people.

Who knew that the two Noel brothers looked at each other, as if there were still some problems.

"What's wrong?"

"Adobe is definitely willing to let you use it for free. This is a live advertisement for the Photoshop software we will officially launch next year, but now Mr. Lucas..." Thomas Noel was a little hesitant.

"Mr. Lucas is somewhat dissatisfied with some of the practices of Apple after acquiring his animation department. We, Industrial Light and Magic, have fully cooperated with SGI. Now the company uses Apple computers internally, which is a bit sensitive... We don't care, but other engineers may not be able to accept it emotionally."

"What are you afraid of? Just use it..." Ronald took out an SGI workstation from the corner. It was expensive and often crashed. He didn't use it much after buying it last time.

Ronald took a knife and pried off the Silin Graphics logo on the SGI workstation. "I'll ask the props to copy some, and you can just stick it on the Apple computer."