Made in Hollywood

PS:  Tonight, the three chapters that will be published tomorrow will be completed until 12:00 tonight, please support and encourage!

During the pre-production and shooting process, only two special effects teams, ILM and Weta Studio, were serving the crew, but in post-production, in order to catch up with the 2006 summer season, Duke had to ensure complicated and tedious special effects production. It can be completed on time, and more special effects studios have been hired to join in.

Among them is the famous visual effects studio in Hollywood. Although this studio is far less famous than Industrial Light and Magic, it also has its own specialties.

However, special effects production is still dominated by ILM and Weta Studios, and new entrants like VFX studios are more about tinkering with some minor details.

Just like the earliest editing that did not follow a fixed logic model, Duke was never a rigid person in post-production. The editing was hosted by Mike Dawson, who had always adhered to his style, and Duke was in the important special effects production. Special effects artists are encouraged to create characters and images with a pioneering mindset, rather than just mechanically following his requirements.

This incident was quickly brought up by Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. as a promotional point in the early stage of the film.

Phil Sanders, the director of Industrial Light and Magic's Iron Man crew, specifically accepted an interview with Yahoo Entertainment.

We were all taken aback by Duke's request, and even a little bit horrified by some of the unexpected scenarios that were encouraged to create.

He said in an interview, But Duke is a great director, he knows how to stimulate the creative enthusiasm of the whole crew, which is a very interesting display. Because, although we are not directly involved in the early stage, we are very early. To be invited by Duke to contribute ideas. It's nice. But it's just one of those things... We used to want to be creative, and on this film, we were surprised that we suddenly got so much many!

At the same time of post-production, the promotion of Iron Man is gradually exerting force.

Of course, these are temporarily in charge of special personnel, Duke's main work. It is still to complete the post-production on time with high quality and quantity, because after consulting his opinion, Warner Bros. has already selected the current period for Iron Man, just like last year's Batman: War Hour, this Marvel series The opening masterpiece of the film will be officially released in North America in the summer of 2006.

Perhaps it was because Kingdom of Heaven and Air Combat Heroes, which competed directly with Batman: Time for War last year, lost so badly that even the cost could not be recovered in the end. Many distribution companies didn't say anything, but they kept away from this schedule in private. On the first weekend of May when Iron Man was released, there were no competitors of the same level at all, only the weekend after two weeks. Only Paramount Pictures' Charlotte's Web, a film that Duke can remember, was released.

Warner Bros. is solely responsible for the announcement and distribution, and Tina Fey from Duke is involved in the coordination. He doesn't have to worry too much about how to complete the special effects of the film well. That's what he's most concerned about.

After all, special effects are one of the biggest selling points of the film.

in most movies. The VFX shots from the board are always assisted by small VFX inputs, which are then edited together by the editor, and the sequence frames are sent to the VFX team with instructions to give them an idea of ​​how to get into the work.

Subsequent director-participation sessions usually revolve around individual shooting themes. Questions like a character moving too fast, or moving the thing to where.

Although Duke is not a perfectionist like James Cameron, he will not be satisfied easily. Whenever the special effects department has the latest completed picture sent to him, he will always say to Phil Sanders, You know, these are far from what we want. These are just preliminary qualifications. Remember, you guys are the top special effects experts in Hollywood.

Duke had to make choices about which shots to use or what special effects to put together to make them better serve the film.

Therefore, once he entered the working state and found that some of the pictures he produced did not meet the requirements of the film, he would never be as furious as James Cameron, but he would try to relax and consider other suitable Type selection replaces them, rethinks them and then throws them to the special effects team.

Encouraging innovation will also bring problems. For example, those who are engaged in CG creation are often people who are imaginative, and sometimes their imaginations will inevitably go too far.

At the beginning of February, the special effects team was rejected by Duke for a considerable number of production results.

For a long time, the team's post-production team privately believed that this was a misuse of digital effects.

Digital special effects have become a standard throughout the Hollywood production pipeline, not just to solve problems and add some ostentation, but also to create complete sets and workflows related to entire films and products.

However, few directors can recognize the talents of these providers, and few recognize its contribution to the success of a film. The special effects team has been rejected by a super director like Duke one after another. know what to do.

Communication is the best way to resolve differences. Duke took the initiative to find Phil Sanders, who was in charge of special effects.

Originally, Phil Sanders thought that even if Duke did not get angry, he would make some severe criticisms, but Duke did not do so. He knew very well that he should not use some restraints to tie these imaginative wings.

There are many people, when it comes to CG special effects, they always think that it is a symbol of low-level, naive and boring movies, and is synonymous with the assembly line mode, but they have thought that CG is the same as the live-action shooting and other literary techniques they advocate. , is also the brainchild of a group of imaginative people. When making CG pictures, special effects artists put much more effort into their imagination and brain cells than those who advocate the so-called dogma95 rule.

Therefore, Duke is still based on encouragement.

In a brief meeting called by Phil Sanders with special effects artists, Duke released a short, basically useless CG image, and said to these people, Let's not be in a hurry to deny anything, let's take two steps back, Look at the entire sequence of images, it's in the film, how do you make it work for the story, this shot may not work anymore, we may not need this shot anymore.

He looked at the special effects artists and said, But no one can deny how imaginative and creative it is. For me, this is something that is very worthy of promotion in the Iron Man project.

Everyone needs recognition and encouragement. In the crew, the recognition of a director and producer like Duke has undoubtedly inspired these special effects artists to have more creative enthusiasm.

Iron Man is a well-planned, well-organized project with a lot of fun to do, and while Duke isn't the kind of director who's crazy about robots, mechanics, and technical craftsmanship, there's plenty of reason to like it This exciting film has always maintained a strong interest in the entire filming and production process.

He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. Strictly speaking, he is an academic director. It seems that Duke, who has experienced enough literary and artistic films in the academy, should prefer literary and artistic films rather than commercial films, but in this world, which one? Man or God has made rules, so academic directors must be literary directors?

Some people like commercial films, some people like literary and artistic films, and everyone has the freedom to choose, but Duke always believes that the film is made to be watched, and the film that can be widely supported is the film he wants to make.

Besides, a director who pays for one film after making one film can really gain power in this Hollywood ecosystem?

From the beginning to the present, Duke has never been a pure director.

The simplest question, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, looking at the whole world, who is more famous among a wide audience and who has a higher status in Hollywood?

Literary-oriented directors have the survival rules of literary-oriented directors, but that is not suitable for Duke at all. If he had chosen the literary and artistic direction of the director path, would he have the status today?

Even an idiot knows that this is absolutely impossible in Hollywood.

After all, Hollywood is a circle that relies on business achievements.

While Duke encourages VFX artists to use their imaginations to actively create, the premise of the team's creative play must be to stay within the allowed character range - a heroic figure, wearing a very suitable humanoid armor, and can fly.

For example, although the flight picture of Iron Man was shot by Robert Downey Jr. using motion capture, ILM also needs to add flight effects. The flight scene is one of the many highlights of the film.

The size of the reaction force and the style of the jet sparks when the armor flies are very important. Industrial Light and Magic has produced many versions of the effects for Duke's reference. After several rounds of revisions, he finalized the best version.

And Iron Man's weapons, especially those delicate small weapons, are too old for Duke to remember these details. The design of these small equipment made him rack his brains, and Marvel's support played an important role at this time. , Kevin? Feige brought Duke an Iron Man Bible - a collection of all the weapons and props used by Iron Man for more than 40 years.

For nearly half a century, many outstanding cartoonists have designed many eye-opening magical weapons, which have inspired Duke and weapon special effects artist Adi Grano enough.

Therefore, the film has never been the product of individual heroism, but the crystallization of the close cooperation of an entire team.

The entire post-production special effects production was very cumbersome, and even the special effects suits generated by Robert Downey Jr. through motion capture had to be modified several times with CG. (To be continued ~^~)