You are a black technology boss, you didn't say it sooner!

Hollywood movies have been stable for many years, and this is the first time such a big problem has appeared.This not only hit Hollywood filmmakers hard, but also attracted the attention of all walks of life.

Many media have begun to explore the reasons behind this phenomenon.

"Thousands of times return dream broken, the animation market staged an unprecedented Waterloo, who messed up everything?"

To find out why a product cannot be sold, it is natural to ask why consumers are not willing to buy it.The media interviewed many movie audiences, and those who were not interviewed also expressed their views on social networks.

"Is there a problem with the quality of the movie? Of course not. Bada has maintained the standard it should be. Didini is especially amazing. But you have to know that I have limited dollars in my pocket. Watching an animation this winter is enough for me." gone."

"I love animated movies, but twenty is too much. I'm not going to waste time in theaters, and if they come to Netflix, I'll probably watch them online."

"As a long-time animation fan, I was really excited that there were so many animations coming out. But guess what? I only watched five and a half movies and left halfway through the sixth one. I have a strong feeling of boredom Although the plots of each movie are completely different, the homogeneity is too serious, and I don’t see the slightest expression in them, they just arouse the pleasure of the audience step by step.”

"I am an amateur film critic, and I especially like animated films. I have watched almost all of the more than 20 films. I have to say that their commercial level is very high, but their artistic level is uneven. Without exception, they are mechanical narratives and routines. The plot, the sacrifice of expression for the sake of rushing to work. We don’t deny the popularity of commercial films, but [-] purely commercial animations have been released in two months, my God, do they think North American audiences are fools?”

In addition to film academia and economics, the IT community—especially artificial intelligence cutting-edge companies—also pays great attention to this matter.Several leading big data teams crawled the entire network data for analysis, and found out the reasons for the overall confusion of the animation market from the perspective of consumers.

More than 20 films got together, resulting in a serious fragmentation of the box office and fatigue of the audience.

The audience for cartoons is already limited, and the box office of the world's highest animated film is less than [-] billion, which is far from enough compared to the hero series that can easily reach billions.

The above two are surface-level reasons, and there is another deep-seated reason-these animations are almost purely commercial films, and the short production time does not allow the creators to dig into the artistic details. They can only sacrifice artistic value for commercial value. The work itself has no Expressive.

Commercial movies bring pleasure, yes, audiences are willing to pay for it.But twenty?dream.

"Fighting the street is a matter of course." "North American Film Weekly" commented.

"Did the investors really not anticipate today's situation? It's impossible. When they see the quality of their own animations and know the fact that [-] animations are vying to be released, they can guess what the market will be squeezed into." .”

"But will they give up for it?"

"Even less likely. Please note the fact that although the market crashed in the later stage, the first half of the month has been making money. Considering the outrageous cost figures, the movies released in the first half of the month have already made a lot of money The bowl is full."

"As long as you can catch the first batch of releases, you can make a lot of money. Yes, as long as you are one step ahead of others!"

"A profit of three hundred times can make a businessman take the risk, and this is a thousand times! Who would give up this opportunity willingly? Even if they have seen through the chaos in the future, who can resist giving it a try?"

"Crazy capitalists will never miss business opportunities. They will only try their best to compete for the schedule, shrink the production time again and again, and focus all the energy that should be on artistic expression on how to speed up. All companies are scrambling, you One step faster and I get another step faster, creating a never-ending vicious circle."

"So, how can we guarantee the quality of the work when everything is aligned with speed? Aren't they afraid that the poor quality will lead to Waterloo?"

"Hey, buddy, don't worry, fire has already solved this problem intimately."

"Everyone knows that fire has invented a new animation industry, reducing the cost of animation by 80%, but what is this new method? We interviewed many people in the industry and finally pieced together this model..."

"North American Film Weekly" introduced the concept of "pipeline animation" in detail, especially focusing on "AI film pulling" and "preprocessing mechanism", and finally concluded: "Preprocessing the film allows the director to spend a short time conceiving the whole picture of the film, and then The production can be completed step by step. The AI ​​pull film guides the production direction at all times, which raises the commercial level of animation.”

"One of them lays the track, and the other provides tension, so that the animation train can keep running at a smooth and high speed, and never derail."

"It is conceivable that a mature pipeline animation should be like this: the preprocessing film gives the model, and the pipeline production refines the model into a complete movie. AI pulling the film is responsible for the commercial value; the director is responsible for the artistic expression, and at the same time, it must be between business and art. Make a trade-off between the two to make a comfortable combination.”

""Voyage Around the Universe" is a mature product of this model, but it still wins commercially. Most of the artistic value is reflected in the picture and worldview settings. The story itself is not amazing."

"Compared to circumnavigation, most of the animations in this winter file are unqualified. In order to pursue speed and abandon artistic expression, the rhythm is almost completely guided by AI, and finally it becomes a deformed commercial monster."

"Of course it's a pity, but we also discovered a shocking fact - these animations didn't make money, but they didn't lose money. Yes, the market has collapsed to this point, and they still haven't lost money! As long as they can be used for a full month, each one can recover the cost, because their cost is too low!"

"Think about it, success is a reward of hundreds of times, even if you fail, you won't lose money. What a horrible industry this is."

"In the face of today's chaos, the entire industry seems at a loss. We tried to analyze and predict the future, and came to a somewhat painful conclusion: the North American animation industry must go through a difficult reshaping process, because the entire industry chain has been broken. .”

"What is fire really bringing to the animation industry? Just a more advanced industry? No, there is also the collapse of the entire industry chain."

"The mainstream animation industry in the United States is a 'movie blockbuster' model, with high investment and high output, and has insurmountable technical and financial barriers. Fire broke these two barriers with his assembly line animation, which will lead to three results: Threshold In the early hours, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises rushed into the industry, and the commercialization of works became more and more mature, and there will be a high frequency of shoddy and purely commercial animations in the market.”

"The audience of animation is gradually expanding, and the overall box office is rising, but the box office of each work will be reduced. After the box office is dispersed, it is difficult for even large companies to produce high-quality blockbusters. The lack of blockbusters will lead to the overall profitability of surrounding areas. decline……"

"That is to say, the two most important sources of profit in the North American animation industry, box office and peripherals, have been weakened. The old industry model can no longer meet the profit demand, and the animation industry must find new growth points."

"—This is the collapse of the industrial chain."

"The scariest thing is that even if they know that the industrial chain is in chaos, practitioners are still walking on the old road, and capital will not shrink back. They know that it is not beneficial to find a new industrial chain, but they still want to go to the end of the old road and put The remaining dividends of animated films will be wiped out."

"North American Film Weekly" was merciful, and finally reserved a sentence without saying it:

This is the true face of capital.

Jason threw an electronic version of the weekly magazine into Lou Qingyan's mailbox.

He asked, "Did you know that today would come?"

Lou Qingyan said: "Isn't it natural that industrial innovation must go through labor pains?"

Jason mocked: "Why don't you see labor pains in Chinese animation?"

Lou Qingyan was silent for a while, and said: "Chinese animation has been in pain for 20 years."

Jason had nothing to say, and finally sighed: "God, fire, why aren't you an American?"

Of course, Jason wasn't much of a patriot, so he grumbled casually.Lou Qingyan did not help the American industry like he helped the Chinese industry, but it was not wrong for him to stand by and watch.

Two months passed quietly. During these two months, Xia Huai presided over Fanxing, Xie Jin presided over Deep Space, and Lou Qingyan has been following up the animation competition.

Fanxing only has daily operations, and the deep space is also quite leisurely.Speech synthesis and special effect plug-ins, both of which have been developed, they simply can't get their hands on the brain-computer interface standard that Lou Qingyan is developing.

He didn't assign new research and development tasks, and asked the employees to continue to consolidate "Weak AI Programming Principles", and he put forward a somewhat special request by the way.

"Learning DirectX?" Xie Jin was surprised, "I thought OpenGL was enough for developing special effects plug-ins, not to mention, isn't the plug-in already developed?"

"The implementation of DirectX is similar to that of OpenGL, and you can get started quickly, and there is no harm in learning." Lou Qingyan said casually, "Not only you, I am also learning these two things."

Xie Jin suddenly remembered his glorious history of being able to develop programs in C in a day: "..."

DirectX and OpenGL are two kinds of graphics APIs, also called graphics programming interfaces. They are essentially a series of prefabricated functions, and they are also the basic tools for the underlying development of graphics.

Simply put, if the program is the drawing hand, the API is the drawing pen.Graphics API is indispensable for all developments related to computer graphics. The program controls the operating system or controls the GPU by calling the functions inside.

Among these two mainstream APIs, OpenGL has more professional applications, and it is also used in the development of special effects plug-ins.After a set of plug-ins has been developed, the R&D team of Deep Space is very familiar with OpenGL.As for DirectX, it is mainly used for entertainment, and they haven't studied it much.

Lou Qingyan didn't say what to do, just let them learn first, and it's best to understand all the underlying algorithms of graphics.

It was like this until the end of January, the company was on holiday, and the city of Beijing was visibly empty.

Jiang Fu was rushing back to China at the end of the year, and in a routine phone call at night, he inadvertently mentioned his return time and flight number.

Lou Qingyan had nothing to do, so he went to pick him up.

Standing among the crowd coming and going at the airport, he suddenly realized that it had been a year since he returned to Earth.

The year begins with a betrayal by a loved one and a huge debt.At the end of the year, the debt is no longer a problem, and it feels painless to pay it off year after year.

In fact, when he gets the 20 billion, he can pay off the debt in one lump sum, and then realize his ideal life on the old money of deep space: being a salted fish waiting to die.

Only, he didn't do that.

While complaining bitterly, while continuing to work hard, why?

Jiang Fu's figure appeared in front of him. He was wearing a hat and mask, a simple down jacket and white sneakers, and his luggage was just a simple backpack and boxes.

Across the vast sea of ​​people, Lou Qingyan not only saw his simplicity, but also saw his gestures of Jiyueguangfeng, Yuan Tingyue Zhiyue deep in his heart, as if he saw the skylight and wind and snow piled up a transparent fairy.

He walked to Lou Qingyan's side, and the latter was immediately surrounded by a chilly winter breath.

"Didn't you say you won't come to pick me up?" He smiled faintly.

Lou Qingyan did say this, but he doesn't know what kind of mentality it was at that time.

"Don't panic, let's go, get in the car, and I'll take you where you are going."

Jiang Fu: "..." What's wrong?

After getting into the car, Jiang Fu asked him, "Where are you celebrating the New Year?"

"At home." Lou Qingyan said casually, "Where are you going?"

Jiang Fu: "Can there be another person living in your house?"

Lou Qingyan looked at him in surprise.

Jiang Fu said very flatly: "This year, my parents will participate in the collective New Year's celebration of the hospital patients, leaving me alone."