rising director

"it is good."

The Gulfstream G5 takes off, and life goes on.

0334【Big Director】

Queenstin, a small suburban town in Vancouver, Canada, is backed by a large redwood forest in the north, and these maple forests belong to the local forest park.There are many forest parks like this in Canada, which is sparsely populated, and each of them has beautiful scenery. The Queenstin Forest Park chosen by the crew of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" has particularly tall and ancient trees.

The park allowed the crew to open up a trail, enter the depths of the park, and build a rocker.

During the day, Wan Xiaohu brought the crew here, and used the crane to shoot the forest's bird's-eye view and detail shots. A helicopter was also on standby at any time, ready to shoot the high-altitude scenery.

In the movie, the plot designed by Wan Xiaohu, including the happy run of the chimpanzee "Caesar" who came to the forest for the first time, and leading the orangutans to the forest at the end, required a lot of material for orangutans running in the book.The most difficult shot was not able to be completed after several attempts.

This shot was shot from the bottom of the big tree all the way up until it reached the same height as the uncle.This material was used to create a shot of Caesar standing on top of a tree overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Drawing lessons from the previous few times, the mechanics of the crew specially designed the steel wire vertical ascending system.This system is similar to an elevator. Two steel cables are fixed on the ground at one end and at the top of a tree at the other end, and the camera is hoisted along the cables.As long as the wind is not strong and the speed is well controlled, the effect Wan Xiaohu wants can be achieved theoretically.

Waiting for the mechanic to report that everything was in order, Wan Xiaohu took the horn and shouted loudly: "All-rgh (ok), On-your-mrks (everyone), e-ry-gn (let's try again)!"

"Come-on, Come-on!"

"Control the speed!"

"Turn on the power of the generator to the maximum!"

"Measure the wind speed and stay vigilant!"

"Oky! Everything is ready, Director!"

Wan Xiaohu looked at the monitor and saw that the image was normal, so he picked up the speaker and shouted: "Acon!"

Hula, the camera is hoisted up.Shoot from slow to fast.

"Pay attention to adjusting the angle! Photographer, I want a downward lens!"

"OK, Good, adjust the adjustment, look at the top!"

"Okay, great, slow down. Yes, slow down, slow down, OK, it works great, keep it up!"

"Turn the camera around, yes. That's it. Okay, we're at the top!"

It is said that it is slow but then it is fast. This is a big tree with a height of 200 meters. In less than a minute, the camera shot from bottom to top was under the command of Wan Xiaohu and the scheduling of the photographer.Perfect shot came out.

Playing back the shot just now on the monitor, and then automatically modifying it in his mind, adding the orangutan's movements, Wan Xiaohu smiled: "This one, it's perfectly done!"

"Haha, I finally passed the level." The photographer sighed.

"After tossing and tossing for several days, it finally passed, and there is no need to feed insects here anymore." The staff of the crew.Everyone is happy, shooting in the forest is naturally more comfortable than in a studio.

The assistant director was called, and Wan Xiaohu ordered: "Take someone to tidy up here. We will arrange aerial photography tomorrow, and we will finish it in one day."

"Ok."

"Well, you take someone to do things. I'll go back to the studio first."

The studio of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is located in the open space to the east of the small town of Queenstin. It is a huge temporary studio, which looks huge.In fact, the interior is very simple.The entire studio is divided into two parts, one is the office area, and the other is the interior shooting area of ​​the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the movie, orangutans and humans will stage a decisive battle on the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. However, the Golden Gate Bridge is very busy, and the vehicles are constantly shuttling. Wan Xiaohu has no chance to destroy the real Golden Gate Bridge, so he can only build a model indoors. .

Indoor shooting has the same effect as outdoor shooting, which is a great test of the talent of Weta Digital Studio.

Fortunately, in the script designed by Wan Xiaohu, during the decisive battle of the Golden Gate Bridge, there was a thick fog, which saved a lot of trouble in the production of special effects. Everything that was more than the camera could be covered with fog.Now the Golden Gate Bridge decisive battle, the assistant director is still leading the special effects team and the actor team to rehearse, Wan Xiaohu walked around here, and then left.

I went to the office area next door, Weta Digital's work hall.

"Hi, Tger."

"Hi, Dn. How is it? Can you handle the plan I brought yesterday?"

As soon as Wan Xiaohu came in, he met Dn. Lemmon, the visual effects director of the crew. As a visual effects director, his importance to "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" was second only to Wan Xiaohu. All scenes needed his coordination.

Dn shrugged his shoulders: "Although it is a bit troublesome, it is not within the unsolvable range. We have already selected the standard for the number of orangutans. Have you seen the shelf on our wall? Wow, we have to choose These fit standards, thanks to Wellington Zoo."

Following Dn's finger, Wan Xiaohu saw a shelf against the wall, densely packed with various models.

In order to make the living habits of the orangutans more convincing, Weta Digital went to the Wellington Zoo in New Zealand to take pictures of the chimpanzees.And when the injured orangutans were anesthetized for treatment, the special effects team also participated two or three times, making foot models, hand models, and face models for the orangutans.

Using these models as the basis, apply and peel off a layer of silicon film, put it in mineral oil and accept the scanning of the desktop scanner, rely on this accurate physical casting to produce real high-fidelity orangutans.

Whether it's the old version of "Planet of the Apes" or Tim Burton's "Battle Planet", they all use makeup to interpret the role of apes.But the effect of make-up can't interpret the subtle expressions in place, so from the very beginning, Wan Xiaohu told Weta Digital that he directed "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" without makeup!

Compared with previous versions, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" pays more attention to the portrayal of the inner drama of apes.

"Very good. We must ensure the effect of the orangutans. Without the realistic orangutans, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" cannot exceed the height of the old version. By the way, where is Kevn. Romond?" Wan Xiaohu asked.

"He's laying out the motion-capture blocks of the Golden Gate Bridge."

"OK, you guys are busy first, I'll go over there and have a look."

Kevn.Romond is the special effects supervisor, responsible for special effects shots.The place where the crew most needs special effects shots is motion capture technology.In the studio in the small town of Queenstin, the crew has two shooting locations, interior and exterior. The interior is the details of the Golden Gate Bridge and the zoo scene.

Although the interior shooting is troublesome, it is not difficult. The real difficulty is the exterior motion capture.

For the first time in history, facial expression motion capture was shot in broad daylight.

Motion capture indoors.Because the light is fixed, actors wearing reflective clothing can easily be caught by the camera to reflect the light.Outside, there is so much mixed light that even an unexpected ray of light can wipe out the captured data.shiny objects.Things like cars and light stands, and even reflective strips on crowd shoes can wreak havoc on a motion capture system.

The improvement made by Weta Digital is to replace the motion capture marks attached to the actors from traditional reflective balls to active infrared LEDs.These LED strings are connected to the controller by wires, and then put into vinylon clothes and fixed on the actors.

The LEDs, coordinated with the motion capture system's camera shutters, flash short bursts of intense infrared light.Combining this intense light with an IR filter and an extremely short shutter time on the camera cuts through the ambient background light for the system to pick up a nice, clean marker signal.

Moreover, experiments have proved that the infrared rays of the LED are invisible to the Kodak film used, which eliminates the concern that the light will pollute the film.

For the exterior capture area of ​​the Golden Gate Bridge, the set was built about 100 meters long and 18 meters wide, surrounded by 6-meter-high green reflectors on three sides.

This is also the largest motion capture area in the world.If you can declare the Guinness Book of World Records.

More than 80 scrapped cars were altered and scattered throughout the set area.

Basically, it can be said that the magic of special effects is fully reflected here.

Including the attacking orangutans, the destruction of the bridge, the explosion of the car, the impact of the plane, and the shots falling into the sea, all are fake and special effects produced by CG.

"Kevn, how are you doing?" Wan Xiaohu found it easily.Kevn.Romond, who directs the staff to place cameras in the crowd, is a young engineer wearing glasses, technical director of Weta Digital motion capture technology, outdoor motion capture.He led the team to develop it.

"It will take a while, if the weather is good enough."

"Is two days enough?"