In the small screening room of the crew, Zhou Fangyuan, Cameron, Mike and others sat together and began to watch the movie.

At the beginning of the movie, the magnificent royal city of Lordaeron, the pearl of the human federation, has now become a dead place.

Alsace, played by Xiao Lizi, stands in the ruins, his blonde hair has turned gray, his eyes are glazed, he sits on a big rock, looking forward to it, his face is expressionless, and it is full of life.

Around him, there are all sorts of undead creatures.

Then the plot unfolds, Titodios appears, the High Elves appear, the Burning Legion appears, and other races also appear.

A burly demon, a druid in the form of a beast, a shooter with arrows like bullets, a magician with churning magic...... All kinds of wonderful big scenes, wonderful battles, a total of more than 100 minutes, Cameron used every second. Until the end of the movie, Zhou Fangyuan took the initiative to stand up and applaud Cameron.

"It's so good, James, it's really good. ”

Zhou Fangyuan held Cameron's hand and said very sincerely.

Cameron's Alsatian movie is what he dreamed of seeing, in the last life, because of Blizzard's various mistakes, the movie released finally achieved mediocre results, and the follow-up movies are far away. originally thought that he would not be able to see it in his lifetime, but he was reborn, which not only changed the fate of his family, but now he has seen with his own eyes the high-quality movies sent by director Cameron.

And Xiao Lizi's performance is also quite exciting, don't look at him now, he is still a little fresh meat, but his acting skills are really not said. In the last part, he showed Alsace's high-spirited and heartbroken, and in this part, he successfully showed Alsace's indifference and further sinking. The special effects are also very well done, and the music is also good...... In short, Zhou Fangyuan can't jump out of the problem, he is not a professional film critic, in his opinion, this movie is already perfect.

He couldn't fault it anyway.

"By the way, what level is our movie?"

Zhou Fangyuan suddenly remembered and asked.

Film classification, this is an issue that every filmmaker must pay attention to.

And it's very important, especially for Hollywood, after all, different ratings will have very different audiences.

For example, Ah 2, this time it was assigned to the R level, you know, when Ah 1, the rating of the movie at that time was still PG-13, that is, the special counseling level, it is recommended that children after the age of 13 watch it. This time, it jumped directly to the R rating, and it became recommended for viewing at the age of 17 and above. With two different levels, the number of movies that are carded out may be tens of millions or even tens of millions of box office.

But there is no way, although there is the content of slaughtering the city and killing the father in Ah 1, there is also the love between Alsace and Gianna, and the growth of Alsace, 13 years old, in fact, he is already a sensible grade, witnessing the growth of Alsace, and then accompanied and guided by parents, it is able to pass on some higher-level knowledge to children. So why is it a special counseling level, because parents can decide whether to watch this movie or not according to the situation of their children and their families.

If parents don't think their children can learn anything, then don't look at it;

Ah 2 is different, the main line of Ah 2 is racial hegemony and war, there are not only elves, minotaurs, orcs and other relatively normal races, but there are also undead disasters and burning legions, and there is a lot of content in the war, the whole movie, more than one-third of the content is all kinds of bloody and violent scenes, children under the age of 17, not to mention whether they can learn anything, at least such a scene is definitely not suitable for watching.

However, the R rating is not without benefits, many people just don't want to watch movies with minors, and if the level is too low, they will also lose some adult audiences.

In short, the film market in the United States is relatively mature, and there are many audiences from all walks of life. Let's even say that sometimes the lower the rating, the higher the box office. On the one hand, because of the low age group, there are more family carnival movies, and it is also a kind of film with a relatively largest audience. The second is inclusiveness, adults can watch R grade, PG-13 grade, or NC-17 grade, but what about children?

Overall, the number of viewers of all ages is the largest.

It is reasonable that Alsace 2 was classified in the R level this time, so after Zhou Fangyuan heard about it, he didn't feel anything.

In fact, he doesn't even care about the box office, because he knows that the box office must be fine.

Why?

It's very simple, the special effects are well done!

From a piece of sand to a tree of the world, every frame is meticulously crafted.

Let's put it this way, this movie has a total investment of 150 million, of which 70 million US dollars was spent on the special effects alone, which is definitely a top Hollywood masterpiece and a world-class movie.

What the?

Someone doubts impossible?

Hehe, people who have this skepticism obviously don't understand movies, especially special effects movies.

Let's put it this way, the investment of 150 million is not considered publicity, just this money, what is the actor's salary?

Xiao Lizi is now popular, 10 million + is just like that, after all, his popularity has no dominance. can't be compared with Iron Man's Donny, nor can he be compared with Depp in the Caribbean, when these two are the most popular, their influence is at the ruling level all over the world, and actors of the same level can reach their level, very few, and there are almost no who can surpass. Of course, Donnie is not good at this stage, he is really powerful, at least after Avengers 1.

Xiao Lizi's problem is that he is popular, but he is not as popular as Iron Man and Pirate Captain, and he is even one or two levels behind, so the 20 million club has nothing to do without him. Even the 15 million club can't be explored at present, 10 million is already a pretty good salary.

plus other actors, including dragon sets, etc., 20 million is about the same.

The director's salary, Cameron signed three film contracts in a row, and the total is only 10 million, which is scattered and the cost is negligible, and it is completely a friendship help.

Plus the other costs of seven, seven, eight, and eight......

Let's put it this way, counting the actors, the crew, the director, etc., the total cost is about 30 million, and the promotion and distribution of the film is another matter, and it is almost necessary to set aside a level equal to the cost of the crew, or even a higher level. Of course, as a sequel to the series of movies, the cost of publicity and distribution can be appropriately reduced compared to the first one. After all, now that "World of Warcraft" is popular around the world, the difficulty of publicity is simply reduced by I don't know how many levels compared to the previous life, so it was finally decided to stay at 50 million for publicity.

So the rest of the money was all spent on special effects, which is as mentioned above, 70 million!

Yes, special effects, some people may wonder, how can special effects be so expensive?

Give it a set of data.

Ready Player One cost $175 million to make, of which more than $100 million was spent on special effects. "Transformers 5" cost $217 million to make, with special effects accounting for $130 million. "Avatar" cost $237 million to make, with special effects accounting for $150 million. "Spider-Man 3" cost $258 million to make, and special effects accounted for $155 million. "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" cost $342 million to make, and special effects accounted for $200 million.

In short, in Hollywood's visual blockbusters, special effects cost at least 60% of the total production cost!

If you look at it this way, the special effects of Ah 2 are actually quite cheap, which is mainly due to the work of several special effects companies under Far Media (North America) and Blizzard's internal CG production team, since they are all their own people, so the cost in this area is much smaller. The same work, if handed over to other companies to do, the same and standard, the price is more than 100 million.

So why are special effects so expensive? Hundreds of thousands of dollars a second is no joke.

Let's calculate the price of the special effects.

Hardware costs account for 20%-30%, software costs account for 10%-20%, and labor costs account for more than 60%.

Let's talk about the hardware cost first, and the special effects production is just a general statement, which is roughly divided into two parts and ten links. 3D Effects - Modeling, Materials, Animation, Lighting, Rendering. Compositing Effects - Keying, Erasing Wia, Color Grading, Compositing, Scenery

Each link is subdivided into a number of small projects, which are the responsibility of the corresponding department. Due to the extremely large amount of materials involved in each production project, the computing power, drawing ability, and storage performance of the hardware are extremely high, and it is impossible to make high-quality special effects without top-level hardware support. Moreover, today's special effects blockbusters are shot and projected using IMAX specifications, which are higher standards and larger than before, which multiplies the amount of special effects production. It's true that the special effects are done on the computer, but it's not the ordinary computer we usually use, but a large workstation and server, and the price is basically around hundreds of thousands of soft girl coins.

It is such a top-level configuration of hardware, and it also needs to run continuously for 50 hours to render 1 frame of special effects, and the movie has at least 24 frames in 1 second, so a 5-second special effects shot will take 250 days for a machine to render!

In order to compress the rendering time and improve efficiency, the only way to do this is to simply increase the number of hardware. Large, established VFX companies like ILM and Weta Digital have built their own render farms in-house, with thousands of workstations and servers running day and night. The same is true for the special effects company under Far Media, the number of workstations on the render farm has exceeded 3,000, and Blizzard will not be much worse.

With so many server-class computers, the monthly electricity bill alone is an astronomical amount that can scare people to death.

Speaking of software costs, a large number of professional software is used in every aspect of special effects production, which is expensive.

Houdini for special effects costs $4,495, Maya for 3D animation costs $1,470 per year, Mari for mapping, Arnold/ for rendering, RenderMan, Nuke for compositing, and so on......

Most of these software are charged on an annual basis, and sometimes it is not uncommon for dozens of software to be installed on a machine at the same time, and each machine has to buy a genuine version, which has to be multiplied by more than a thousand times......

Some people may say, what to buy genuine, can't you just crack it!

I'm sorry, but in foreign countries that attach importance to copyright, as long as you dare to use cracked pirates, the software company will dare to send a lawyer's letter to the door of the company and sue you for bankruptcy! Moreover, in China, the awareness of copyright has also begun to awaken, and it can be said that this kind of money cannot be saved, and it is a mandatory requirement. And this is not only the cost of purchasing software, if the software on the market cannot meet the needs of special effects production, or the purchase cost is too expensive, some companies will invest huge sums of money to develop their own software or plug-ins.

For example, Weta Digital, the special effects company that produces "Avatar" and "The Hobbit", spends as much as 180 million soft girl coins on just one renderer every year, and finally they decided to hire technicians and develop their own renderers......

Finally, there is the labor cost, which is the most expensive part!

There are many links in the film special effects process, complicated software debugging, and long production, which requires thousands of people to complete it for several years. According to statistics, there are 1,855 people in the special effects team of "Avatar", 739 people in "Titanic", 1,453 people in "The Avengers", 1,180 people in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", and 1,178 people in "Transformers 3".

The special effects team of "Ah 2" has continued the level of "Ah 1" and further expanded, with the number of people approaching 1,000.

These special effects artists are divided into ordinary special effects artists, senior special effects artists, and top special effects artists according to the ratio of about 6:3:1, and they have different responsibilities in the team. In the United States, a big country in the film industry, the annual salary of ordinary special effects artists is about 40,000 US dollars, the annual salary of senior special effects artists is about 60,000 US dollars, and the annual salary of top special effects artists is about 150,000 US dollars. Such a team of 1,000 people will cost $57 million in a year alone!

The production cycle of a movie usually takes 2-3 years, making manpower expenditure the biggest cost.

Let's not talk about special effects companies, let's talk about movie crews, they release tasks to the outside world, but this time it can be regarded as an insider's digestion, but even so, tens of millions of expenses can't be saved. To be honest, if these companies all belong to Zhou Fangyuan, it would be really not difficult to throw out 100 million yuan just for special effects. There's no way, who made "Ah 2" full of big scenes, not to mention anything else, just a "billionaire elf bombing Akmund" is comparable to the total value of most medium-sized enterprises, are you kidding?

It can be said that the movie "Alsace 2", from the director, to the actors, to the crew, to the special effects, it can be said that in addition to publicity, all aspects have saved money, and that's it, 150 million was spent, absolutely full of sincerity, and an absolute super masterpiece.

That's it, just ask how you lose?

I have to admit that in 06, it was indeed a blockbuster, Pirate 2, Men 3, and the new Superman series...... These are all proper special effects blockbusters, to put it mildly, colliding with these blockbusters, you want to say that Warcraft can win steadily? But don't forget one thing, that is, it is 06 years now, which is the time when Warcraft is at its most popular. The World of Warcraft in this life, because of some small changes, is better than the previous life, and there are as many as five million paying players worldwide, and North America alone accounts for half, and the Chinese continent, plus other countries, has reached the other half, after all, the current level of Internet development in China is still a little worse than that of the United States, and the most important thing is that the computer penetration rate is not as good as North America, so North America is now the place with the most gamers.

More than ninety percent of these millions of players are tap water, and as long as they have the opportunity, they will give Amway this game to the people around them.

With such a terrible audience, Alsace 2 may not be as good as the Pirate and Men series at the total box office, but it will definitely not be much worse. And don't forget, in terms of big scenes, they can't compare to hundreds of millions of elves bombing Akmund, it can be said that the movie has not yet been released, and Zhou Fangyuan has already locked the victory in his heart.