Two companies, one valued at $300 million, the other valued at $500 million, if it is according to the general standard of the first round of financing, there is no doubt that these two companies are relatively high valuation companies, although they are far from being able to compare with their respective scales in later generations, but as long as they have this money, the company itself can enter a virtuous circle, and Zhou Fangyuan's side does not need to continue to provide them with assistance.

Invisibly, it also saved Zhou Fangyuan a lot of trouble.

He thought about it for a while, and finally agreed to the financing application, and the follow-up work was handed over to a special accounting staff to do, and Zhou Fangyuan did not interfere too much. He took his attention back and began to focus on the things of the movie.

bought the rights to many of Marvel's heroic characters, and his first step plan, as mentioned earlier, is the same as the choice made by Marvel in the original time and space, which is the first film of Iron Man as the beginning of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man doesn't need to be narrated, the main feature of this movie is still those dazzling mecha deformations, which are completely piled up with special effects, and at the same time, how to assemble the entire mecha, how to deform, etc., also need to be discussed for a long time, although it is a movie, it is a fantasy thing, originally your Iron Man is also a character drawn by a cartoonist, but even if it is such a fantasy existence, it is necessary to pay attention to the basic law.

For example, what are the joints of Iron Man, and then the size of Steel Man, related weapons and equipment, etc., in short, there are too many things to prepare, whether the shooting technology can meet the standards, and whether the computer special effects can be done, which are also questions that Zhou Fangyuan has to think about.

Fortunately, he has Blizzard, and in a short period of time, there shouldn't be any big problems. However, the work of a dedicated special effects team should also be on the agenda.

There are many well-known special effects teams in the world, especially in this era of rapid computer development.

Although they do a great job in the game and are one of the most important game companies in the world, Blizzard's special effects strength is really not weak, not to mention anything else, it is not difficult to see from the CG of several expansions in World of Warcraft that Blizzard has the ability to be called the world's top special effects company.

Then there is the digital field in, referred to as D, once almost won the position of special effects boss, but unfortunately this company went bankrupt when it was 1 year old. This company can be called a representative of a high-yield sow in the industry, and movies such as Titanic, the Transformers series, and the Avengers are the masterpieces of this company. Later, the founder sold the entire company to Exploding Be, and then Exloding Bey played the whole company with Exploding Be.

Weta Digital (TAL), a bigwig-level special effects company, one of the four major special effects companies in the world, should be the closest company to the special effects boss after the collapse of the digital field. The masterpiece box office miracle Avatar, this movie goes without saying, the stable global movie box office No1, in the future that Zhou Fangyuan knows, no one can surpass. I heard that Avatar, Avatar 3, and Avatar 4 all have special effects done by Vita, but emmmmm is estimated to be in his lifetime. There is also the full series of The Lord of the Rings, the originator of fantasy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, even if you haven't seen it, you should have heard of it, of course, the movie is so long, and the three are gone after watching it for a day in a row, plus the Hobbit series, this is almost the rhythm of an American drama.

And then there's Sony, which doesn't just produce small mobile phones, but also covers the entire audio-visual field! As one of the bigwigs of Fuso, Sony is a leader in the game industry and the film and television industry. It's just a side hustle. Film and television special effects are also one of Sony's projects, but Sony itself is powerful, not the main business but one of the four major special effects companies in the world, the same level as Vita!

The representative work is the Harry Potter series, from books to movies, Rowling is world-famous, and most of the special effects of movies rely on this company. In addition, there are also the Warriors: Last Stand, Edge of Tomorrow, 10,000 years before history, etc., etc., which can be regarded as a relatively well-known company in the industry.

Industrial Light & Magic, the first brother in the special effects industry, the stable boss, the digital field at its peak, Weta Digital, and Sony Pictures are all able to look up to Light & Magic, one of the world's four major special effects companies. There are really a lot of his works, such as the Star Wars series, which is far more popular abroad than imagined, in terms of the global box office alone, Star Wars 7 is the only one that can barely catch up with Cameron's two box office miracles Avatar and Titanic, reaching a limit of $000 million. There is also the Pirates of the Caribbean series, a movie in which Uncle Depp is crazy about attracting fans. There are also Transformers and Avengers, and Industrial Light & Magic also has a role to play in it.

In addition, Pixar's level is also good, although it is mainly an animated movie, but one line is a hundred lines, and to be honest, the special effects required for animated movies are not bad at all. Live-action movies may have some sets that can be omitted, and they can be shot in real life or used as a skeleton for secondary creation, but what about animated films? What's more, if people don't do it, it doesn't mean that people can't do it. It's just a different focus, speaking of which, doing movie special effects is nothing more than those means, which may be difficult for ordinary people, but for these big people who rely on computers to eat, doing special effects is not as simple as drinking water, but it is about the same difficulty as eating, it's just a small meaning.

In other words, if Zhou Fangyuan wants to have a special effects team that really belongs to him, he must start from these companies.

Needless to say, Blizzard is under his command, and he can use it however he wants, but the problem is that Blizzard's own research and development tasks are very heavy, and the games are one after another, why is Blizzard in the original time and space launching games so slow? On the one hand, it is because they are in line with the attitude of excellence, each game is strictly demonstrated, although Blizzard games have been much worse than before Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, and their popularity has plummeted, but it cannot be said that Blizzard's games are not good, whether it is workmanship or setting, they are all the best choices, it can only be said that the times are changing, and the mentality and tastes of players are also changing, so Blizzard, which was originally able to stand out, began to embark on a rapid downhill route in the later stage. On the other hand, the number of their R&D personnel is insufficient to support multiple large-scale projects at the same time, so they can only allocate manpower to develop new projects as much as possible while ensuring the stable update and maintenance of the original projects.

Therefore, Blizzard's support for Zhou Fangyuan is not great, the R&D team of domestic game companies has not yet fully matured, and Blizzard's people need to occasionally come over to help, plus Blizzard's own problems, Blizzard's road is over, and it is basically impossible to expect them to help themselves deal with the special effects of the movie. What's more, don't forget that there is still a Warcraft movie, and Blizzard is already a serious shortage of personnel.

The digital realm is a great option.

Although the digital field, like industrial light and magic, is good at solving 80% of problems in the post-production and 0% in 3D. However, the R&D capabilities of 3D technology in the digital field are so strong that even Industrial Light & Magic cannot be ignored. As early as the production of the day after tomorrow, a large-scale and efficient fluid dynamics calculation software based on the closed flow container field was developed in the digital field, which was used in the production of the tsunami in the film The day after tomorrow. The rendering of the day after tomorrow tornado is divided into the RGB light layer of the particles and the volume arching depth layer.

The digital realm is also very good at using houdini. DD's Houdini Department is world-renowned. I believe that anyone who does special effects for movies wants to enter this part, and they are based on the development of Houdini

Very good, from HAPI-based dynamics plug-ins, implicit surface models of fluid particles, to OTLs for batch processing. It can be said that after so many years of film production, from Titanic, Fifth Element to Die Hard 4 and Transformers, DD's Houdini process has been quite perfect, and almost all Houdini has been redeveloped

It's a pity that due to James Cameron's strong temper and star aura, the creator of DD, Scottros, fell into an embarrassing situation, and at the same time, because James Cameron had a strong interest in documentaries after the production of the Titanic, he simply disappeared from commercial films and left DD to concentrate on making documentaries, and Cameron's friend Stanveston also abandoned DD because of his departure and founded his own special effects company.

In May 06, because of the company's development trends and the exhausted Scottros, he decided to step back into the background, and within a month, he sold his death to an acquaintance, Michael Bay, and changed his title from CEO to company consultant.

Even so, the "digital sphere" has been struggling to make ends meet for a long time after the '08 economic crisis. As of September 1, the company had debt of $16 million and had multiple losses of more than $50 million. To reverse the situation, Digital Sphere established a special committee on August 1, and the city of Port St. Lucie, Florida, provided it with $13.5 billion in tax breaks and grants after submitting a loss report to the relevant authorities, but there is still no hope of turning around.

Finally, on September 7, 1, the desperate "digital field" closed its 13,000-square-meter studio in Florida, which retained only 0 of its 300 employees, and the former CEO John Tyxtowe has resigned. Eventually, the "digital sphere" is undergoing bankruptcy reorganization proceedings under the U.S. Bankruptcy Act.

Therefore, doing special effects is very expensive, and if the special effects company wants to survive, it can basically only rely on the big tree to borrow the east wind, and the difficulty of independent production companies to survive is too great.

Not to mention anything else, just talking about making movies for others, how much can a movie give to special effects? It is only half of the investment of a movie, after all, the movie is not a complete collection of special effects, stars, venues, crews, and all kinds of publicity and production costs, and if you remove these, there is not much left for the special effects company. It's just that this is not a lot of money, but it requires a special effects company to spend a lot of effort to complete, otherwise there is not even such a list, and the company will collapse faster. The company's own labor, equipment, and venues all cost money, and the annual bonded amount is not a small amount, except for tax evaders, of course. In addition, there is also a large part of the expenditure of the special effects company, which is the development of tools.

As we all know, whether it is a special effects company or a game company, they have to develop some of their own tools, rendering systems, and production engines, which cost money. Left stroke after stroke, one by one looks infinitely brilliant special effects companies, and the inventory pressure is far greater than that of ordinary companies. Of course, if there is a big tree to rely on, it is naturally easy and pleasant, anyway, the company gives money, and there is no need to worry about making money when becoming a special effects team of a department. If it is an independent production company, it is not difficult to take care of the company's operation.

Therefore, the digital field can be used as the main target of the next step, and it doesn't even cost much money to buy the company, buy it, split it, reorganize it, and use it directly, no matter how you do it, the cost of acquisition will not be too big. But the follow-up work is not small, but it doesn't matter, there are too many places where Zhou Fangyuan can use special effects here, and he is not afraid that after buying the company, it will be useless and wasted.

In addition to the digital realm, the moving image special effects company is also good, this company is small, it is a new company that has just been established for a short time, because of the director's relationship, it was able to produce the Harry Potter series, and now it has just completed the first part, if nothing else, the subsequent films will also be produced by them. But again, it's not easy for special effects companies to survive, even if there is a Harry Potter series as a façade, but so what? In terms of plot, Harry Potter is not as good as a large group of literary film bosses, and in terms of special effects, there are countless movies that crush Harry Potter. The Harry Potter movies are actually not up to par, they sell well, the movies also have a group of loyal fans, and there are many passers-by and audiences, but after all, the movies in this series are just like that, they can't be top-notch, they can only be reduced to the level of the first-class end.

And the moving images that made special effects for Harry Potter can be imagined, why did they basically never hear of this company much later? In the final analysis, it is still market factors that make it difficult for such companies to develop and grow, as long as they are not seen for three or five years, the industry will forget about them. But what needs to be admitted is that the company's special effects are still good, just look at the movie, so this company can be acquired, acquired to directly shatter, part of it is integrated into the digital field, part of it is integrated into Blizzard, and part of it is brought back to China to join the game company, which can be said to be a win-win situation.

But neither of these two companies can spend much money, combined, 50 million is the sky, and they can't even use so much money. So Zhou Fangyuan decided to make a big one, so soon, he set his sights on several other special effects companies.

In the final analysis, there is still a real big guy to fill the strength, the strength of a small company is weak, and it doesn't make much sense to split it, or you have to build a big company, so that there is value in making a shot, so, which company to start with?

Zhou Fangyuan fell into deep thought.

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