In the past two years, Lanli has participated in more and more commercial productions, and has been exposed to more and more different performance methods and contents, and this time is no exception. In order to shoot the dinosaurs in "Jurassic World", computer special effects are undoubtedly the most important part of the work that the entire crew needs to rely on, and the special effects of the whole movie will run throughout, which also puts forward higher requirements for shooting methods and content presentation.

Generally speaking, this kind of film can be shot in two ways, one is shot in the studio, mainly on the green screen, as is the case with movies such as "Gravity" and "The Avengers", and the other is shot on location, with post-production special effects as the auxiliary, such as "Interstellar", "Mad Max: Fury Road" and so on.

"Jurassic World" chose the latter.

Colin Trevorrow still wanted to create a truly immersive viewing effect, which is also the source of the shock of the "Jurassic Park" series of movies in the first place. Considering that the wild environment such as the primeval forest is the main scene of the whole movie, compared to the high-rise buildings of the "Avengers", the computer special effects are still prone to produce more distortion effects.

In 2016, "Fantasy Forest" was created with computer special effects, but the forest picture in the film was facing a serious problem of special effects distortion, and the director Jon-Favreau came up with the solution to lower the light, because the story of the movie is set in the primeval forest where torches have not yet been fully popularized, which also makes the whole film permeated in a very, very dark environment to avoid the distortion of computer special effects.

But that can't be the case in "Jurassic World," which has to take place in sunny Central America, and Colin wants the tone to remain more positive — something Universal was looking for, as the success of the Marvel franchise proves that lighthearted popcorn is still the norm. Then, on-site shooting combined with post-production computer special effects is the best shooting method.

However, the combination of computer special effects has become another test for the crew, because the shooting site has completely entered the real primeval forest, and the difficulty of the filming process has added more difficulties to the production of post-special effects.

In the open space directly in front of the dense jungle, they built an entire cage similar to the Colosseum, as an environment for raising wild velociraptors, the cage was built on the ground with the environment as the background, and the staff could walk up and down freely on the platform on the top floor normally-

Although there are no beasts or dinosaurs inside the cage, the entire building does not cut corners, ensuring that the cage can also be used as a scaffolding for the crew's shooting, while presenting a more realistic effect in the camera.

Then, in the center of the cage, a three-sided blue screen environment was abruptly built - because the four jungles were all green environments, the blue screen was chosen, but the blue screen environment was symbolically arranged around some sand and grass, reducing the workload of connecting the edges in the process of computer cutout, and providing a reference for computer special effects artists.

The "crossing the line" just mentioned by the drama management means not to enter the blue screen range, otherwise there may be deviations during post-production cutouts, for example, only one head is left floating in the center of the picture, and it inexplicably becomes the scene of a horror film, which is a very, very likely situation, and these accidental mistakes and deviations are often impossible to prevent - it may be that the staff themselves appear in the picture relatively rarely, but the cases of accidental dropping of personal objects are extremely frequent.

The cast and crew will be in such an environment to complete the shooting, the blue screen area will be used to cast dinosaur effects, and the surrounding environment can be used as a reference for post-production special effects, creating more realistic and delicate visual effects in a way that intertwines virtual and real, real and fake.

Next, the crew is ready to shoot the scene where Owen trains a velociraptor

At this time, in the blue screen environment, four stuntmen are moving their limbs, and they are the actors who are ready to play the role of "Velociraptor" to cooperate with the performance.

Some of the scenes here are also exquisite, the director can choose to let Lan Li perform completely in front of the air, and later all the dinosaurs are produced through computer special effects, but this is easy to cause the problem of out-of-focus performance - because there is no reference, Lan Li has no way to accurately align the focal length, and the performance is easy to become vain.

In the Lord of the Rings films, Gandalf's actor Ian-McKellen (Ian-McKellen) is like this, because the hobbit is very short, and Gandalf has to enter the hobbit's house, which also makes it impossible for the hobbit actors to stretch their hands and feet indoors, and Ian can only speak into the air in the end.

Later, in the behind-the-scenes footage, Ian said, "I'm really lonely", because he may be the only one chatting with the camera for most of the scenes, and that kind of acting experience is really ...... It's hard to put into words.

However, with the continuous update and progress of shooting technology, this also allows Colin to choose the most advanced motion capture technology to complete the shooting of the velociraptor at the moment.

In fact, the first mature use of motion capture technology was also in the "Lord of the Rings" series - they created the image of Gollum, and in the past ten years, this film shooting technology has also been comprehensively developed with each passing day, and reached a peak through "Avatar", and then the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" series used all ape characters to complete the shooting, which can be called an epoch-making work.

Compared with the anthropomorphic image created by computer special effects, motion capture technology can give full play to the advantages of real actors, further complete anthropomorphism, and make the screen image have more vivid and delicate movements, expressions and demeanor, etc., in short, it is to give those screen images more "humanity".

Of course, the verisimacy of this "image" also requires a lot of financial support. The budget cost of the "Jurassic World" project still did not reach the level of "Avatar", and there was no way to focus on the similar image of fur rendering like "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", which also made Colin have to make a trade-off.

In the film, the four key characters of the spirit, the four velociraptors, who also have direct communication with Owen, will be filmed by motion capture technology, while the other dinosaur images will be produced through post-production computer special effects. Different shooting techniques, the ultimate goal is to present the best viewing effect.

In front of him, the four stuntmen will be responsible for the performance of the four velociraptors.

At this time, they have changed into hot spot capture action costumes - in fact, it is a set of all-black close-fitting sportswear, and then posted many hot spot capture points outside the sportswear, all of which can be connected to form a line, which fully connects the various joints of the body, and then provides a heat source for the computer to capture the actor's body movements, because each capture point is connected to a long wire, which also makes the actor have wires hanging from top to bottom, which is really inconvenient to move.

Standing within the blue screen is incomparably joyful, and if you leave the blue screen and are in the middle of the jungle, then it is even more ridiculous.

The on-site staff may be no stranger to motion capture technology, but they are very interested in the shooting techniques that blur the boundaries between reality and illusion in the jungle, and only with the continuous progress and improvement of filmmaking technology can this become possible, and everyone is quite curious - just like "gravity", which can only be realized in the studio, and the five-dimensional space in "Interstellar" is also, there are still many constraints and restrictions on on-site shooting.

Lan Li took the initiative to greet him, waving his hand and greeting, "Hey, I'm your work partner, Owen, the next period of cooperation will need to trouble you to work hard." If nothing else, the four velociraptors in the entire movie will be played by them, which also means that they have a lot of "rivalry" with Lan Li.

"I'm Scott and I'm going to be in charge of playing Charlie. ”

"I'm Pete and I'm going to be in charge of playing Delta. ”

"I'm Brad and I'm going to be in charge of playing Echo. ”

"I'm Samuel, and I'm going to be in charge of playing Blue. ”

The first four names are for the actors, the last four are for the velociraptors, each with their own responsibilities, and although the velociraptor seems to be the same to the audience, the actors need to distinguish between them to be able to give more details to the characters. Among them, Blue is the boss of the four velociraptors, and he is also the one with the most scenes.

As soon as he introduced himself, Lan Li immediately understood, "So, which one is the most ferocious? I mean, only the brave and not the wise." ”

"I, I'm Delta!" Pete immediately raised his right hand, a look of surprise appeared on his face, and looked left and right at the other friends, "Lan Li, I mean, don't you mind? Actually, each of us discussed it and gave each velociraptor a different personality, hoping to distinguish it a little, but we weren't sure ......"

Not quite sure if the big-name actors like it.

In fact, just like what is told in "The King of Comedy", if there are too many scenes, it is very impolite to add drama to yourself, or even steal the scene. For big-name actors, they naturally don't want the rhythm of their performances to be disturbed, let alone robbed of the focus.

The four substitutes are a little nervous, because they only play the velociraptors, and they don't even have faces and names in the movie, and their relatives and friends don't see themselves in the cinema, but they want to give the velociraptors personality within a limited range?

"Hah, let me guess? Echo is a woman? And Charlie is a nerd? As far as I know, Blue is the youngest but smartest? Of course, this is my own brain, I think, you should be able to give me more things, how about it, is there anything I need to know in advance?" Lan Li didn't say anything, but expressed his opinion with practical actions:

Welcome to the world of performance.