Multiple endings and multiple versions are actually the norm in contemporary films, and in addition to the release version, there are also so-called director's cut versions, uncut versions, extended versions, and so on.

The final editing power of Hollywood films is in the hands of the producers, and big-name directors can intervene in the editing by serving as producers, while other directors can only watch their "children" being disfigured beyond recognition by outsiders and suffering the stigma of bad movies.

Under the leadership of the famous director Ridley Scott, reluctant directors have released director's cut CDs to justify themselves and their works. Today, this practice has become a common practice, as it draws fans to the disc and allows studios and directors to make more money.

Those directors with editing rights are hot, and they also follow the trend to launch the "Platinum Extended Version" and "Uncut Version", after all, no one has a grudge against money.

The Chinese film tradition is centered on the director, but in recent years, the status of producers has become higher and higher, and many producers wearing the skin of cutting-edge directors have appeared, such as Guo Siniang, Zhao Dayan, etc., and the "divergence between director and producer" has gradually emerged.

The two versions of "The Wandering Earth" are from Atletico Madrid and Wang Luobin respectively, and it seems that the cold and cruel first ending is instructed by Atletico Madrid, and the more commercial second ending is the real "director's cut". After all, Robin Wong is a Hollywood technical worker, and paying attention to investment income has become his professional habit, so he naturally thinks more about the audience's feelings. Atletico Madrid, on the other hand, is trying to express his views with the help of films, and his story will certainly be more "artistic".

Hearing this inside story, everyone present was a little stunned at first, and then reacted and smiled, and their eyes swept back and forth between Atletico Madrid and Wang Luobin. These two people are also interesting, the director looks like a producer, but the investor does the director's planning work.

Ma and Wang are both thick-skinned people, completely ignoring the ridicule in everyone's eyes, and looking back calmly, which makes the other party embarrassed. These guests are either writers or magazine editors, and they still have a bit of a literati temperament, but their faces are much thinner.

"Ahem!" Atletico broke the silence with a cough, and said first: "I've seen both versions, let's talk about what you think." Do you want the two of us to avoid it?"

The old president smiled and said, "No, no, this is not peer review, these two versions are very good, I don't think there is anything to change the other party." ”

Ordinary films often have a ratio of tens of times or even higher, and editors can cut two completely different films by picking shots from them. Most of the formal shots of CG films have special effects, and the cost of re-editing is much higher than the former, so there is little fuss in this regard, at most it is to change the rhythm and adjust the length.

The old president actually knew very well that Atletico Madrid invited them to come over to watch the soon-to-be-completed film, and the purpose was still to hope that he and others would help publicize it, and it was too late to solicit opinions or something. After thinking about it, she looked at Atletico and said, "Also, if you hide out, who should I say next?"

Then she stood up and said, "Anyway, I think I have to thank you." At that time, there were so many domestic science fiction projects, and only yours was the closest to completion. So on behalf of myself, a former sci-fi editor, I have to thank you very much!"

Seeing that the other party was about to bow, Atletico Madrid hurriedly stopped: "I'm just a businessman who sees money, you really torture me." If we really want to thank Da Liu, without him there would be no today's situation. ”

Da Liu was not ambiguous, and threw his thanks to the editor-in-chief Yao next to him, who also continued to forward without hesitation, and insisted on making a thank you chain. In the end, it was passed to the eldest president, and she said with a smile: "Eh, you have all finished saying good things, who should I thank? Then thank the Provincial Association for Science and Technology!"

Like other old magazines, "Science Fiction World" also has a state-owned "mother-in-law" at its head, which is a state-owned institution under the Sichuan Provincial Association for Science and Technology. This layer of identity allows them not to worry about the edition number and salary, and also adds a lot of burdens to them, such as the irritating "airborne layman".

If the unit is thriving, the contradiction may still be hidden, but after the rise of the mobile network, the paper media have declined, the circulation of magazines has dropped from 400,000 copies around 2000 to 100,000 copies, the external crisis has caused internal contradictions, in 10 years, 14 years has occurred twice "down the president" incident, the president appointed by the Association for Science and Technology was driven away twice.

If it is an ordinary commercial company, if such a thing happens, the next step is for the team to leave and set up another mountain. However, the current situation of the domestic publishing industry makes it impossible for them to completely tear their faces, so they can only stand up without embarrassment. Later, "The Three-Body Problem" became so popular that the chairman and the president loved to read it, and the magazine benefited from it, and this embarrassing situation had to be maintained for a while.

As a retired person, the old president has already jumped out of the five elements, and she said this sentence completely deliberately, in order to help Atletico beat the side drum. The latter has long coveted the resources of the magazine's authors, editors and readers, and wants to package them all and poach them all. Bee has a family that focuses on "crossing" through a hundred years, which can barely be regarded as science fiction.

Hearing the old things mentioned again, Editor-in-Chief Yao quit, and now the position of president is vacant, and he, the deputy editor-in-chief, is the de facto number one, and this kind of face-to-face poaching must be resolutely resisted back. So he said: "Don't mention these unpleasant things. Atletico Madrid, we also watched the movie, what about the commemorative gift you said?"

When the others saw it, they all tacitly turned the topic to the souvenir and pretended to be very interested.

The poaching failed, and Atletico Madrid was not in a hurry, and stretched out his hand with a smile: "Take the impression after watching it!"

Everyone said, "I'm not in a hurry, I have a lot of feelings, it's all in my head, I'm going to take time to brew it, and I'll write it to you when I get back!"

"I've memorized everything, be careful that I smash the glass if I delay the manuscript," Atletico said with a smile, "Wait a minute, there's still a short film I haven't watched." ”

"Ahh

The door opened, and two staff members came in with a translucent box containing a neatly arranged VR headset, a non-production model for the Wandering studio's own use, with top-of-the-line processors and screens to provide the best possible visuals.

Taking advantage of the moment when the two of them were distributing equipment to everyone, Wang Luobin opened his mouth and introduced: "The short film that everyone is going to see is the short film 'Who Will Drive the Earth?' that we prepared for the Sundance Film Festival in January next year, so I don't need to tell me the specific plot, right?"

Everyone smiled knowingly.

But when they really saw the actual picture, they gasped one after another, and then they realized that the Americans still had a hand.

The VR video is indeed a "battle for the cab", but the picture is very different from what you just saw.

In the movie version, the Earth Wheelhouse is a large spherical room located underground, with a huge holographic display on the wall, displaying real-time information about the cosmic celestial bodies around the Earth, and a suspended driving platform in the middle. The two sides of each other's rat traps engaged in a war of words on it, the Earth faction criticized the Sun faction for not understanding science and fooling around, and the Sun faction said that I don't beep when I see it, and finally became angry, punched and kicked each other, and finally hit this place with his fists. The Solar Faction then shut down all Earth engines, intending to wait for the exile ritual before activating them to return Earth to the most habitable orbit between Venus and Mars.

In the VR version, the holographic display becomes an unknown virtual starry sky, the platform becomes a huge, unrecognizable model of the earth, and people become giants who step on mountains and rivers and look up at the stars. Looking down, you can see the continuous operation of the earth's engine, and when you look up, you can encounter a beautiful meteor that accidentally crashes into the atmosphere, which is very strange and mysterious.

However, neither side of the fight had any intention of paying attention to this, and they focused their attention on each other, continuing to stage the established routine from verbal cannons to dry fights.

I didn't feel it when I stood just now, but when the group started fighting, what I showed was the feeling of a dry titan, moving my mouth and howling in the wind, waving my hand through the clouds and cracking stones, kicking and kicking the trees and flying mountains, and stomping my feet into the springs, a feeling of watching the god war arise spontaneously.

Of course, if you look far enough away, when the "Earth" becomes the size of a ping-pong ball, the "Battle of the Giants" will become a boring pastime like ants fighting.

Unfortunately, the length of the film was limited, and soon the Sunpie triumphed, and by the time the engines of the earth that lit up half of the sky turned off one after another, the special VR experience came to an end.

"Director Wang, the completion of this paragraph is very high, why don't you put it in the film, it shouldn't be difficult to convert, right?" Zhu Lingling didn't make a sound, but this time she couldn't help asking.

"It's not difficult, but the problem is that the painting style doesn't match," Wang Luobin explained with a smile: "We did this at the beginning, but after we actually made it, it felt very strange, not like science fiction or fantasy." So I can only give up the pain and replace it with a more realistic version in the film. ”

Then this special effect screen was not wasted, and it was changed to be made into a new VR short film.

Da Liu suddenly asked: "How does it feel different, could it be that what I saw before was fake VR?"

After he reminded him, everyone also reacted that he was able to move freely and adjust the perspective when he was experiencing it just now, no matter whether he was far or closer, running around, even if he turned to the other side of the earth, the picture could remain clear and stable. This is not something that can be achieved by those so-called VR films, and even Bee's previous works can't be realized.

"That's right, what you saw before was just a panoramic video pretend," Wang Luobin nodded yes, and then he said a little frustratedly: "Actually, this is not a real VR movie, at most it is a better virtual reality game." Because its images are rendered in real time, the effect is not as good as that of the render farm. ”

The world is 3D stereoscopic, but before the maturity of light field photography/playback technology, we could only capture and present it with flat sensor chips and screens, which brought a lot of information loss. For this reason, the so-called panoramic video has a definite focus and position for each frame, and it seems that the panoramic surround playback is realized, but the audience cannot move the position at will, and it is also difficult to see distant and near objects at the same time. If you can't see clearly, how can you talk about "virtual reality"?

Faced with this problem, some manufacturers choose lens arrays, hoping to use these "artificial compound eyes" to collect more information, but Bee Mirage chooses CG reproduction. The former has a huge amount of data, time-consuming processing, and time-consuming electricity. This small piece of content alone cost more than 10 million dollars to produce, and that's not counting the cost of the equipment needed to produce and play it, which is a professional-grade graphics supercomputer!

If it weren't for the idea of going to ParkCity to pretend, oh no, missionary, and bringing real VR to the world, Ma would not have approved the project at all.

Located in Park City, Utah, USA, it is an alpine town known for its skiing and alpine tourism. But for movie lovers, the Sundance Film Festival, held in January in January, is the city's most important attraction, just as the Cannes Film Festival is to Cannes.

The SFF was originally created for independent filmmakers to encourage low-budget small productions. But as more and more good films are discovered, the festival has become more and more lively and commercialized, and major Hollywood companies are not only going there to discover new directors and find potential good films, but also find ways to send their own films to the market. To create a VR short, sign up for the "NewFrontier" section is a great way to do it, and Bee Pictures does just that.

"Isn't that right?" Zhu Lingling interjected, "This is much better than the game screen, or am I playing a fake game?"

Wang Luobin glanced at her, "How can the game function compare with the supercomputer?"

Only then did you realize that what you just watched was actually a real-time rendered animation running on a supercomputer, a specially designed demo game. Then curiosity arose, and they inquired about the cost of this video and the cost of the dedicated supercomputer.

When they heard the numbers, everyone was also speechless, Da Liu took a breath with a smile and said: "If I remember correctly, it seems that there are more than 300 VR short films on Sundance this year, and there will only be more next year." Hehe, I really don't feel worth it for them, what about the independent photo exhibition that I said? Why do you let the local tyrants in?"

"I'm not a tyrant either, but the technical limitations are too great, and if you want to make a better picture, you have to burn money," Atletico explained.

"You're not a tyrant, who are you? Anyway, the souvenirs waiting for can't be shabby, otherwise we will draw circles around your neck to expose you!"

"Don't worry," Atletico smiled and waved his hand, "I have prepared a commemorative grand prize of up to nine million for everyone, and I guarantee that you will be satisfied." ”

Then, he took out a thick stack of two-color 'ball color' tickets from his pocket, "This stack is predicted by me, this stack is predicted by AI, this stack is thrown by the dice, come and come and choose three cards at will, it depends on your own luck if you don't win!"

(End of chapter)