Zhang Ran arrived at the exit of the terminal building of the airport, and Jiang Bo, the person in charge of the Lin'an branch of Tiangong Chongcai, was already waiting there. Jiang Bo is one of the special effects artists recruited from abroad at the beginning of the establishment of Tiangong Chongcai, and Zhang Ran is an alumnus of UCLA, with outstanding skills and abilities, and now he is not only a well-known special effects director in the industry, but also the head of the Lin'an team.

When Jiang Bo saw Zhang Ran, he immediately greeted him and said, "Mr. Zhang, I haven't seen you for a long time!"

Zhang Ran laughed and said, "Jiang Bo, I haven't seen you for a long time!"

After a few brief greetings, Jiang Bo took Zhang Ran out and got into the car parked outside.

When Tiangong Chongcai was established nine years ago, it was only a small team of more than ten people, but after nine years of development, especially after the acquisition of Summit Entertainment and Marvel by Century Peak, the company has gained more opportunities to participate in the production of special effects for Hollywood blockbusters, allowing the company to gain enough technical accumulation. Up to now, Tiangong Chongcai has developed into a large company with thousands of employees and four production bases in Beiping, Lin'an, Rongcheng and Los Angeles.

Now Tiangong Chongcai has a complete film and television special effects production process, and has cooperated with Tsinghua, Zhejiang University, and Stanford's graphics studios, has strong research and development capabilities, and has become a world-class special effects company, especially in the disaster special effects, which can be said to be the world's top level.

Thanks to Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings, Weta has become the world's top special effects company, and New Zealand has also become the world's special effects town; due to the training of the "Harry Potter" series, a number of top special effects companies have also emerged in the UK in just a few years, and with Zhang Ran and Tiangong Chongcai, China's special effects industry has also made great progress.

The treatment is quite good, and the projects that take over the pinnacle of the century can be shared, which is unique among all special effects companies in the world. However, even so, many technicians leave the company every year to start their own special effects company. For these entrepreneurs who left the company, Tiangong Chongcai did not suppress them, but supported them accordingly and outsourced part of the content of their own projects. In this way, Tiangong Chongcai can take on more projects, and the company of the departing company has also been developed, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone. At present, half of the top ten special effects companies in China are derived from Tiangong Chongcai. Therefore, the industry says that Tiangong Chongcai is the Whampoa Military Academy in China's special effects industry.

Due to the good Chinese special effects technology and the very cheap price, many Korean and Dongying films also hire Chinese teams to produce special effects. As a result, Korean special effects companies went bankrupt one after another, and the entire Korean special effects industry was crushed by Chinese special effects. In the last life, the special effects of Chinese films were dominated by the Korean team and occupied half of the country by the Koreans, and in this life, due to the efforts of Zhang Ran and Tiangong, the Korean special effects industry was annihilated.

However, the situation of Wumao special effects in domestic film and television works is still serious, there are too few directors who understand special effects in China, and most of the production costs of film and television works are taken away by actors, and the cost of special effects is pitiful. There are only five cents to make special effects, and there must be only five cents to make the effect. To change this situation, it is only possible after the industrialization of Chinese films.

The reason why Zhang Ran came to the Lin'an team this time is because the protagonists of his new film are an old man and a blind dog, and this dog is very spiritual, and the real dog can't be played, it can only be done through special effects, just like the tiger in "Youth Pi", which can only be completed through CG;

The car didn't drive long before it arrived at the Century Film and Television Industrial Park in Fuyang District. Zhang Ran asked the driver to drive around the industrial park to see the construction of the industrial park.

Although Jiang Bo is the person in charge of Tiangong Chongcai, not the person in charge of the Century Film Capital, they have been stationed in the Century Film Capital for more than three months, and they still know a little about the progress of the project. He told Zhang Ran that in addition to the cinema palace with a particularly large amount of work, the first phase of the Century Film City project has been completed, and the comprehensive service building, office building, part of the photography studio, as well as the post-production workshop and R&D center of the industrial park have been completed, and many enterprises have settled in.

The theme park next to the Century Movie Metropolis has also started, but the land leveling work has just been completed, and nothing can be seen yet.

There is actually nothing to see at the construction site, and Zhang Ran doesn't want to disturb everyone's work, even the movie palace he cares about the most only looks through the car window and doesn't get out of the car. After the car turned around in the industrial park, Zhang Ran asked the driver to drive to the building where the Tiangong Chongcai Lin'an Branch was located.

After the car stopped, Zhang Ran and Jiang Bo raised their feet and walked upstairs, and after entering the door, they got on the elevator, and Jiang Bo pressed the fifth floor. He told Zhang Ran that Tiangong Chongcai moved in in January this year, and the conditions here are quite good in all aspects.

The elevator quickly reached the fifth floor, and as the elevator doors opened, the two stepped out of the elevator. After walking a few steps, Zhang Ran saw the word "Tiangong" on the red seal, and the Tiangong Chongcai Lin'an Branch was in front of him.

After entering Tiangong Chongcai, Zhang Ran saw that the special effects artists were busy operating the equipment and concentrating on making special effects, so that he didn't see Zhang Ran and them. Jiang Bo clapped his hands and shouted loudly: "Everyone, stop, you can see who is coming!"

The special effects artists present raised their heads and saw Zhang Ran, and immediately burst into exclamations, almost all of them put down their work, just like fans saw idols, hula came around, and greeted Zhang Ran excitedly.

Jiang Bo hurriedly clapped his hands, signaled everyone to be quiet, and then looked at Zhang Ran and said, "Mr. Zhang, let's tell you a few words!"

All the employees immediately applauded enthusiastically, and their faces were full of indescribable excitement.

Zhang Ran smiled and waved his hand, asking everyone to put down his hand, and then said: "I really don't have anything to say, this time I came here to prepare for the new film, the protagonist of my new film is an old man and a dog, this dog is very smart, very human, and can even be said to be a person who can't speak." It can't be done with real animals, it can only be done through CG and special effects. Our Lin'an team has a good reputation in animal special effects, and I want to hand over the special effects work of this movie to you, so I will leave it to you!"

There was another round of applause at the scene, most of the special effects artists present were very young, and many people regarded Zhang Ran as an idol, and it was undoubtedly the most exciting to be able to cooperate with idols.

After chatting briefly with the special effects artists and taking photos with everyone, Zhang Ran entered the conference room under the leadership of Jiang Bo. Immediately afterwards, several special effects directors who will participate in Zhang Ran's new film also walked into the conference room.

Under Jiang Bo's introduction, Zhang Ran shook hands with several special effects directors, and then he looked at several special effects directors and said: "I believe everyone has already read the script, our film is going to be made in 3D, and there are more special effects shots, I want to hear what you think about the special effects of this movie." ”

One of the directors said: "The scenes of this film are not complicated, and there are not a lot of animals to be made, mainly mice, yellow wolves, and a blind dog. One of the most important is this dog, we must first determine the image of this dog, and then we can go to the real dog and collect its movements and expressions, so we must first know what you want from this dog, what its breed is, and what the image is like. ”

Zhang Ran nodded and said: "My biggest requirement for this dog is to be real, our movie is going to be made into a 5K picture, and it will be on IMAX, and my requirement is that it must be very real in IMAX, and it must be real to the extent that it is fake." After watching the movie, the first reaction of all the viewers was that this was a real dog, not a special effect. As for the image of the dog, this dog must be a local dog, or a Chinese pastoral dog, it can't be a foreign breed, the image of this dog should be good-looking, although it is blind, but it should be handsome in the dog, and it is the kind of best handsome guy!"

When they heard this, everyone burst out laughing.

Zhang Ran also laughed when he saw that everyone was laughing: "This is really important, only if this dog is handsome and cute enough, the audience will be more likely to like it, and in the end, the audience will be more likely to be moved." ”

Jiang Bo nodded and said, "We will go to sampling as soon as possible, go and shoot a video of the earth dog back, so that you can choose the most suitable one." ”

Zhang Ran knew that it was very complicated to make this dog, so he had to first collect the movements and expressions of the model dog, model and make the dog's bones, measure the muscle curvature, and add skin texture and hair effects on this basis, and finally make the image of the dog. When filming "Life of Pi", the special effects work made the tiger, and it took almost a year. And the difficulty of making this dog is not necessarily easier than the tiger in "Life of Pi", so he must give the special effects team enough time.

Zhang Ran smiled and said: "I know that the special effects of this movie are technically difficult and time-consuming. For example, the dog to be made has millions of hairs, and it takes more than half a month to grow these hairs. I'll give you plenty of time, if you're not ready, we won't turn it on!"

Jiang Bo and several directors looked at each other and smiled, and then said confidently: "Making animals is actually not a difficult task for us. Last year, we were invited by Weta to work on the special effects for Rise of the Ape Ball, and Weta chose us because we had developed a software called Caterpillar, which specializes in making hair for animals. Weta has its own hair implantation software, but their software is planted one by one, an orangutan has 5 million hairs, and the amount of work is very impressive, and our caterpillars can be implanted in clumps, which can save a lot of time!"

Zhang Ran was stunned when he heard this, it seemed that he had underestimated the Lin'an team, they were stronger than he imagined in terms of animal special effects, so he laughed: "Since this is the case, then I am completely relieved." ”

After chatting about special effects for a while, one of the special effects directors suggested: "The hardest part of this film's special effects is not the animals, but the lighting, and if possible, I recommend abandoning location shooting and shooting all virtual." ”

The so-called virtual shooting means that all the shots in the entire movie shooting are carried out in the virtual scene in the computer. In general, digital stunt production combines a live-action performance with a pre-shot background by keying. However, due to the inability to see the compositing effect on the set, and the lack of accurate positioning and capture systems, the compositing effect was always unsatisfactory.

Shooting with a virtual shooting system can be directly composited, the actor performs in front of the green screen without a background, but the green screen displayed by the monitor has been deducted and replaced with a real background, and even some digital characters that need to be collaborated can be placed directly into the background, so that the director can adjust and direct the scene as if he were in real life.

Virtual shooting can save time and energy in post-production such as tracking and modeling due to the very accurate on-site shooting data, and can improve the efficiency of shooting without being limited by time and on-site environment.

Although there are many benefits of virtual shooting, Zhang Ran did not rush to agree, which requires listening to the opinions of photographer Zhao Fei and 3D photographers: "This needs to be communicated with the photographer, and after Zhao Fei and the others come over, we will discuss the issue of virtual photography." ”