Just after Thanksgiving, Murphy unveiled the main poster of "Dark City" on his Twitter and Facebook at the same time, Chris Dane stands under a gloomy sky, with the smoke of Manhattan in the background, but the world's financial center no longer looks bustling, but looks cold and dilapidated. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

In the following days, the official posters of Magic and Jay Rachel were also released, which caused quite a strong response among fans.

However, Murphy did not pay attention to these for the time being, and the post-production work of "Dark City" was quite busy.

It took a long time for Murphy and Jody Griffiths to finally get the first cut of the second version of the film, which was more than 240 minutes long, a far cry from the 100 and 50 minutes that Murphy had requested, and there was still a lot of work to be done in the next fine cut.

A wonderful film is the result of careful editing.

And as he watched more of the film and footage in the edit, Murphy was able to see the shortcomings of some of the ideas he had planned, as is always the case in filmmaking, and the initial idea was not necessarily the best.

As soon as the editing work began, he was ready to adjust the first shot at the beginning of the film.

"Jody, adjust the first shot."

Standing in front of the monitor, Murphy looked at the clip playing and said to his editor, "I'm going to focus on the main character for the first shot!" ”

"Chris Dane?" Jody Griffith asked, confused, "Or a magician?" ”

"James' character!" Murphy said without hesitation, "The magician is the hero of this film." ”

Jody Griffiths nodded, adjusted the camera himself, and changed the first shot of the film to James Franco's back according to Murphy's request, and the picture went from far to near, and there was a freeze frame of about 0.5 seconds at the end.

Although the audience will not know that this is a magician when they watch the film, they will definitely realize it later.

The opening shot is aimed at the protagonist, which can shorten the distance between the audience and the movie for the first time, let the audience and the protagonist face each other at the beginning, and strengthen the audience's sense of substitution in the movie.

In addition, focusing the camera on the protagonist is also conducive to the natural development of the film's story, which leads the whole story.

Murphy uses an almost static shot to show the male protagonist played by James Franco, and deliberately places the protagonist on the left side of the picture in the editing composition, coupled with the distinctive back in the obscure black and white light and shadow, which can highlight the character's recklessness and set a dark and crazy tone for the film.

Just like the opening shot, Murphy doesn't hesitate to adjust the rough cut version whenever he thinks it might be better.

In addition to editing, Murphy's other job is to process some special effects shots of the film.

In this film, he added a large number of explosion scenes, and for specific purposes, most of the special effects relied on traditional techniques and post-editing, and did not use today's more common CG production.

When shooting, many shots were completed through real models, such as the car chase scene filmed in Manhattan, New York, in addition to the live shooting, some difficult shots that are difficult to achieve use the now outdated model special effects technology, making the stunt cost very high, but it looks very real and shocking.

This is one of the reasons why Murphy Ken used this backward technology to produce, in terms of the finished special effects, "Dark City" can be said to be impeccable, the scene of the magician blowing up the hospital was filmed on the spot, and Murphy also asked the special effects team to model a 1:80 hospital to make up for some of the explosions and places that could not be taken care of during filming.

Such traditional special effects production can also make the audience feel the shock brought by the film, Murphy used many close-ups to depict the villain of the magician in this film, even more than Chris Dane as the main character, in order to make the image of the Joker's evil and twisted madness be remembered by the audience.

In recent years, whether it is in North America or overseas, there are few similar roles like magicians on the screen, and Murphy pays special attention to the shaping of this character when he is fine-cut, and the use of a large number of close-ups will make the audience feel more oppressive, and further feel the evil atmosphere exuded by the role of magician.

Of course, Murphy's consistent editing style will inevitably make this film have no urine spots, with a tense and compact rhythm and perfect image building, to pry a box office miracle.

There are a lot of scene changes in this play, and there is also a lot of use of light, and Murphy will not ignore Chris Dane, after all, this is the male lead, in all his shots, as long as he appears as a night walker, Chris Dane is a man who needs shadows.

As for the music, it has to be said that Hans Zimmer is a master of commercial soundtracks, and more and more samples of the score are sent by him to the studio of the Fox Building, with the majestic sound of horns and tight rhythms, creating a dark and majestic atmosphere.

All of this made Murphy quite satisfied.

And Hans Zimmer is not only a master of soundtracks, but also knows how to run a business.

"Being the soundtrack artist for Dark City and working with such a talented and great director as Murphy Stanton is a tremendous pleasure and a great honour for me. He is the kind of wise director who is willing to listen to others and welcomes all kinds of observations. ”

In an interview with reporters, Hans Zimmer did not hesitate to praise his words, "We work together, we want to make a great film together, we all want to be shocked and surprised, but we also want to resonate strongly with the audience." No matter how grand the production scene is, Murphy is most concerned about the story itself, as long as you have seen his previous films, everyone can appreciate his good intentions. ”

It turned out that spending a lot of money on Hans Zimmer was well worth the money.

By December, when the fine cut was almost complete, Murphy was considering the first trailer for Dark City, and Hans Zimmer returned to the Fox Tower studio to assist him with this part of the work.

According to the contract signed by both parties, Hans Zimmer needed to configure a good enough soundtrack for the trailer.

This is also quite important work in the production of trailers.

In fact, all commercial directors understand that whether the trailer of a commercial film can be attractive or not, the musical weight will occupy more than 30%.

A piece of music with a melody and rich rhythmic changes can be said to be the core of an action movie trailer, no matter how good the trailer editing skills are, if the music is mediocre, the trailer will also look mediocre; The music is of high taste and the music is well edited, so it doesn't matter if the cut is a little rough.

Music is the most intuitive thing to give people "feeling", two-minute music contains a huge flow of emotions, without saying a word, music can make the audience feel "excited", "moved", "love", "disillusioned", "philosophy", "religion", "nervous", "fear", "depressed" and other emotions, these abstract themes can be subdivided into countless specific images.

And the picture and dialogue, in the short two minutes of the trailer, can only present sporadic "information".

So, the soundtrack of the trailer is quite crucial.

The soundtrack is important, and the editing certainly can't be ignored, after Hans Zimmer completed the arrangement of the trailer, Murphy made the editing of ordinary shots deliberately not press on the rhythm, but only on the rhythm of the important shots.

Why? All the shots are pressed on the rhythm, the first is very flute, the second looks like a MV, and the third is also the most important, each shot is pressed on the rhythm, which is very cool, and when it comes to the brilliant shots or the shots that should be strengthened, it is not so cool to press on the rhythm point, and the effect will not come out.

On the other hand, Murphy's overall grasp of the trailer will be lowered before the camera climaxes, quiet after the climax, and then a higher climax, such as before the gun explodes, he will brake the music, let the whole speaker quiet down, say something or something, and shoot or explode again.

This is done to make the climax appear higher and more powerful, and to create a contrast through the energy difference, and to enhance the effect of the trailer.

As the post-production of the film was completed step by step, and the release time in May 2013 was getting closer and closer, Twentieth Century Fox's promotion of "Dark City" became more and more intensive, and related posters and behind-the-scenes shooting anecdotes continued to be released.

At the same time, the 'viral marketing' on the Internet has never relaxed.

On Thanksgiving, the film's official website and Murphy's Twitter account launched a crossword puzzle game with national participation. The game requires netizens to click on the note on the web page, through the name of the city displayed on the note and clues, to find the letters, and then take a picture and upload it to this website, when the 49 letters distributed in 21 cities in the United States are all found, they can spell out a complete sentence.

This novel online and offline interactive activity immediately attracted many netizens to participate, and soon, the phrase "the way to survive in this world is lawlessness" was spelled out, and "Dark City" also became famous in this first wave of interactive marketing.

The enthusiastic response to the event also accumulated experience and confidence for the next offline activities of Twentieth Century Fox, and soon they planned activities such as the Magician Imitation Contest, the Global Gift Hunt, and the Chris Dane Supporters Building Lighting Ceremony, all of which also achieved good results.

In the words of the Hollywood Reporter's commentary, "Dark City" successfully maximized the publicity effect through a combination of online and offline activities, providing an excellent example for the viral marketing of other films in the future.

Such publicity has also attracted the attention of countless people, such as Archbishop Márquez-Costello.