Chapter 241 Is It a Terrible Intuition Or Is It Natural Good Luck?

The funding gap for the production of "Avatar" is actually not that big. Cameron threw out $300 million just to test Lin Mingyang's determination and the attitude of MGM as a whole, but he didn't expect things to go so smoothly, even the one who "instructed" him to come to Lin Mingyang behind his back never expected such a result.

Lin Mingyang's unexpected decisiveness made the expressions of the other two people in the reception room extremely weird: MGM's president Ex frowned, he obviously still considered the pros and cons of the whole thing; Cameron fell into a state of ecstasy, because of Lin Mingyang's promise, there is only beauty left in his world now.

Of course, Lin Mingyang didn't have a hot head, on the contrary, he was very sober now. He knows very well what the concept of $300 million is, but he also knows very well that it is not a loss at all to smash the $300 million heavy bet on "Avatar". This Cameron, which took four and a half years to produce and a total cost of nearly $500 million to build, not only opened up a new world of cinematic 3D technology, but also brought people an epoch-making audio-visual experience. It is not an exaggeration to sum up such a movie as "opening a new era of Hollywood films", and its status as a technical benchmark is comparable to Cameron's masterpiece "Titanic".

The most important thing is that in Lin Mingyang's memory, the final box office of this film was as high as 2.7 billion US dollars, and the investment was about 500 million US dollars. This is equivalent to a movie with an investment of $200 million and finally earning a box office of $1 billion, and with the same box office return, Hollywood movies that break $1 billion at the box office basically do this. The key is that the investment base of the whole film is there, and the huge amount of $500 million is enough to shoot more than two other films.

The greater the investment, the lower the box office return, which is a common sense problem in the film investment industry, a film with an investment of 10 million US dollars finally gets a box office of 100 million US dollars, and a 10 times box office return is not surprising at this level, but a blockbuster with an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars can get 5 times the box office return, which is already a box office bomb in similar works, which is enough for a director to become famous.

According to this ratio, as long as the $500 million investment can get a box office return of $1 billion, it is already considered qualified, and Cameron's final answer sheet can no longer be described as simply excellent, which is an important reason for Lin Mingyang to make up his mind without thinking.

Now that Lin Mingyang has made a final decision, Ex will naturally not stand up against it again, and after the two sides reached a verbal intention to cooperate, Lin Mingyang immediately urged the conclusion of a written contract, and his reaction was like Cameron would regret it.

When he took the investment agreement signed with MGM Pictures and went to the door to find the behind-the-scenes boss who "instructed" him to find Lin Mingyang, the other party immediately regretted it, and even secretly blamed himself for taking out a good opportunity to make money and sharing it with others "generously", and finally lifted a stone and shot himself in the foot.

The man behind Cameron's search for a new investment partner was News Corp.'s major shareholder, Chairman and CEO Murdoch Murdoch. In terms of stock market capitalization, News Corp. is the world's leading multinational media group, and under its command is the prestigious British newspaper "The Times" and the American film industry's big-name film company, 20th Century Fox.

Cameron burned off the $230 million investment given by Fox, but it was a half-finished product, which once again caused dissatisfaction within the company with this "money burning king", and many directors believed that Cameron's bad problem of overspending on filming was not corrected after "Titanic", but became worse. This time, he obviously wants to repeat the old way of "Titanic", using unfinished works to blackmail investors, and then get more investment.

Cameron's actions have crossed the bottom limit that Fox's shareholders can bear, and this resentment has erupted collectively, and even Murdoch himself cannot force the bullet, and although he himself supports Cameron, he actually has doubts in his heart about whether Cameron can perform miracles again. In the end, he thought of a way to verify it, which was to ask Cameron to find Lin Mingyang.

From MGM to the recent acquisition of Playboy Group, Lin Mingyang has made the whole of Hollywood look sideways with every step he takes, and Murdoch has been paying attention to Lin Mingyang for a long time, and even spent a lot of effort to study Lin Mingyang's ideas. In just 20 years, Murdoch has developed from a tabloid owner to an international newspaper king, and many dying newspapers can be brought back to life in his hands, and his vision is naturally good. Lin Mingyang is the first young man who makes him feel incomprehensible, although the two sides have never met, Lin Mingyang's dazzling "record" that has never missed makes Murdoch firmly believe that this young man has an almost intuitive and keen judgment of the success or failure of movies. His original intention was to use Lin Mingyang to test the quality of the film "Avatar".

In his opinion, even if Lin Mingyang admires "Avatar" very much and is willing to contribute, when MGM is preparing to merge and acquire the "Playboy" group, Lin Mingyang should not be able to take out the huge amount of money that Cameron needs, and he will come up with 100 million US dollars, and when Cameron comes to him again, Murdoch can persuade other directors to invest more.

Murdoch's arrangement can be described as a scheming, but unfortunately he met Lin Mingyang, and all his plans came to naught.

Of course, Murdoch is not the only one who is depressed, MGM President Ex is also very awkward, as MGM's "big butler", he has to prepare the investment and financing plan for the acquisition of the Playboy Group, and at the same time tighten his belt to squeeze $300 million out of the company's pocket. While complaining, Ex had been waiting for Lin Mingyang's explanation.

But Lin Mingyang hid in the crew of "New Sherlock Holmes" and refused to show up, which made Exx hold back his resentment in his heart, and finally waited for Lin Mingyang's call, but the other party did not explain the reason for this investment at all, but just blindly invited him to visit the filming of "Avatar".

Ex is very similar to hanging up the phone, but after seeing Lin Mingyang "go crazy" several times, he knows that "crazy" can't be figured out with common sense, and Lin Mingyang's sudden invitation may have other purposes. It was with this idea in mind that Ex reluctantly agreed to go to the crew of "Avatar" with Lin Mingyang.

The two did not set off at the same time, but made an appointment to meet in the crew, Lin Mingyang arrived one step ahead of Exx, and when Exx came, the staff in charge of reception did not immediately take him to visit the filming of the crew, but led him to the screening hall.

Confused, Exx asked, "What do you want to show me?" ”

"Some of the finished film clips," the staff member handed Ackes a pair of 3D eyes, and explained with a smile: "Sir has just left here, and he says that there is something in these clips that you are very interested in. ”

In the face of the ambiguous information left by Lin Mingyang, Ackes vaguely felt that this film might really bring him something beyond imagination, he brought 3D eyes, and then, accompanied by the staff, began to seriously appreciate the tip of the iceberg of this film.

The clips were edited by Cameron for next year's annual European film festival in Amsterdam,1 an eight-minute clip of "Titanic" was shown to the world for the first time, and a few months later, the wreck brought him $1.9 billion at the global box office and 11 Oscars, which Cameron considered his blessing.

The first clip of this clip is when the main character, Jack, wakes up from the spaceship's dormant chamber and is in a weightless spaceship, and the immersive reality is immediately apparent, in order to show Jack's levitation, the camera scrolls in the same position, and the viewing effect is that the screen focus is still, and the result of this technical processing is that the person in the seat - Ex feels like he is floating

As the fragment unfolds, Ex's heart is shaken over and over again, after Jack becomes an "Avatar" hybrid creature and enters the primeval forest of Pandora, those rich and diverse herbs seem to be under his nose, within reach; When Jack first saw a large, multi-layered red flower in the shape of an inverted umbrella, Ex felt that the sun-stretched needle petals almost covered the front of the screening room, and he might be able to touch it if he stretched his neck. The most wonderful thing is the "soul tree" seeds flying in the sky, they are like snowflakes and transparent jellyfish in the ocean, surrounding the characters in the movie, and also surrounding Exx in front of the screen, making him breathless and dizzy, completely lost in the fantasy world of Pandora.

As he plucked his eyes, he felt nothing but emotion, and he had only experienced the deep shock caused by the beauty of the scenery for the first time, and only when he saw the colorful tropical fish in the underwater coral reef forest. The movie made Cameron get to this point, and he couldn't think of the right words to describe his mood at this time. It's no wonder that Cameron was able to spend the investment given by Fox and still be so bold as to call out an additional investment of $300 million, which MGM did not lose money.

The answer given by Lin Mingyang through Cameron's hand has answered most of the doubts in Ackes's heart, but the old problem has been solved, and a new problem has appeared. Lin Mingyang must not have watched these clips before investing, so why does he think that this film is worth investing in, is it still his terrible intuition that may not be explained?

The same situation has happened many times, every time Ackes asks about it, the answer is ambiguous, and Exx even thinks that Lin Mingyang himself can't say why, this invincible judgment is either because Lin Mingyang has a terrible intuition that is beyond ordinary people, or because he was born with good luck?

Ex shook his head, trying to get the nonsensical thoughts out of his head. In any case, his investment in Lin Mingyang back then can be said to be an incomparable choice, and although the process of such a "master" is terrifying, the result is always satisfactory.

The staff member Cameron sent to receive Ackes was a very "eye-catching" guy, and he had been observing the change in the expression of the head of the investor since he took off his glasses from Ex. Seeing a smile on the corner of Ackes' mouth, the staff member began to lose no time in introducing some specific circumstances of the filming of this film.

In order to be 100% representative of Pandora's amazing fantasy world, Cameron used three breakthrough technologies in this film: virtual camera technology, expression capture, and a combined digital stereo camera.

Ix had heard of virtual camera technology before, but he had the impression that the technology was mainly used for 3D virtual world games, and his understanding of this was also thanks to the 3D computer games that Lin Mingyang installed in his office.

It was only then that Exx realized that Lin Mingyang was so "enthusiastic" about playing games and obviously had other purposes. The application of virtual camera technology in the game is that the gamer can control his own artificial intelligence body in the virtual world, and the character behavior information will be fed back in real time and two-way, and the three-dimensional environment in which the character is located changes in real time with the change of its action position.

In "Avatar", the actor wears countless sensors for "action grabbing", and the computer directly processes the captured data, and the virtual character it represents is directly displayed on the monitor according to the pre-made scale, so that the director can observe the interaction between the virtual character and the virtual electronic Pandora world in real time.

The technology of expression grabbing is a new word for Ex, and through the explanation of the staff member, he understands that the so-called expression grabbing refers to the computer graphics technology that grabs the actor's expression by taking his fingers.

In order to use this technology, Cameron set up a special stage in Los Angeles that is five times larger than the average performance capture studio, and installed 120 fixed cameras to capture all the information about the actors' performances from all angles; The actor who plays the Na'vi also wears a special hat, and a tiny camera records all changes in their facial expressions during the performance. In this way, Cameron hopes to transmit 95% of the actor's performances and facial expressions to his or her digital avatar. The result is an incredibly realistic imaging that makes it impossible for viewers to distinguish between real and virtual interactions.

As for the joint digital stereo camera, it is a 3D stereo camera system created by director Cameron and the cameraman. Those technical functions are not too intuitive for a "layman" like Ex, but he knows very well that without these three technological innovations, there would be no immersive Pandora experience in the film, and the audience would not be able to experience the mystery, wonder, and wonder of the dragon bird, the speed of the dragon bird, the colors of roaming the night forest, and the breath and murmur of the tree of life.

And all these feelings belong to the theater, which is the key to ensuring that the story is realistic and emotionally real. There is a faint feeling that Cameron's film may be able to bring cinemas, once buffeted by home projection and Blu-ray HD DVDs, back into the spotlight and usher in a new era in cinema history.

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Thank you very much for not giving up, don't say anything, the state of the frog has been adjusted, this is the first shift, there is a shift before 9 o'clock in the evening

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