Sperger has learned a lesson this time, his new work "The Great War" is similar to this "Transformers" in terms of scene scale and special effects, but the actors in it are all big names, as a result, Sberg spent $250 million heartbrokenly, but did not get the expected market response.

In fact, for movies based on special effects, the role of stars is minimal. Looking back at the movie "The Great War" now, if the protagonist did not use Toms and other actors did not use first-line stars, but used some second- and third-tier stars, the box office would not have a big impact, and the investment could be about $15 million less.

So this time, Snapger set his sights on selecting actors as early as three years ago, especially those rising stars in DreamWorks, who are not in the rising stage, with low asking prices, good acting skills, and not low popularity, and are actually the preferred actors for special effects blockbusters.

At the beginning, Chen Feng fully met this condition, although his worth has become one of the first-line movie stars of DreamWorks, but compared with his popularity and box office appeal, every penny spent on him is definitely worth it.

But Chen Feng won the actor trophy in Mesno the year before last, and this sudden change caught Sberg off guard. After thinking about it repeatedly, he decided to continue to let Chen Feng, whose value has risen a lot, as the starring role. The two sides soon reached an agreement, and Chen Feng agreed to star in the film for $17 million, which is also among the top three among all male actors.

The media have speculated that Chen Feng starred in this film at such a "low price", and Sperger's "face" played an important role.

In the $180 million budget, Sperger asked Michael Bay to keep the total remuneration of all actors within $25 million. Chen Feng alone has already taken the lead, and of the remaining $8 million, the heroine Wells spent another $4 million, and Michael Bay can only be careful about the rest of the money, and among the remaining characters in the film, the audience basically sees very unfamiliar faces.

Chen Feng joined. The screen duo of "Youth Musical" and "Twilight" reunited, as well as various speculations about the film by Transformers fans, after the producers announced the production plan of the film. The media has been buzzing about the hot topic of Transformers.

Despite the constant speculation from the outside world, the tone within the crew is very tight. Michael Bay and all the crew members of the crew have signed demanding non-disclosure agreements, while serving as the two lead actors of the film. Chen Feng and Wells also rarely talked about the film on the occasion of the joint opening.

Strictly speaking, "Transformers" should be an action movie with a sci-fi nature, and Michael Bay is famous for his wonderful presentation of live special effects. He is so obsessed with and good at live special effects that the best part of his failed sci-fi film "Escape from Psychedelic Island" is actually the traditional street car chase.

When making this film, Michael Bay did not intend to give up his own style, he believes that live special effects and sci-fi content are not contradictory, because the former actually adds to the realism of the film. During the filming of "Transformers", Michael Bay insisted on not using the digital effects part, and turned to traditional blasting and modeling methods to achieve the same goal.

Explosions are certainly indispensable in Michael Bay's films. Although DreamWorks is relatively mature in a complete set of digital special effects production technologies such as fire, sparks, shockwaves, gravity engines, debris, and smoke, and is fully capable of creating relatively realistic pictures, it is difficult to perfect it, and second, it takes unlimited money to achieve perfection. The so-called "100 feet to the next level", making special effects above the level is not a problem for industrial light and magic. But to make a super-first-class, dreamy picture that breaks people's imagination, the cost will increase exponentially. …,

In contrast, in traditional live special effects, the controllability of explosion effects has been greatly improved, enough to complete various effects according to the director's requirements. From his own style point of view, Michael Bay made a wise choice.

In order to maximize the realism of the film. In this movie, which uses digital special effects technology to synthesize the "Transformers" picture, Michael Bay still used models in the filming of some scenes.

KNB, DreamWorks' senior model and makeup effects studio, produced 10 large-scale models of King Kong for "Transformers", including Optimus Prime's head, Megatron's legs, and vertigo's paws in addition to Bumblebee as a whole. Large, detailed solid models are mainly prepared for close-ups, especially when there are not many animated scenes, and it can save the hassle of "virtual background drawing" and "digital compositing" while conveying more realism at your fingertips.

――――

In order to fulfill the vision of director Michael Bay, the actors in the film not only had to take great risks to shoot on location, but the crew's on-set special effects team also racked their brains, and they had to come up with all kinds of ways to help the director realize those crazy ideas in his head.

However, when filming the scene where the mad robot "Barricade" chases the hero in the scrapyard, the special effects team encountered a very tricky problem. It took them three days without coming up with a workable plan. For this, Michael Bay lost his temper.

Chen Feng was dragged to the scene by the assistant director to be a "firefighter". Michael Bay's short temper is well known in the crew, and he can still speak when he is angry, except for the film's executive producer Sperger, only Chen Feng can do this.

Michael Bay also slowly calmed down after losing his temper, and Chen Feng's timely appearance just gave him a step. After everyone sat calmly in the conference room, Chen Feng figured out what was going on.

It turned out that during the filming of this scene, "Barricade" overturned an obstructive car to the side in the process of chasing the hero. To achieve this shot of the car rolling in the air, the traditional method is to use a small pneumatic barrel, placed on the side of the car chassis, and after remote detonation, the reaction force will push the car to roll in the air.

"I've heard that this special effects technology was also used in the recent filming of Casino Royale, which caused Bond's Aston Martin DBS to roll seven laps at high speed, and is said to have set a new world record for stunts." Van Digan, the head of the special effects team, gave a recent example, and although "Casino Royale" is still being filmed, this technical approach is no secret in the circle.

His explanation made Chen Feng feel more and more puzzled, since there was a solution to the problem, why couldn't they come up with a shooting plan for a long time. He asked suspiciously, "Then why don't we use this technology?" ”

Michael Bay, who had not spoken, gave the answer in his deep voice at this time: "Because it is difficult to control." ”

"So apart from this 'pneumatic barrel', we have no other technical means available?"

"There's also a more traditional 'rollover' effect," Van Digan looked at Michael Bay, who was sitting diagonally across from him, "and this technique uses a steep roadblock to drive a moving car up from one side and then it rolls." As far as I know, the black sedan in "The Matrix 2" that does a harrier roll over the heads of Trinity and Morpheus was filmed like this. ”

"I used this technique 10 years ago when I was filming Death Island, do you remember the shot of Sean Connery's black car flying into the air? That's how it was filmed. Without waiting for Chen Feng to ask, Michael Bay himself explained: "But in our current film, many cars are unlucky to be ravaged by crazy robots in a stationary state for no reason, so the skill of 'slope barricade' is not used at all." ”…,

"These two methods are currently the most commonly used, and we have not thought of a better solution," Van Digan added.

"I have a way... Maybe it's okay" When everyone was at a loss, Chen Feng suddenly came up with such a sentence, and everyone's eyes in the conference room stared at him.

Chen Feng is a complete layman when it comes to special effects technology, but it is precisely because of this that he can think of some unconventional means, such as this time he got inspiration from the film "The Matrix" that Fan Digan just mentioned when he explained the "slope barricade". Of course, what inspired him was not how the car rolled in the air in that movie, but how people rolled in the air in that film.

As we all know, "The Matrix" successfully used the technique of "hanging Weiya" in Hangzhou-Hong Kong kung fu films when filming the actions of the characters. Since the wire can lift people, of course, it can also "crane the flying car", Chen Feng's idea is to apply the "hanging Weiya" to the scene of the "flying car".

On the basis of the idea, Chen Feng further proposed specific operation steps: "We can use the steel cable of the overhead crane to buckle one side of the roof of the car, and at the other end, the car will be rolled into the air with the huge pulling force generated by the high-speed hydraulic pump." ”

Michael Bey and Van Digan were eye-catching at the same time, and Chen Feng's idea opened their minds for them, and his proposal was also highly practical. Michael Bay stood up excitedly, "Chen Feng, you are simply a genius, how did you come up with this method?" ”

Chen Feng shrugged, "I used to do this in toy cars when I was a child. ”

――――

Chen Feng's idea has been proved to be completely feasible in practice, and like "Hanging Weiya", "Crane Flying Car" has a more spectacle effect, the car rolls farther in the air, stays in the air for a longer time, and has a more graceful attitude in the air, which is very much in line with Michael Bay's aesthetic orientation to action shots. (Your support is my biggest motivation.) )