After a short break, Duke quickly moved into post-production of The Dark Knight Rises, and as always, he chose Warner Studios as his base for post-production. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The team of VFX also from ILM and its many partners and subcontractors, and under his leadership, the team's VFX supervisor has worked with Duke on all of the Batman films and Inception, and the team has produced a number of VFX and animation shots, and the stunning scenes have been recognized by Duke.

According to Duke's plan, the film will be at least two and a half hours long, and there will be more than 3,000 computer special effects visual effects shots, and some shots will even be dizzying.

Quantitatively, the production of these special effects shots is a must for superhero movies.

This also fully reflects Duke's production method and production philosophy, that is, to use special effects as much as possible, and many of the actual shots need to be processed by computer special effects, which has the advantage of making the film as large and impactful as possible.

And those live shots will also provide enough data base for the production of special effects shots, which can create a high level of reality, that is, the visual effects can match the high quality of the live action image, and it is also closer to the state of the film that Duke wants.

Early in the build-up, the team spent a lot of time documenting, surveying the terrain, scanning the crew, accurately documenting the lighting, and more, and to achieve the best results, the team also developed a key tool specifically for the film: a ray-traced rendering system that would work with existing pipelines and lighting setups.

This system is able to accurately calculate the energy exchange between different surfaces and create realistic lighting effects for different surfaces, a process that requires a lot of computer power to do so, and the results are perfect because it gives objects such as Batmobiles and Batman's bikes an inherent sense of realism that can be easily adjusted.

It is worth mentioning that this new toolbox is made when effects. There is no need to give precise grading instructions, such as making the surface look brighter, removing the highlight area, contrasting effects, etc., now you only need to adjust the brightness and darkness, and the effect can also meet the requirements of the lens. Not only does it simplify the operation steps, but it also makes post-production work more efficient.

The visual effects of The Dark Knight Rise are divided into several important sequences, and the first thing to be delivered to Duke is the aerial hijacking shot at the beginning, in this scene. The actor parachuted from a C-130 to another CIA jet, broke into the cabin, escaped with a prisoner and destroyed the jet's wing, before the fuselage slammed in two.

The shot was pre-produced with high-precision dailies, including how the special effects were shown, and the detailed dailies allowed Duke to work on how to handle the stunts and live-action shots, and what special effects needed to be made to accompany the shot.

The final result is also a mixture of multiple production methods, miniatures and special effects, creating an airplane wing fracture scene, and green screen keying replacement. Combined with the real airplane model and two actors shot in real action, and finally the CG animation of the skydive was added to complete the realization of this difficult shot.

In another clip, the explosion of a soccer field, in which Bane the Destroyer, detonates explosives on the soccer field, creating a scene where the field collapses, and in order to create a realistic live effect, the team uses previvis to plan a live-action shoot, in which the stuntman falls through a crack in a platform above the field. To match the effect, the team created some additional actors with CG animation, and the entire sports field was also made of CG.

The difficulty with this shot is that the entire field is physical. The team needed to have a high level of production capability to control the realism of these simulations and synchronize the physics with the actors' movements. In this shot, the crowd was also expanded, and some shots of the stadium were made based on the crowd of about 20,000 or so sitting in the stands watching the game.

As with most VFX films, CG is usually used in the digital doubles of the main actors, and The Dark Knight Rises is no exception.

The digital substitutions mainly include Batman and Catwoman. When the character is driving a vehicle, many shots actually use digital keyframe animation, and digital doubles are not only characters, but also some motorcycles, such as a scene shot by Duke that requires a batbike to climb a ramp and use the ramp as a springboard to escape from the trap.

The biggest challenge with this shot was that since the Batbike is not a moped, it didn't look easy to get it off the slopes, so the shot was made with a real stunt bike for the stunt show, and then the VFX team gradually replaced it with a digital bat bike, and then adjusted it to the physics of the real bike jump.

As Duke said, cinema is often an art that deceives the audience.

Through special effects, Duke wanted The Dark Knight to present an extraordinarily realistic and sophisticated visual texture, with those cold and proud colors combined with the detailed composition like industrial design, giving superhero movies another possibility, building a bridge between the exaggerated comic book style and traditional film noir.

IMAX technology is an important foundation for this.

There is no doubt that the IMAX lens obtained by Duke when shooting is unprecedented, using the large HD format frame to shoot about 50% of the footage, and the IMAX large frame requires about 20 times the data of an ordinary 2K image, the operation of this data alone is a huge logical work, and from a creative point of view, in fact, most people can't really see what IMAX does, because there is no image device that can support this digital screen.

VFX engineers can see a proxy image or a part of an image, and the only way to see the whole image is to output it to IMAX, and the process of output can only take several days and can only be done in IMAX's Los Angeles office, and the first person to see the film is not the production staff, but Duke, the director.

So the whole film is a huge challenge for the team, both in terms of creation and production.

However, just as they are not afraid of competition, Duke and his team are never afraid of any challenge.

Before the special effects work was completed, Duke handed over all the editing work to Mike for the time being. Dawson, in addition to being busy with the special effects team, he also frequently works with Hans? Zimmer meets to discuss the soundtrack.

The Dark Knight Rises missed the Super Bowl ad in early February due to time constraints, and despite the Los Angeles Raiders' three-game winning streak, Duke didn't have time to focus too much on his team.

At the beginning of March, Hans? Zimmer submitted the first version of some of the soundtrack to Duke.

In the finale of this trilogy, Hans? Zimmer summarized the thematic soundtracks of the first two films, and then there is the current first edition.

In the studio, the rousing music ended, and when Duke put down his headphones, Hans? Zimmer explained in detail, "We chose a completely different direction for Bain's soundtrack, and I wanted to use the symphony orchestra to speak for the characters' thoughts and emotions, and I explained to the players that they should put aside everything they knew and be the most primitive drummers." ’

Speaking of which, Hans? Zimmer laughed, "The result was very good, everyone felt very liberating, like feeling a musical adventure." ”

Duke also nodded slightly, although it was the first version, and some places still needed to be improved, but it already had the effect he wanted.

In addition to the soundtrack, Hans? Zimmer also dedicates a notable chant to Bane.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Warner Bros.'s publicity department specially asked Hans? Zimmer had an interaction with a wide audience of Batman fans in order to get fans involved in the production of the film's soundtrack and create hype.

Fans can send their own songs through UJAM, a website dedicated to composing, producing and publishing music.

Tens of thousands of netizens around the world responded to the event, and the audio files received were synchronized into a powerful chant that Duke arranged into the film.

Hans? Zimmer said in an interview: "I suggested to Duke that this was a way to give back to the fans and fans and get them to actually get involved, and we had some concerns at first, but the end result was beautiful. ”

"I've never worked with someone who is so obsessed with an idea, desperate, and almost desperate for it. But the most dangerous places are often the least risky,"

Later, Duke also expressed some opinions on this matter in an interview, "Hans taught me how to find the truth even if you go astray, and if you don't go through these sideways, maybe you will never be able to make an amazing performance." He is able to set new goals for each film, and each time it will make you feel unattainable, even completely impossible. ”

Like the characters in the film, for Selena? Kyle's music is 'ambiguous and ambiguous, which is much more interesting than bluntly judging a person good or bad, and Duke's film has a fair share of gray ambiguity, Hans? Zimmer uses music to express this ambiguity.

It was Hans who connected each part of the trilogy with a musical thread? Zimmer for Bruce? Orchestrated by Wayne.

The theme of the Batman soundtrack is the simplest and clearest, and the theme of both identities is almost always the same.

When it was busy in April, the post-production of the film had entered the final stage, and the release date in May was getting closer and closer, and the publicity offensive was naturally becoming more and more fierce. (To be continued.) )

PS: Ask for monthly passes and recommended tickets!