First, visual effects:
1 film age
Traditional special effects can be subdivided into makeup, scenery setting, fireworks special effects and early film special effects.
Before the advent of computers, all special effects depended on traditional special effects. Everyone is familiar with the Journey to the West in the 1980s, in which all monsters are made up of traditional special effects. Professionals make masks of monsters, and actors put them on their heads to shoot. The scenery is reflected in the scene of the Heavenly Palace. Building some buildings similar to the Heavenly Palace and putting some smoke will create a misty scene of the Heavenly Palace.
2.CG era
CG can be understood as computer creation. When the traditional special effects can't meet the requirements of the film, CG special effects are needed, and CG special effects can achieve almost all the effects that human beings can imagine.
The production of special effects in CG era can be roughly divided into two categories: three-dimensional special effects and synthetic special effects. Among them, three-dimensional special effects are completed by three-dimensional special effects artists, who are mainly responsible for the performance of dynamic animation, mainly classified as modeling, materials, lighting, animation and rendering. The synthesis of special effects is completed by a synthesizer, who is mainly responsible for the synthesis of various effects. Main categories: keying, rubbing, color matching, synthesis, and scenery gathering.
Companies representing the world's top level include: Industrial Light Magic/New Zealand Vita Company, etc. In the past two decades, countless shocking blockbusters have been completed by these companies. Let's briefly introduce these two companies.
Industrial Light Magic was founded by George Lucas 1975, and its masterpieces include Avatar, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminator, Jurassic Park and Star Wars. The most classic works are prehistoric dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and octopus faces of pirates of the Caribbean.
New Zealand Vita was founded by Peter Jackson, and its masterpieces include The Lord of the Rings series, Avatar (such special effects blockbusters are basically completed by many special effects companies) and King Kong. Gollum and King Kong basically represent the highest level CG creatures in the industry. Another very influential achievement is the development of the group animation tool MASSIVE, through which the epic melee of the Lord of the Rings was created. This software has been studied in China for several years, but limited by the cost and personnel level, few results have appeared.
Second, the sound effects:
Sound special effects, called sound effects, are usually accomplished by the cooperation of a sound imitator, a sound recorder and sound mixer. The imitator is responsible for capturing all special sounds (such as explosions, footsteps, broken sounds, etc.) in the picture. The sound engineer is responsible for recording the sound of the imitator, and finally editing and processing it into sound effects for film and television.
Visual experience of film and television special effects
Truth is the basic principle of artistic creation. "It is neither the same as life itself, nor can it be verified and restored like scientific truth". Movies make people dream, good movies make the audience unwilling to wake up, but no one wants to dream about their common people and scenery. Film and television special effects make this dream more exciting. Through film and television special effects, the film creates a dream that the audience has never seen or thought of. As one of the means of film creation, the creation of film and television special effects also follows the basic law of artistic creation-authenticity.
1, realistic human scenery, acousto-optic color
People's scenery and acousto-optic color are the most important elements of audio-visual language, and they are the main components of picture information. The principle of dealing with these audio-visual elements in film and television special effects is to restore their overall relationship. Whether it is virtual generation or key generation, we should unify the tone and color and restore the texture in combination with the environmental light conditions of the scene, so as to achieve realistic effects. If this is not done well, it will make the audience aware of what is the result of film and television special effects, thus creating a sense of alienation.
2. The viewpoint, movement and trajectory of the lens are reasonable.
The viewpoint of the lens is the viewpoint of the audience, and its reasonable position should still follow the principle of true feeling, and its rationality is to expand people's visual habits to some extent. The movement of the lens also has its laws. The traditional camera movement has very strict and mature norms, which can't be broken in digital special effects. If the camera is moved at will, the form will be divorced from the content. The trajectory of objects has long been formed in nature, and only by strictly restoring the film and television special effects can we experience the truth. If there is a slight deviation, it will immediately change the overall relationship of people's understanding of things, resulting in unreality.
Detailed explanation of contemporary CG special effects
1 3 d special effects. Most characters and scenes with stereoscopic perspective changes are created by three-dimensional special effects. Three-dimensional special effects are almost the most difficult part in the whole special effects, but also the most problem-solving part. For example, various lifelike monsters in the film, the flood that flooded the whole city in 20 12, and the collapse of skyscrapers. The general production process is: model-material lighting-binding-animation-rendering.
Specific software: MAYA platform is the main platform in China, supplemented by dozens of softwares such as MAX, realflow, huodini, C4D, XSI and LIGHTWAVE.
2 Synthetic special effects. The most common manifestation of synthetic special effects is that the heroes in costume films fly around the sky with flying light skills. Specific implementation method: The actor fighting is filmed separately from the sky, in which the actor fighting part is shot in the background of blue screen or green screen with steel wire hanging by the actor, and then the blue screen and steel wire are removed in the computer by using the later software, leaving only the actor part and then sticking it in front of the real shot sky. It looks like actors are fighting in the sky. Of course, the specific synthesis is much more complicated than this, and many later software can also make some effects of three-dimensional special effects, but it is only an aid and is unlikely to replace three-dimensional software.
Commonly used software: nuke/fusion is the mainstream, and some companies use AE/COMBUSION/SHAKE/flame/smoke and other platforms.
Digital landscape painting and conceptual design. Digital landscape painting and conceptual design can be understood as painting.
Digital landscape painting: For example, a panoramic view of an ancient city appears in a film, involving thousands of ancient houses or palaces, flowers, trees, bridges and flowing water, etc. If three-dimensional software is required to make it, the cost will be very high, and it usually needs the cooperation of many people to complete it, but with a digital painter, he can draw all these into a picture by himself.
Conceptual design: Conceptual design is usually used for pre-production reference. For example, there will be a monster in the film, but what does the monster look like? The director speaks in words, and the concept designer draws it in the form of pictures according to the director's requirements. After determining the image, he gives it to three-dimensional special effects to make lifelike monsters.
Function:
In the current film production process, the idea of special effects has been reflected since story board, and the film and television special effects have changed the original traditional film production process and mode. In the script planning and narrative arrangement, the film and television special effects make the creators jump out of the traditional linear thinking mode and completely break the concept of time and space, so some pictures limited to shooting technology can be realized, and the creators let go of their hands and feet and give full play to their imagination. In addition to traditional scripts and story board, film and television special effects also need their own special effects scripts.
In the early stage of shooting, in addition to the field shooting, there are more and more shots such as setting scenery, blue screen, model and digital skylight painting. In order to meet the requirements of key-making, actors are required to shoot in the studio of the blue screen, because there is no scene in the studio of the blue screen, and it is entirely up to the imagination of the actors. It is also required that the emotional actions of the performances match the scenes in the synthesized picture, which is undoubtedly a challenge to the actors' experience and performance skills.
Moreover, the requirements of lighting and props are different from those of traditional shooting: lighting personnel should design the lighting in the studio in combination with the background light to be synthesized and environmental changes including wind, rain and lightning, and some parts of the props will be hidden in the blue cloth, which also needs to be seamlessly combined with the props to be synthesized in the production. The requirement for the personnel who set the scenes and props is not just to make some physical models, but to draw the required scenes and props in the computer for later synthesis.
After the preliminary work is completed, the post-synthesis processing completely uses computer technology, and the original traditional special effects methods such as masking and overlapping are replaced by some functions of computer software.
The expression technique of film and television special effects
Film is an art of expression. The creator tells a touching story through audio-visual language, expresses the feelings of the characters and infects the audience. With the development of computer technology, film and television special effects have brought many themes that could not be expressed in the original film to the screen, and established a brand-new film language style and style. It provides the creator with unlimited imagination space, and the filmmaker's mind is liberated from the bondage of technology. Through film and television special effects, the director can create people, scenery and things that were not originally available, restore huge ancient buildings, and let modern people talk to historical figures. You can also adjust the camera's viewpoint and trajectory according to the needs of style and plot.
Digital special effects will be classified as the elements of audio-visual language together with human scenery, acousto-optic color, lens movement, etc. It is conceivable that without digital special effects, there would be no Matrix, no narrative structure and philosophy of Matrix, and no image with a static rotating perspective that is regarded as a model. Because when the creator Wachowski brothers wrote the script, they began to tell the story and render the picture with the thinking of film and television special effects. They not only created many new shooting techniques, but also created picture language and narrative language which can only be realized by special effects.
6 industry status quo
In recent years, domestic CG special effects have made remarkable progress. The famous companies include Hualong Company of China Film Group, BASEFX Company under the banner of the United States, and some branches of foreign special effects companies in China, such as Dortmund and Viewpoint Special Arts. But overall, the domestic CG special effects level is several grades worse than the above three companies. If industrial light magic is a doctoral student, then the best company in China is at the level of high school or secondary school students.
Hong Kong special effects companies are represented by Wankuan and Centro Digital, and FATFACE is also good. The main works are Stephen Chow's Kung Fu/Fengyun Jue/Changjiang No.7/Metallic Attraction Kungfu Cyborg, etc., which are between junior college and undergraduate students.
Movies with large domestic film investment and complex special effects, such as Tangshan earthquake and Chibi, are mainly handed over to special effects companies in Hong Kong or abroad. Except for a few companies such as Hualong, the vast majority of domestic film and television special effects production companies rely on some relatively primary TV special effects and low-cost movies to survive, which is characterized by low production costs and low requirements, and the practitioners barely survive.
As nearly 1,000 universities have set up animation and other related majors, and there are hundreds of MAYA training institutions in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, junior talents have far exceeded the market demand. The average animation employment rate of animation graduates is estimated to be less than 30%, and the salary of newly employed students is mostly around 800-3,000 (Beishangguang). Countless students spend high tuition and training fees, but they can't stand in the industry; For the sake of their own interests, colleges and most training institutions spare no effort to advocate the gap of 150 thousand in CG industry and film and television special effects industry, and sigh.
The domestic film industry, from investors, producers to directors, is still in a very slow stage of development, although people have seen the impact of American films. Today, when we have the ability of film and television production, the public and the media have shown great interest, but this interest is not about the whole industry, but about the film and television special effects in American movies, taking into account the concern of the domestic film and television special effects industry. Apart from the employees themselves, there are not many people who care about film and television special effects.
In this big environment, there are basically three situations in the application of film and television special effects: (1) The director is interested in film and television special effects and wants to make some attempts. But the scale of the attempt is very small, not in the whole process of film production, so it can't achieve very profound results. (2) In films that don't consider the return, the film and television special effects are fully applied. Such as: "Flying Leopard" and "Rough Waves". (3) The film creator hopes that the film special effects will add some highlights and selling points to the film. In "Critical Strike", some shots that are difficult or impossible to achieve are completed with computer assistance.
In a word, film and television special effects have not yet formed a very standardized commercial operation. There are few films with practical film and television special effects for commercial purposes, so the film and television special effects production industry has not formed. The dilemma of lack of professionals also plagues this immature industry. Few people engaged in film and television special effects production are from the film industry, but most of them are computer professionals and art professionals. The understanding of moving images is not enough, and the ability to tell stories in audio-visual language is not strong. However, with the progress of the times, the essence and function of film and television special effects are gradually recognized and used by Chinese filmmakers.