Duke's method of shooting "Georgeism" is very special, which also determines that its post-production will be very different from previous movies. As early as the early preparations, he, the director, realized this.

Not to mention technical and financial issues, the first problem I face is time.

The film wants to pre-screen before the New Year to qualify for the Oscar competition, and only has three months of post-production time. For such a film, the difficulty can be imagined. Even John Schwartzman and Tim Weber have persuaded Duke to give up this Oscar and it will not be too late to wait next year.

But they didn't know Duke's mind. The reason he made this film was for this Oscar. Unless "Black Swan" is moved to be released in North America next year, he will not change his plan.

This is obviously impossible. "Black Swan" has already held its global premiere at the Venice Film Festival and will officially land in North America in October.

After the filming, Duke went to the home of Industrial Light and Magic and George Lucas again, and the production cost of "Georgement" was also increased to $230,000. Nearly two-thirds of the film's funds will be invested in special effects production.

This is a business society. As long as you can afford the price, you can gain enough manpower.

Industrial Light and Magic mobilized almost all the people who could be mobilized to participate in the post-production of "Georgeous"; not only North America, but also the branches of Industrial Light and Magic in London, India and Singapore also joined in. They mobilized a large number of people and digitalists to be responsible for the most time-consuming and labor-intensive lens rendering work.

However, Duke is very clear that to make the film excellent enough, special effects production is one aspect, and storytelling is also one aspect. "Gravity" is in line with reality, but it does not have a rigid and completely based on reality.

For example, in post-production, the orbits of many space stations and satellites are properly compressed.

Since the film will use a large number of long shots, shots that last more than five minutes abound, and the editing work is relatively not as complicated as before. Duke completely threw the initial editing work to Mike Dawson, who was at the special effects headquarters of the Warner Studios films, coordinated the special effects production work that included North America, South Asia, Europe and Southeast Asia.

The special effects production started before the film started, and the shooting process was going on. Otherwise, it would be impossible to complete the production that would take several months to render it alone. Moreover, Duke used heavy funds to collect a large number of people, and many shots could be processed at the same time.

Of course, the consequence is the high production cost.

But he now has such a cost. As long as the production cost is not more than $300 million, I believe that the Warner Bros.'s audit committee will not hesitate.

There is a lot of important work in the entire post-production, and lens rendering is undoubtedly the most tedious item.

According to Duke's requirements, after shooting and cg-made lenses, many lens effects such as penetration, shine and chromatic aberration are needed.

Due to time constraints, the Industrial Light and Magic special effects group planned to use the latest special effects development software named ‘Arnold’ renderer at the beginning. This software is powerful, but has not been actually used in any past videos.

Since it was the first time to use it and faced with an extremely huge workload, many people were still worried, including Duke. Fortunately, the Arnold renderer has super powerful memory management functions, allowing many complex scenes to be rendered.

This is something Arnold renderer is good at. It uses many complex geometries to complete rendering and can also do a lot of ray tracing. Due to the long rendering time and the huge pressure applied by Duke, the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic must always confirm that what they are doing is correct. If the things they make are not helpful to the texture of the entire movie, it is undoubtedly smashing the Industrial Light and Magic's signature.

In addition, Duke also asked them to use a lot of instantiation techniques to increase the complexity of the picture.

“There is partly because doing so helps the audience’s sensory experience.”

Duke also explained to Tim Weber, the special effects director of Industrial Light and Magic in the crew, so that they can understand the necessity of doing so. "Because when you are shooting in space, you can't shoot with the best camera, and you can't change the lens. Many things can't be done, so those special effects lenses are used to show the feeling of space photography."

According to Duke's understanding, there will be some light leakage when shooting in space. Due to the distant sun and the blackness of space, if the light reflected by the earth is not shown in the shadow part, the contrast will become particularly large, larger than anything seen on the earth.

So, there are many high-contrast pictures needed in movies.

How to convince the audience of the authenticity of what happened in space is quite troublesome. Duke is generally used in space movies, whether it is simulation or special effects. For example, the pulse electromagnetic radiation caused by the discharge process in the atmosphere is the skylight, which is the skylight, which is the skylight that is not as powerful as the distance skylight is not so powerful, which is not in line with the expectations of the movie audience.

There is also an explosion. If there is an explosion in the universe, few people know what it is.

Therefore, in post-production, the information provided by the astronauts will not be completely based on the information provided by the astronauts. Sometimes, exceptions have to be made. For example, it often takes 5 minutes for astronauts to leave the space station. Such things must not be copied. At that time, the audience is happy to watch, and the video will give them such a thing, and the consequences can be imagined.

Of course, Duke will do the same thing as reality first, and some will make exceptions, but they will always make these actions seem meaningful.

There is another job that will directly affect the success or failure of the film, that is, 3D.

Due to the craze caused by "Avatar", many Hollywood companies are now preparing to convert their classic movies into 3D and re-release them so that they can make a lot of money.

There is no doubt that Duke is ahead of the entire Hollywood. As early as the beginning of the year, the 3D version of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy took advantage of the "Avatar" craze and earned more than 300 million US dollars from the world.

As for "Gravity", Duke decided to make it into a 3D movie more for its story service. Most of the scenes inside are floating in outer space, and the effect will definitely be remarkable in 3D.

A long time ago, Duke confirmed that "Gravity" would be a movie that combines CG and real-life shooting, but before the shooting started, he had never decided whether to use 3D to shoot directly or convert it to 3D in the later stage.

Duke and John Schwartzman tried to use 3D shooting, but in practice, it was very troublesome to put bulky 3D shooting equipment in a narrow light box.

Therefore, after Duke went to Industrial Light and Magic and brought back the 3D conversion results, the crew found that in this specific environment of space and the crew's special shooting methods, there is no difference between the real-life conversion and direct shooting with 3D shooting, and the actual shooting efficiency is much higher.

So, Duke abandoned his plan to shoot 3D without hesitation.

But "Gravity" will definitely not be a fake 3D film. Its shooting and production methods are extremely special, completely different from the traditional 3D transformation.

The traditional method of converting 3D to convert movies into 3D in post-production, while "Gravity" is different.

As early as in pre-production, the work of Industrial Light and Magic conversion 3D began. Duke's 3D director Chris Parks has been working with teams related to Industrial Light and Magic. He explained Duke's philosophy to them in detail, all of which were carefully thought about.

For example, the vast contrast between the vast universe's empty space and narrow space capsules that almost make people feel claustrophobic.

From the beginning, this team faced huge challenges, and they had to ensure that the converted 3D pictures can be seamlessly connected with the 3D pictures made by CGI.

After real scene shooting, you need to convert it to 3d. The cgi is also made of 3d. Both are 3d, but one is converted and the other is made of special effects.

Another point is that when doing this, they can’t make sure that this will be the picture Duke will eventually want, and the team is trying their best to maintain the flexibility and creativity of the transformation process.

Not only that, when they were working, "Gravity" was not a completed movie. They worked with the crew to follow the shooting progress. The team did not start to switch later. They kept the same progress as Duke's crew.

The entire post-production is closely linked and is a standard team behavior. Duke is just the commander-in-chief. Many shots are drawn up in Los Angeles and San Francisco and transmitted to India and Singapore, where they do the most tedious translation work, then teleported to London for processing, and finally transferred back to Los Angeles, where they are reviewed by Duke and Visual Effects Director Tim Webber.

Duke wants to ensure that all the pictures are in line with the environment, and make the environment more beautiful as much as possible. Of course, this requires the whole post-production team to work together.

In the final editing, the technical strictness is to make the picture seamlessly connected, so that the audience cannot see where the editing point is. Duke often considers where to edit from the perspective of 3D. The entire editing team is doing the same thing for 3D to find the subtle editing point, so that the picture looks like it has not been edited.

There is no doubt that "Gravity" is the most complex and detailed work completed by Industrial Light and Magic so far.

Duke has achieved the ultimate in the current conditions with the length of the shot and the high requirements for details during the conversion. Many people who have even watched the clips he has completed believe that 3D will change the movie one day.

Thanksgiving is coming soon. Before Thanksgiving, Duke temporarily put down his work and prepares to attend the premiere of the final chapter of the Harry Potter series. (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!